The Sun is the supreme male power of Baruya cosmology and, with the Moon, one of the two great celestial luminaries who preside over the world. In the beginning the Sun lay joined to the Earth, indistinguishable from her; when he rose into the sky and the Moon rose after him, the first age of the universe ended and the cosmic order took its present form. The Sun fathered men and continues to intervene in every human conception. When the first man and woman still had sealed, unusable genitals and anus, the Sun took pity on them and threw a flintstone into a fire, and the bursting stone pierced their bodies, making sexuality, birth, and death possible. His heat governs the ripening of crops: should he draw too near the earth, all growing things are scorched, and the balance between him and the cold, wet Moon regulates the seasons.