Nagegiryai

Nagegiryai, also called Magiryai, is the primordial mother of the Guna cosmogonic cycle. Conceiving without a mortal father, impregnated in the varying tellings by the wind or by a mythic being of the early world, she gives birth to a set of sibling heroes, usually numbered as eight brothers together with a sister, the eldest of whom is Ibeler the sun. In many versions she is killed by the monstrous beings of the world before her children come of age, and it is to avenge her and to complete the ordering of the earth that the siblings undertake their world-shaping deeds. Sources differ on the exact number and names of her children and on the identity of the being that fathered them.

Children

• Ibeler

Domains

• primordial motherhood

Powers

• give birth to the sibling world-orderers

Relations

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

Sources

• Nagegiryai (Magiryai) is the primordial mother, impregnated supernaturally, who bears the sibling heroes led by Ibeler.: 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)