Tel is the creator and high god of Ingessana (Gaam) religion. The Gaam word tel is the verb 'to create,' and although outsiders long described the Ingessana as sun-worshippers, their teaching holds that the sun is only the foremost of the things Tel brought into being. Tel is the giver of life and of the ordered world, appealed to at shrines maintained in every village and called upon in the great crises of existence: drought, the sickness of a child, the barrenness of a woman. Sources differ on whether tel names the creator, the sun, or both at once, and the ambiguity is intrinsic to Gaam usage rather than a confusion to be resolved.