Sun

In the cosmology of the Enga-speaking peoples of the Papua New Guinea highlands the sun is a male celestial being paired with the female moon. Mae and Raiapu Enga traditions hold that the sun and moon together bore the immortal, fair-skinned sky people (yalyakali), whose sons descended to earth and founded the human tribes and phratries, so that the sun stands at the head of the genealogies linking living clans to the sky world. Among the western Enga and the neighbouring Ipili the sun is intimately associated with the sky deity Aitawe: the anthropologist Jerry Jacka records that Aitawe was symbolized by the sun, and that offerings might be made to the sun to avert catastrophe. This solar piety became conspicuous in the mid-1940s, when the millenarian movement that Mervyn Meggitt called the Cult of Ain swept through Enga country: enormous numbers of pigs were slaughtered for the sun, and participants who gazed at the sun and shook in trance hoped for renewed wealth and health, some expecting to ascend to the immortal sky world of the yalyakali.

Domains

• sun
• prosperity

Powers

• to father the immortal sky people
• to grant pigs, health and abundance when propitiated with sacrifices
• to look upon beings hidden from every human eye

Relations

• consort of: MoonThe sun and the moon (Kana) are paired as the male and female celestial procreators whose union produced the immortal sky people.M. J. Meggitt, 'The Mae Enga of the Western Highlands', in P. Lawrence and M. J. Meggitt (eds), Gods Ghosts and Men in Melanesia: Some Religions of Australian New Guinea and the New Hebrides, Melbourne: Oxford University Press (1965) (secondary); Richard Feachem, 'The Religious Belief and Ritual of the Raiapu Enga', Oceania 43 (1973) (secondary)
• father of: Sky PeopleThe sky people (yalyakali) are the immortal descendants of the sun and moon, and their sons founded the earthly tribes and phratries.Aletta Biersack, 'The Sun and the Shakers, Again: Enga, Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain, Part One', Oceania 81 (2011) (secondary); 'Mae Enga', in Terence E. Hays (ed.), Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume II: Oceania, Boston: G. K. Hall (1991) (secondary)

Sources

• The sun is a male celestial being of Enga religion who, with his consort the moon, procreated the immortal sky people (yalyakali), ancestors of the Enga tribes.: M. J. Meggitt, 'The Mae Enga of the Western Highlands', in P. Lawrence and M. J. Meggitt (eds), Gods Ghosts and Men in Melanesia: Some Religions of Australian New Guinea and the New Hebrides, Melbourne: Oxford University Press (1965) (secondary); Richard Feachem, 'The Religious Belief and Ritual of the Raiapu Enga', Oceania 43 (1973) (secondary); Aletta Biersack, 'The Sun and the Shakers, Again: Enga, Ipili, and Somaip Perspectives on the Cult of Ain, Part One', Oceania 81 (2011) (secondary)
• Offerings were made to the sun to avert catastrophe, and in the mid-1940s the millenarian Cult of Ain centred on massive pig sacrifices to the sun.: M. J. Meggitt, 'The Sun and the Shakers: A Millenarian Cult and its Transformations in the New Guinea Highlands', Oceania 44 (1973) (secondary); Jerry Jacka, 'Cults and Christianity among the Enga and Ipili', Oceania 72/3 (2002), pp. 196–214 (secondary)