Amb Kor

Amb Kor, 'the Female Spirit', is the most prominent named spirit-being of Melpa religion and the focus of the great fertility cult performed intermittently across the Hagen region. Conceived as a beautiful and dangerous woman of the high forest and wild places, she enters into a special relationship with the men who host her cult, bringing them health, the multiplication of pigs, and the flow of pearlshell and other wealth used in moka exchange, while demanding sexual restraint and freedom from the pollution attributed to ordinary women. She reveals herself through signs and can possess female mediums, who fall into trance and foretell events. Her cult was built around sacred stones and a prepared enclosure, and Andrew Strathern analysed its imagery as a sustained play of opposition, reversal and pairing between male and female. She stands as the complementary counterpart of the Male Spirit, Kor Woep.

Domains

• fertility
• wealth exchange
• health and protection

Powers

• bestow fertility on people and pigs
• confer wealth and valuables on her hosts
• possess female mediums and speak through them

Epithets

• Amb Kor

Relations

• companion: Kor Woep

Sources

• Strathern, A. J. (1979). 'Men's House, Women's House: The Efficacy of Opposition, Reversal, and Pairing in the Melpa Amb Kor Cult.' Journal of the Polynesian Society 88(1): 37-52.
• Vicedom, G. F. & Tischner, H. (1943-1948). Die Mbowamb, 3 vols. Hamburg: Cram, De Gruyter & Co.
• Stewart, P. J. & Strathern, A. J. (1999-2000). 'The Female and Male Spirit Cults in Mount Hagen.'
• Hawkins, S. (1984). 'Gender Symbolism and Power Relations: A Reassessment of the Amb Kor Cult of Mt. Hagen.' Mankind 14(5).