Hatuibwari

Hatuibwari is a winged serpent-being with a human head, four eyes, and bat-like wings, reported for San Cristoval and for Bugotu on Santa Isabel and counted among the figona and vigona, the spirits that were never men. Described as a creator and nourisher, in several tellings a mother-being who makes and suckles the first human beings, Hatuibwari dwells on a mountain or in the sky and is bound up with rain and the fruitfulness of the land. The distinctive four-eyed, winged form makes it one of the most vividly imagined beings of the south-east Solomons. Sources differ on its sex, some treating Hatuibwari as a mother-creator and others as male, and its name is cognate with Kahausibware of Makira, with whom it is sometimes identified.

Domains

• creation
• sky and rain
• serpents

Powers

• makes and nurses the first human beings
• governs rain and the fertility of the land

Epithets

• hatui bwari — the (four-eyed) winged serpentC.E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (1924) (secondary)

Sources

• Hatuibwari is a winged serpent-being with a human head, four eyes, and bat-like wings, reported for San Cristoval and for Bugotu on Santa Isabel, counted among the figona / vigona and regarded as a creator and nourisher of the first human beings.: C.E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (1924), description of Hatuibwari (secondary); R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), on serpent spirit-beings of the Solomons (primary)
• Hatuibwari is associated with a mountain or the sky and with rain and the fertility of the land.: C.E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (1924) (secondary)