Kukryt, the Tapir at the Sky-Prop
Kayapó · numen · Kayapó traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
In Kayapó cosmology the sky is a solid vault held up by a support, and gnawing endlessly at that support is a great tapir. Its patient labour is an image of the world's fragility: should it ever gnaw through, the sky will come down and the present order be destroyed. The figure gives Lukesch's later account of Kayapó myth its title, the tapir that gnaws at the pillar of heaven, and belongs to a widespread Amazonian conception of the cosmos as a layered structure whose props may fail. It stands at the eschatological horizon of the tradition, a quiet counterweight to the ancestral descent from the sky that opens Kayapó cosmic history.
Domains
- cosmic cataclysm
- sky support
Powers
- gnaws the pillar that holds up the sky
Sources
- A great tapir gnaws unceasingly at the prop that holds up the sky; when it gnaws through, the sky will fall and the present world will end.: Anton Lukesch, Der Tapir, der an der Himmelsstütze nagt: Mythos und Leben der Kayapó-Indianer (Graz, 1994) (primary); Anton Lukesch, Mythos und Leben der Kayapó (Vienna, 1968) (primary)