Toar (To'ar) is the divine son of the earth goddess Lumimuut and, with her, the ancestral father of the Minahasan people. Born after Lumimuut's conception by the west wind, he is raised and taught by the priestess Karema, who endows him with all her knowledge before sending him out into the world. In popular and scholarly glossing he is paired with his mother as the sun to her earth. The central episode of the cycle is the separation and unwitting reunion of mother and son: each is sent off with a measuring staff (Toar's of tuis wood, Lumimuut's of tawaang wood) under Karema's rule that equal staffs mark kinship and forbid marriage. After long wandering Toar returns, meets the ever-youthful Lumimuut, fails to recognize her, and marries her; the truth emerges only afterward. From their many children descend the sub-groups (taranak) of Minahasa, and in the indigenous theology Toar is the 'child' of the sky-triad beneath the mother Lumimuut and grandmother Karema.