Butan
Batammariba · deity · Batammariba traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Butan is the earth-and-underworld goddess of the Batammariba and the divine counterpart of the solar Kuiye, to whom she stands as both twin and wife in a cosmology that pairs the sky above with the earth below. Her dominion embraces everything within the ground and upon its surface: the growth of plants and the success of agriculture, the proliferation of game on which hunting depends, and the cemeteries in which the dead are buried. As such she is honored at the earthen, ground-level features of the Batammariba tower-house, complementing the solar worship directed to the door-horns above. Her earth-and-death associations make her central to the funerary world documented at length in the ethnography of the Atakora peoples.
Domains
- earth and underworld
- agriculture and vegetal growth
- death and the cemetery
Powers
- to rule the earth, its growth, and the cemeteries of the dead
- to grant the fertility of fields and the proliferation of game
Relations
- twin sibling: KuiyeButan is named as the complement of the solar Kuiye and is described as that deity's twin, the two forming an earth-and-sun pair.Suzanne Preston Blier, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge University Press / University of Chicago Press, 1987). (secondary)
- spouse: KuiyeBatammariba tradition also presents Butan as the wife of Kuiye, joining the earth goddess and the sun god as a divine couple.Dominique Sewane, Le souffle du mort : la tragédie de la mort chez les Batãmmariba du Togo, Bénin (Plon, collection Terre humaine, 2003). (secondary)
Sources
- Butan is the Batammariba goddess of the earth and underworld, the twin and wife of the solar Kuiye, ruler of agriculture, game and the cemeteries of the dead.: Suzanne Preston Blier, The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge University Press / University of Chicago Press, 1987). (secondary); Paul Mercier, Tradition, changement, histoire : les « Somba » du Dahomey septentrional (Éditions Anthropos, Paris, 1968). (secondary)