Wakonda is the Omaha name for the invisible, all-pervading creative power that animates the visible world. Fletcher and La Flesche render it as the permeating life of visible nature, an invisible and continuous life that is neither wholly personal nor impersonal; the child's ritual introduction to the cosmos, the anointing of the Sacred Pole, and the pipe and war rites were all addressed to it. Wakonda has no fixed anthropomorphic form and was not represented in image, though the sun, the moon, thunder, and the water-powers were understood as its manifestations. Sources differ on whether the term is best translated 'the Great Mystery,' 'the sacred,' or simply 'power,' and Francis La Flesche cautioned against equating it with the Christian Great Spirit.