Kavachi
Roviana & Marovo · numen · Roviana & Marovo traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Kavachi is the submarine volcano that breaks the sea off the south-eastern reefs of the New Georgia Group, near Vangunu and Gatokae. In Marovo tradition it is spoken of as a living being of the deep whose fire boils up through the water, and its eruptions are named rejo te Kvachi, 'Kavachi's oven'. It lies within the maritime world that Marovo people reckon as filled with ancestral and spirit presences, and its unpredictable violence marks it as a power to be respected rather than approached. Ethnographic and volcanological records agree on the local name; the degree of formal veneration is less fully documented.
Domains
- sea
- volcanic fire
Powers
- boils and erupts as fire beneath the sea
Sources
- Kavachi is the submarine volcano off Vangunu and Gatokae, spoken of in Marovo tradition as a living power of the deep whose eruptions are named 'Kavachi's oven'.: Hviding, E. (1996). Guardians of Marovo Lagoon. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press; Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program, Kavachi. (secondary)