Tororut
Tororut is the supreme creator god of the Pokot (Suk), the northern section of the Kalenjin cluster, recorded in detail from the elder Tiamolok by Mervyn Beech in 1911. He made the earth and causes the birth of people and beasts; he knows all secrets and is the universal father, and cattle-plagues and calamities are held to be his punishment for human sin. He is imagined as manlike but with enormous wings, the flash of which is the lightning (Kerual) and the whirring of which is the thunder (Kotil). About him gathers a family of lesser sky-deities, all benevolent toward humankind: his wife Seta (the Pleiades), his firstborn son Arawa (the moon), his firstborn daughter Topogh (the evening star), his son Ilat (the rain), and the Kokel (the stars). In this Pokot account the sun Asis is reckoned Tororut's younger brother, who grows angry in the dry season, a striking contrast with the more southerly Kalenjin traditions in which the solar Asis is himself the supreme being.
Children
Domains
- creator sky god
- storm and lightning
Powers
- to create the world and bring forth mankind and animals
- to loose lightning and thunder from his beating wings
Relations
- spouse: SetaHis wife is Seta, identified with the star-cluster of the Pleiades.Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). (secondary)
- father of: ArawaArawa, the moon, is named as his firstborn son.Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). (secondary)
- father of: TopoghTopogh, the evening star, is named as his firstborn daughter.Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). (secondary)
- father of: IletIn the northern Suk/Pokot reckoning, Ilat the rain is counted among Tororut's sons, one of the celestial family through whom the sky-god acts.Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). (secondary)
Sources
- Tororut is the omnipotent, omniscient creator and universal sky-father of the Pokot/Suk (a northern Kalenjin people), pictured as a winged man whose flashing wings make lightning and whose whirring makes thunder, and who heads a family of celestial deities.: Mervyn W. H. Beech, The Suk: Their Language and Folklore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911). (secondary); Michael Jordan, Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, 2nd ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2004). (secondary); Harold Scheub, A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). (secondary)