Jinopotabá, the crab-healer who crosses the three worlds

In Emberá cosmology Jinopotabá (also Jinopotabar, Jino Potabá) is the paradigmatic world-crossing being and the prototype of the jaibaná, the Emberá shaman. He is described as a crab and a great healer, and he alone passes freely among the three levels of the cosmos: the celestial world (bajía) of his father Karagabí, the earthly world (egoró) of living people, and the watery world below (aremuko or chiapera) governed by Tutruicá. He climbs to the mountain to reach the moon that sails the sky in its canoe and descends to the river to reach the lower world, and through this constant traffic he sustains the exchanges of soul-force on which healing and cosmic order depend.

Parentage

• Karagabí, the demiurge and orderer of the human world

Domains

• shamanic mediation
• cosmic travel

Powers

• to travel between the upper, human, and lower worlds
• to heal the sick as the prototype of the jaibaná

Relations

• companion: Jino Poto Warra, the hero sent into the underworld

Sources

• Isacsson, Sven-Erik. Transformations of Eternity: On Man and Cosmos in Emberá Thought. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, Department of Social Anthropology, 1993.
• Mitología embera. Principales mitos, características y funciones. Revista Bioetnia, vol. 8, no. 1, Instituto de Investigaciones Ambientales del Pacífico (IIAP), Quibdó, 2011.
• Pardo Rojas, Mauricio. El convite de los espíritus. Notas sobre chamanismo Chocó. Quibdó: Centro Pastoral Indigenista, Diócesis de Quibdó, 1987.