Serpent Creator
Fijian · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
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
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 The great serpent-god of Nakauvadra; creator and judge of the souls of the deadBasil Thomson, The Fijians; A. M. Hocart (secondary)
Relations
- enemy: Nakausabaria the TwinHis rebel grandsons of the Nakauvadra cycle, who killed his cock Turukawa and warred against him.Williams, Fiji and the Fijians (1858); Geraghty (ed.), Degei's Descendants (secondary)
- enemy: Cirinakaumoli the TwinRebel grandson of the Nakauvadra cycle, twin of Nakausabaria.Williams, Fiji and the Fijians (1858) (secondary)
- ancestor of: Patron of CarpentersA.M. Hocart, The Northern States of Fiji (1952); Fijian Kaunitoni tradition making the carpenter-god Rokola a son of the serpent-creator Degei (secondary)
Sources
- Degei is the supreme serpent creator-god of Fiji, dwelling in a cave in the Nakauvadra range near Rakiraki and regarded as the ancestral 'root-god' (kalou-vu) of the iTaukei.: Williams, Thomas. Fiji and the Fijians, Vol. 1 (1858) (secondary); Fison, Lorimer. Tales from Old Fiji (1904) (secondary)
- Degei judges the souls of the dead and presides over their passage to the underworld Bulu.: Thomson, Basil. The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom (1908) (secondary)