Serpent Creator

Pre-eminent kalou-vu of Fijian tradition, enshrined as a great serpent. Treated as a deity (the supreme creator), not a culture-hero. Native theology recorded by 19th-c. missionary-ethnographers Williams and Fison; secondary synthesis in Thomson (1908) and the ANU Press study Degei's Descendants (Geraghty & contributors).

Children

• Patron of Carpenters

Domains

• creation
• earthquakes
• judgment of the dead
• serpents

Powers

• hatches and rears the first human beings
• shakes the islands by turning in his cave
• judges the souls of the dead at his cave

Epithets

• Degei

Relations

• enemy: Nakausabaria the Twin
• enemy: Cirinakaumoli the Twin
• ancestor of: Patron of Carpenters

Sources

• Williams, Thomas. Fiji and the Fijians, Vol. 1 (1858)
• Fison, Lorimer. Tales from Old Fiji (1904)
• Thomson, Basil. The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom (1908)