Goddess of Love
Chuukese · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
Goddess of love of Chuuk, 'the Venus of Chuuk' (Bollig 1927). English 'Goddess of Love' leads name.primary; native Inemes in transliterations/term. Entered at mythic era as an individuated named deity with a living love-magic cult; faculties cover the love/desire power, the love-magic she answers, and her descent on a medium, with the meeting-house spirit-canoe and the love-magic complex as materialCulture. SOLITARY: no parentage, spouse, or sibling is attested for Inemes in the Chuukese sources (Bollig 1927; Lessa in the Encyclopedia of Religion).
Domains
- love
- desire
Powers
- kindles and compels sexual love and desire
- answers the love-magic spells addressed to her
- is called down upon a spirit-medium in the meeting house
Epithets
- Venus of Chuuk Bollig's epithet for the love-goddessBollig, Die Bewohner der Truk-Inseln (1927) (secondary)
Sources
- Inemes is the Chuukese goddess of love, called by Bollig 'the Venus of Chuuk'; among the most popular and most-often-supplicated of the gods, she is the deity invoked in the love magic that survived into modern times.: Laurentius Bollig, Die Bewohner der Truk-Inseln: Religion, Leben und kurze Grammatik eines Mikronesiervolkes (Anthropos-Bibliothek, Münster, 1927), p. 6 (Inemes, 'die Venus von Truk'). (ethnography); William A. Lessa, 'Micronesian Religions: Mythic Themes,' Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan), naming Inemes goddess of love, imprecated in surviving love magic. (secondary)
- Chuukese deities were supplicated through a cult of spirit possession in which a medium (sou awarawar / wáátawa) in the lineage meeting house was entered by the called spirit, a model double-hulled canoe overhead serving as the vehicle of descent.: Laurentius Bollig, Die Bewohner der Truk-Inseln (1927), on the Chuukese spirit cult and possession. (ethnography); Micronesian Seminar (Francis X. Hezel), 'Spirit Possession in Chuuk' / 'Congeries of Spirits,' summarizing Bollig 1927 and Goodenough on the medium and the meeting-house canoe. (secondary)