Agunua

Agunua is the great serpent creator of the Arosi of San Cristoval (Makira), the chief and greatest of the figona, the class of serpent creator-spirits; the lesser figona are held to be his representatives or incarnations, so that he embraces them all. He is credited with making the vegetables, fruits and food-trees of the island. In the myth recorded by Charles Fox he fashioned a male child who could not care for himself, and then made a woman to kindle fire, cook, and weed the gardens; certain foods were ruined when his brother burnt them in the oven. The first drinking-coconut taken from a palm was sacred to him. As the original spirit in serpent form he gives a sacred character to snakes, which are honoured as his living representatives.

Domains

• creation
• food plants
• serpents

Powers

• to create the vegetables, fruits and food-bearing trees of the island
• to embody and embrace all the other figona as his aspects

Epithets

• figonaC. E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (1924) (secondary)

Relations

• manifests as: HatuibwariIn the Arosi district Agunua is manifested as Hatuibwari, the winged, human-headed serpent who suckles all he has made; the two names denote the one great creator-figona.C. E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific (1924) (secondary)

Sources

• Agunua is the cosmic serpent and chief of the figona among the Arosi of San Cristoval (Makira), creator of the food plants, of whom all the other figona are aspects.: C. E. Fox, The Threshold of the Pacific: An Account of the Social Organization, Magic and Religion of the People of San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands (London: Kegan Paul, 1924) (secondary); Michael W. Scott, The Severed Snake: Matrilineages, Making Place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon Islands (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007) (secondary)