Kore
Gimi · numen · Gimi traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kore names at once the disembodied spirit of a dead person and the primeval forest into which that spirit passes. It is the wild, the domain outside the gardens and settlements, where the dead live on transformed into the birds and marsupials of the high forest. Kore stands as the structuring opposite of the cultivated, domestic world of the living, and Gimi mortuary practice, including the former eating of the dead by women, was understood as a means of returning the kore to its proper place in the wild rather than letting it rot in the ground.
Domains
- death
- wilderness
Powers
- receive the spirits of the dead
Epithets
- kore — the wildGillison, Gillian. 'Images of Nature in Gimi Thought.' In Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. (secondary)
Sources
- Kore is the Gimi spirit of the dead and the wild forest of the dead, where the dead survive as birds and marsupials, opposed to the cultivated settlement.: Gillison, Gillian. Between Culture and Fantasy: A New Guinea Highlands Mythology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. (secondary); Gillison, Gillian. 'Images of Nature in Gimi Thought.' In Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. (secondary)