Sulá, the creator-helper and lord of the seed below
Sulá (Bribri; Surá in Cabécar) is the subsoil creator-helper of Talamancan religion, the guardian of seeds (ditsö̀) and of the souls of the dead in the world below, and the first jawá or healer. He acts as Sibö's indispensable partner and as the mythic bridge between the shaman and the high god, manifesting through magic stones or a ritual staff. In the cosmogonic cycle he reassembles and revives Sibö after the creator falls and shatters, dispatching the small animals to recover the scattered organs and compelling a vulture to disgorge the swallowed liver. He is the father of the girl-child Iriria, whose body Sibö needs to make the earth; when the captured girl grows too heavy for the animals to carry, Sibö entrusts her to Sulá so that the creation can be finished. His domain is bound up with the Bribri funerary festival, in which death is understood as a return of the seed to Sulá's keeping.
Children
Domains
- underworld and souls
- healing and medicine
Powers
- to guard the seeds and the souls of the dead in the world below
- to reassemble and revive the fallen Sibö
Relations
- ally: Sibö, the creator culture-heroSulá is the creator-helper who restores Sibö after his fall and takes the heavy girl-earth into his keeping so Sibö can complete the creation.Doris Stone, The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 43 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1962). (secondary)
Sources
- Sulá (Cabécar Surá) is Sibö's creator-helper and the seed-and-soul guardian of the world below, the first healer, who revives the dismembered Sibö and fathers the girl-earth Iriria.: María Eugenia Bozzoli de Wille, El nacimiento y la muerte entre los bribris (San José: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica, 1979). (secondary); Doris Stone, The Talamancan Tribes of Costa Rica, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 43 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1962). (secondary)