Kwere
Kwere is one of the three sons of the creator Wuro and the Bobo god of thunder and lightning, associated with the sky. Together with his brothers Dwo, the god of renewal embodied in the masks, and Soxo, the god of the bush, Kwere is one of the divine emanations through whom the withdrawn high god Wuro is present in the ordered world. As the celestial and storm power of the Bobo pantheon he governs the lightning; the Bobo treat death by lightning as a manifestation of his agency, and in the north such deaths, like deaths by fire in the mask, are marked by the participation of particular leaf masks in the funeral. He is named consistently in the ethnographic and encyclopedic literature as the third of Wuro's sons, completing the triad of bush, sky and renewal.
Parentage
- parent: Wuro
Domains
- thunder lightning
- sky heavens
Powers
- to command the thunder and the lightning of the sky
Epithets
- KwereMolefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds., 'Encyclopedia of African Religion', Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2009. (secondary)
Relations
- sibling: DwoKwere and Dwo are brothers, both sons of Wuro; Kwere wields thunder and the sky while Dwo governs renewal and the masks.Christopher D. Roy, 'Art of the Upper Volta Rivers', Meudon: Alain et Françoise Chaffin, 1987. (secondary)
- sibling: SoxoKwere and Soxo are brothers, both sons of Wuro; Kwere holds the sky and Soxo the bush.Christopher D. Roy, 'Art of the Upper Volta Rivers', Meudon: Alain et Françoise Chaffin, 1987. (secondary)
Sources
- Kwere is a son of the creator Wuro and the Bobo god of thunder, lightning and the sky.: Christopher D. Roy, 'Art of the Upper Volta Rivers', Meudon: Alain et Françoise Chaffin, 1987. (secondary); Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama, eds., 'Encyclopedia of African Religion', Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2009. (secondary)