Moon
Mehinaku · deity · Mehinaku traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The Moon is the younger of the transformer twins, born with the Sun to the wooden woman fathered by the Jaguar. He shares in his brother's work of remaking the primordial world and in the decisions that gave the present order its shape, among them the acceptance of death and the founding of the effigy rite by which the noble dead are commemorated. Where the Sun is the more prominent and trickster-like of the pair, the Moon accompanies and complements him, the two together standing as the demiurges of the Xingu world. Neighboring peoples name him with cognate forms, the Kalapalo calling the younger twin Aulukumã.
Parentage
- parent: Mother of the Sun and MoonOrlando Villas Bôas & Cláudio Villas Bôas, Xingu: The Indians, Their Myths (1973) (secondary)
- parent: the JaguarEllen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
Domains
- lunar order
- world transformation
Powers
- shape the present world alongside the Sun
Relations
- twin: SunThomas Gregor, Mehinaku (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) (primary)
- parent: Mother of the Sun and MoonOrlando Villas Bôas & Cláudio Villas Bôas, Xingu: The Indians, Their Myths (1973) (secondary)
- parent: the JaguarEllen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (1985) (secondary)
Sources
- The Moon is the twin brother of the Sun and co-transformer of the world in Upper Xingu cosmology: Ellen B. Basso, A Musical View of the Universe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985) (secondary); Orlando Villas Bôas & Cláudio Villas Bôas, Xingu: The Indians, Their Myths (1973) (secondary)