Tororut

Kalenjin · deity · primordial · deity

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.

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