The werebana, women who send an incorporeal double abroad by night to sicken and devour their victims, form the female half of Dobuan witchcraft, paired with the male barau sorcerers. Ethnography traces this night-flying power to a primordial witch-woman associated with the north-west monsoon (bomatu), from whom the werebana are said to descend and toward whose quarter the witches are believed to travel. Sources differ on the particulars of her name and story, but she stands as the archetype and origin of women's flying witchcraft, the power that pervades the Dobu experience of sickness, jealousy and death.