Marespa
Central Carolinian · deity · Central Carolinian traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Marespa is numbered among the great benevolent deities of Ifaluk, a protecting high god to whom a spirit-house was kept and offerings made. Some accounts recorded by Burrows and Spiro hold that he had once been a man who was raised to divinity, which set him among the tutelary gods rather than the malevolent alus, the harmful ghosts whose affliction of the living is the central preoccupation of Ifaluk religion. He exemplifies the benevolent side of a spirit world sharply divided between protecting gods and dangerous dead.
Domains
- tutelary benevolence
Powers
- receives offerings at a dedicated spirit-house
Sources
- Marespa is a benevolent high god of Ifaluk, to whom a spirit-house and offerings were dedicated; some accounts hold that he was once a man who became a god.: Burrows, E. G. & Spiro, M. E. (1953), An Atoll Culture: Ethnography of Ifaluk in the Central Carolines, New Haven: HRAF. (secondary)
- On Ifaluk the benevolent gods and the ancestral spirits are distinguished from the malevolent ghosts, the alus, that afflict the living.: Spiro, M. E. (1952), 'Ghosts, Ifaluk, and Teleological Functionalism', American Anthropologist 54. (secondary)