Ibeler

Ibeler, called Dad Ibe (Grandfather Sun), is the great solar hero of Guna cosmogony and the eldest of the sibling children born to Nagegiryai after her supernatural impregnation. Raised in the early world, the siblings acquire shamanic knowledge and set out to avenge their mother and to rid the layered earth of the monstrous beings that infest it. Through their battles the cosmos is set in order: Ibeler rises as the sun and his brothers and sister take their places among the celestial bodies, and the earth is made fit for human life. He stands with Ibeorgun as one of the two decisive world-founding heroes of Guna tradition, the cosmogonic orderer as against Ibeorgun the giver of law.

Parentage

• parent: NagegiryaiErland Nordenskiold, An Historical and Ethnological Survey of the Cuna Indians, ed. Henry Wassen (Goteborg, 1938). (secondary)

Domains

• sun and daylight
• world ordering

Powers

• give light to the world as the sun
• destroy the demons of the underworld

Epithets

• Dad Ibe — Grandfather / Father SunMac Chapin, Pab Igala (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1989). (primary)

Relations

• parent: NagegiryaiErland Nordenskiold, An Historical and Ethnological Survey of the Cuna Indians, ed. Henry Wassen (Goteborg, 1938). (secondary)

Sources

• Ibeler (Dad Ibe), eldest son of Nagegiryai, becomes the sun and, with his brothers, destroys the underworld demons to order the world.: Erland Nordenskiold, An Historical and Ethnological Survey of the Cuna Indians, ed. Henry Wassen (Goteborg, 1938). (secondary); Mac Chapin, Pab Igala: Historias de la tradicion kuna (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1989). (primary)