Aunga
Mekeo · numen · Mekeo traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The aunga is the Mekeo free-soul or spirit-double: the animate part of a person that leaves the body in sleep, dream and trance and journeys apart from it. This journeying underlies the spirit-travel of sorcerers and dreamers and is central to Michele Stephen's account of the Mekeo 'hidden self'. At death the aunga departs the body and takes its place among the tsiange, the ghosts of the dead. It is a category of animating spirit rather than a single named being, and different observers describe its relation to the ordinary waking self in different terms.
Domains
- soul and dream
Powers
- leaves the body to travel in dream and trance
- departs the body at death to become a ghost
Sources
- Aunga is the Mekeo free-soul or spirit-double that leaves the body in dream and trance and departs at death to become a ghost.: Stephen, Michele. A'aisa's Gifts: A Study of Magic and the Self. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. (secondary)