Kavwokmali

Kavwokmali is the primeval crocodile of Iatmul cosmogony. In the beginning nothing existed but water, and the crocodile paddled endlessly with his front and hind legs, keeping the mud churned up and suspended so that earth and water remained undivided. This unbroken labour held the cosmos in an unordered state until the culture hero Kevembuangga speared him, after which the stilled mud sank and settled into dry land. Sources differ over the relation between this churning crocodile and the wider Sepik image of a world-bearing crocodile whose movements cause earthquakes; Bateson records Kavwokmali specifically as the being whose death separates land from water.

Domains

• primordial waters
• cosmogony

Powers

• churn the primeval waters

Epithets

• the primal crocodileBateson, Gregory. 1936. Naven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (secondary)

Relations

• enemy: KevembuanggaSpeared and killed by the culture hero, whose act allowed the mud to settle into land.Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. San Francisco: Chandler. (secondary)

Sources

• Kavwokmali is the primeval crocodile whose paddling kept mud and water intermixed at the beginning of the world.: Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. San Francisco: Chandler, p. 4 (Iatmul origin myth). (secondary)
• The crocodile belongs to the Iatmul cosmogony recorded during Bateson's Middle Sepik fieldwork of 1929-1933.: Bateson, Gregory. 1936. Naven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (secondary)