Aluluei

Aluluei is the god of navigation and seamanship, the patron of the palu or master navigators, and son of the primordial captain Palulop. He was among the first Carolinian deities to enter the written record, described in 1817 by the voyager Kadu to the naturalist Adelbert von Chamisso as god of the sea and of the stars. He is imagined with a face on both the front and the back of his head, and his many eyes are the stars by which a canoe is steered. In the widespread navigation myth his elder half-brothers mistreated and killed him, whereupon he became the sea-god who forever guides seafarers. His name resembles that of the supreme god so closely that some accounts conflate the two; scholars differ over whether the sea-god and the sky-god were originally one.

Parentage

• parent: PalulopGladwin, T. (1970), East Is a Big Bird, Harvard University Press. (secondary)

Domains

• navigation
• stars and sea

Powers

• guides the canoes of navigators across the sea

Relations

• parent: PalulopGladwin, T. (1970), East Is a Big Bird, Harvard University Press. (secondary)

Sources

• Aluluei is the god of navigation and seamanship, patron of the master navigators, son of the primordial captain Palulop.: Gladwin, T. (1970), East Is a Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Puluwat Atoll, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (secondary)
• He was recorded as early as 1817 from the Carolinian voyager Kadu as the god of the sea and stars; iconographically he bears two faces, and his many eyes are the guiding stars.: Chamisso, A. von (1821), Bemerkungen und Ansichten, in Otto von Kotzebue, Entdeckungs-Reise in die Sud-See; Kadu's testimony on Carolinian religion. (primary)