Karema

Minahasa · deity · Minahasa traditional religion; continuing · deity

Karema (Karéma) is the primal priestess of the Minahasan creation cycle and, in tradition, the first walian, the ritual specialist whose office structured indigenous religion. In the most widely recorded version the dry-season sun beats upon a stone until it sweats and Karema comes into being; sent by the supreme being to quicken the land, she prays over the stone so that it splits and Lumimuut emerges. Karema rears the boy Toar, endows him with all her own knowledge, and when he is grown sends him and his mother out into the world, equipping each with a staff (Toar's of tuis wood, Lumimuut's of tawaang wood) and the rule that any two whose staffs prove equal in length are kin and may not wed. When Toar later returns and unknowingly courts the still-youthful Lumimuut, the staff test is the device by which their true relationship is judged. In the indigenous theology Karema, Lumimuut and Toar are the gods of the sky, ranked as grandmother, mother and child, and remembered as ancestors of all the taranak (descendant lineages) of Minahasa; her role was re-enacted by the senior priestess (Walian Tua) in the thanksgiving ceremony.

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