Lord Earth

Otomi of the Sierra Madre Oriental (Puebla, Hidalgo, Veracruz). Lord Earth, Maka Häi, is named in Sierra Otomi ethnography as one of the four great approachable deities together with Lord Sun (Maka Hyadi), the Lady of the Waters (Maka Xumpø Dehe) and Grandfather Fire (Maka Xita Sibi). The earth is fed with offerings of food, drink and cut-paper figures before planting, building and curing, and in Galinier's account it is an ambivalent, devouring power of the world below that both nourishes humankind and eats the dead; though addressed as a lord, it also bears maternal traits in Otomi ritual thought. He is distinct from the lunar Old Mother, whose fertility is celestial and nocturnal rather than telluric.

Domains

• earth

Powers

• to bear up the living and devour the dead

Sources

• Maka Häi, 'Lord Earth', is the Sierra Otomi earth deity, one of the principal approachable lords of the pantheon, an ambivalent power that sustains the living and consumes the dead and the offerings buried for it.: "Otomí of the Sierra," in Encyclopedia of World Cultures, vol. 8: Middle America and the Caribbean, ed. James W. Dow (Boston: G. K. Hall/Macmillan, 1995). (secondary); Galinier, Jacques (2004 [1990]). The World Below: Body and Cosmos in Otomí Indian Ritual. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. (secondary)