Koevasi

Koevasi is a female creator spirit-being of the south-east Solomon Islands, recorded most fully by C.E. Fox among the Arosi of San Cristoval and belonging to the same class of never-were-men beings that R.H. Codrington called vigona in Nggela (Florida) and figona in the islands to the south. She is imagined as a serpent-woman who existed before ordinary humankind, shaped the first people, and gave them their several languages, foods, and customs. Because she renews herself by sloughing her skin like a snake she does not die, and myth traces the coming of human mortality to a moment when this power was withheld from her descendants. Sources differ on how sharply she is to be distinguished from the winged serpent-mothers of Makira and Isabel, with whom later comparativists have sometimes identified her.

Domains

• creation
• language origins
• serpents and renewal

Powers

• fashions the first people
• renews herself by casting her skin

Epithets

• vigona — the spirit-being (that never was a man)R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians (1891) (primary)

Sources

• Koevasi is a female creator spirit-being (figona) of the south-east Solomons who made humankind and gave the several languages and customs, and who cannot die because she sloughs her skin.: C.E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (London: Kegan Paul, 1924), on the figona Koevasi (secondary)
• Beings that were never men are called vigona in Nggela (Florida) and figona in the neighbouring islands, forming one class of spirit-beings.: R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians (1891), ch. on divine beings and spirits (primary)