Power-of-the-Shining-Heavens
Haida · deity · mythic primordial · deity
Power-of-the-Shining-Heavens (Sîns Sganagwai) is, in the ethnography of John Swanton, the highest of all Haida supernatural beings: an impersonal sky-power rather than an anthropomorphic god, dwelling above the world and serving as the ultimate wellspring of the potency held by the many Sganagwai, including the killer-whale beings. Because the power is diffuse and abstract, it is rarely narrated as a character, yet it stands at the apex of the cosmological hierarchy the Haida described to early ethnographers.
Domains
- cosmic order
- sky
Powers
- to grant supernatural power to other beings
Relations
- creator of: Killer Whale Beings
Sources
- John R. Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida (Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Jesup North Pacific Expedition Vol. 5, Pt. 1), 1905
- Marianne Boelscher Ignace, 'Haida Religious Traditions,' in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference), 2005