Yak Takel

Yak Takel ('Grandmother Takel') is one of the chthonic grandmother goddesses recorded among the northern Semang of the Kedah-Perak border forests. With Yak Kalcheng and Yak Manoid she sits beneath the earth guarding the roots of Batu Herem, the stone pillar that upholds the heavens, and the grandmothers together can make the waters rise from below, the dreaded counterpart of the thunder god's storm sent against breakers of the divine prohibitions. Kirk Endicott's synthesis of Semang religion notes that the thunder god is aided by a female earth deity sometimes pictured as a pair of sisters; Takel is one of the named figures behind that observation.

Domains

• underworld

Powers

• to guard the roots of the pillar that supports the heavens
• to make the waters rise from beneath the earth against transgressors

Relations

• companion: Yak KalchengTakel and Kalcheng are named together, with Yak Manoid, as the grandmother guardians of the roots of the heaven-pillar who jointly raise the waters from beneath the earth.'Yak Manoid', Encyclopedia Mythica (pantheon.org, ed. M. F. Lindemans, 1997-2004), digest of Evans (1937). (secondary); Evans, Ivor H. N. (1937). The Negritos of Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. XIV, 'The Negrito Deities'. (secondary)

Sources

• Yak Takel is a subterranean 'grandmother' deity of the Semang who, together with Yak Kalcheng and Yak Manoid, guards the roots of the heaven-supporting pillar Batu Herem and raises the punitive waters from beneath the earth.: Evans, Ivor H. N. (1937). The Negritos of Malaya. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. XIV, 'The Negrito Deities'. (secondary); 'Yak Takel', Encyclopedia Mythica (pantheon.org, ed. M. F. Lindemans, 1997-2004), digest of Evans (1937). (secondary); Endicott, Kirk (1987). 'Negrito Religions: Negritos of the Malay Peninsula', in Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan. (secondary)