See, God of Life
See is the spirit or god of life in the Dongba religion of the Naxi. Comparative study of the Dongba pantheon pairs See, the spirit of life, with Shu, the spirit of nature, treating them as twin sustaining powers that accompany living beings, and likening their joint function to the genius of Roman religion and the god Pan of Greece; the two are held to be possibly hypostases of a single ancestral life-deity. Within the Naxi heroic epics See also stands as the counterpart of the god Ddu, the ancestral father of the 'white' clan, with See representing the 'black' lineage in the pervasive white-and-black dualism that structures Naxi myth. The figure survives, like the rest of the pantheon, through the pictographic Dongba manuscripts and the ceremonies of the Dongba priests.
Domains
- life and vital force
- black lineage dualism
Powers
- to grant and sustain the vital force of living beings
Epithets
Relations
- companion: Shu, Lord of NatureSee, the spirit of life, is paired with Shu, the spirit of nature, as twin sustaining powers of the Dongba cosmos that accompany living beings; comparative scholarship treats the two as closely linked, possibly as hypostases of one ancestral life-deity."The Genius Universal: A Comparison among Dongba, Ancient Greek, and Archaic Roman Religions," Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, no. 1 (2022). (secondary)
Sources
- See is the god or spirit of life in the Dongba religion of the Naxi, paired with Shu the spirit of nature and serving in the heroic epics as the counterpart of the god Ddu within the white/black dualism of Naxi cosmology.: "The Genius Universal: A Comparison among Dongba, Ancient Greek, and Archaic Roman Religions," Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 2, no. 1 (2022). (secondary); Anthony Jackson, Na-khi Religion: An Analytical Appraisal of the Na-khi Ritual Texts (The Hague: Mouton, 1979). (secondary)