The Moon
Kiwai · numen · mythic ancestral · numen
In Kiwai belief the moon is the man Ganumi, whose name is simply the Kiwai word for the moon. The tales recorded by Landtman treat him as a person who can be visited: in one well-known story a man, disputing with his friend whether sun and moon are one being or two, journeys to Ganumi's country, where everything about the dwelling is dazzling white and beyond it all is black, and learns the truth from Ganumi himself. The moon's phases are understood as the ages of Ganumi's person, who shows himself as a small child at new moon and grows old as the moon fills; the tales were later retold for a general audience by Brenda Hughes.
Domains
- moon
Powers
- to appear as a small child, a grown man and an old man as the moon changes its phases
- to give light to the world by night
Sources
- Landtman, Gunnar. The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans (Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae XLVII). Helsingfors: Printing Office of the Finnish Society of Literature, 1917.
- Landtman, Gunnar. The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea: A Nature-Born Instance of Rousseau's Ideal Community. London: Macmillan, 1927.
- Hughes, Brenda. New Guinea Folk-Tales. London: George G. Harrap, 1959.