Abka Hehe, the Sky-Mother

Abka Hehe ('Sky Woman / Sky Mother') is the primordial creator-goddess of Manchu traditional religion, the source of all life and creation. In the Manchu cosmogony recorded by the Manchu folklorist Fu Yuguang she heads a triad of creating sky-goddesses, the further goddesses issuing from her body, and the three together shape the world, the spirits, humankind and all living things; she is also the guardian of the universe who banishes the powers of evil. In the older female-centred cosmology she is the supreme sky-power, a place later assumed by the masculine sky-god Abka Enduri / Abka Han as the cult was reframed under the Qing.

Children

• Omosi-mama, the Divine Grandmother

Domains

• creation and cosmos
• sky and heaven

Powers

• to bring forth the heavens and the earth from her own being
• to defeat and banish the powers of evil that threaten the world

Epithets

• Abka Hehe

Relations

• creator of: Omosi-mama, the Divine Grandmother

Sources

• Fu Yuguang, Shamanic and Mythic Cultures of Ethnic Peoples in Northern China, vol. 2: Shamanic Divination, Myths, and Idols (London: Routledge, 2021)
• Xiaoli Jiang, 'Shamanism and the Manchu Bannermen of the Qing Dynasty', Religions 13, no. 10 (2022): 884