Rayénari (the Sun, the Father)
Rayénari is the personified Sun of the Rarámuri, addressed as 'the father'. In the creation narrative he and the Moon, Metzaka, are at first tiny dark-skinned children who dwell alone in a hut of sticks and mud, possessing nothing and lit only by the scattered glow of the Morning Star; the two are cured by being touched on the breast with little crosses of madroño wood dipped in tesgüino, after which they slowly begin to shine and give light. Grown, the Sun and Moon create the first Rarámuri, lean and swift runners who settle in the mountains the supreme creator had formed. As the Sun, Rayénari guards human beings during the day while the Moon watches over the night; the Rarámuri keep him 'content' through the yúmari and other dances and through offerings of tesgüino, ritual acts understood to avert the death of the Sun and so to sustain the order of the cosmos.
Parentage
Domains
- solar light and day
- guardianship of the living
Powers
- to shine upon and watch over human beings during the day
- to create the first human beings together with the Moon
Epithets
- Nonó (el padre)William L. Merrill, 'Rarámuri Souls: Knowledge and Social Process in Northern Mexico' (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988). (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: Metzaka (the Moon, the Mother)Sun and Moon form the primordial male-female pair who live together and together bring forth the first human beings.Carlo Bonfiglioli, 'El yúmari, clave de acceso a la cosmología rarámuri', Cuicuilco 15, no. 42 (2008): 45-60. (secondary)
- sibling: Chirisópori (the Morning Star)Rayénari and the Morning Star are children of the same creator; Chirisópori's light watches over the Sun and Moon in their infancy.Wendell C. Bennett & Robert M. Zingg, 'The Tarahumara: An Indian Tribe of Northern Mexico' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935). (secondary)
Sources
- Rayénari is the Sun, a son of the Father-Mother creator, venerated as 'the father' who guards the Rarámuri by day and, with the Moon, made the first human beings.: William L. Merrill, 'Rarámuri Souls: Knowledge and Social Process in Northern Mexico' (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988). (secondary); Carlo Bonfiglioli, 'El yúmari, clave de acceso a la cosmología rarámuri', Cuicuilco 15, no. 42 (2008): 45-60. (secondary)