Karey
Karey is the thunder-deity and the central moral power of Senoi religion among the Temiar and Semai. His name is the everyday word for thunder, and the two are not sharply separated: the storm is his voice and his weapon. Karey governs the categorical order of the world and reacts with sudden, violent squalls to acts the Senoi class as tolah (Temiar misec) - laughing at or tormenting animals, especially butterflies and leeches, mimicking the calls of creatures, boiling certain foods together, or committing incest. The remedy during a storm is the blood sacrifice: an offender cuts the lower leg, mixes the blood with water, and throws it toward the sky and the ground to turn the anger aside. Sources differ on his relation to the subterranean deity: some Semai communities call the thunderer himself Enku or Ngkuu', while Temiar and other groups keep Karey above and a separate water-dragon below. He is commonly addressed with the respectful kin term 'grandfather'.
Domains
- weather thunder
- law prohibition
Powers
- hurls the punishing thunderstorm
- enforces the tolah prohibitions
Epithets
- Ta' Karey — Grandfather ThunderRoseman, Marina (1990), 'Head, Heart, Odor, and Shadow', Ethos 18(3): 227-250. (secondary)
Relations
- ally: 'Engku'The two paramount deities jointly punish breaches of prohibition, one from the sky and one from beneath the earth.Benjamin, Geoffrey (2014), Temiar Religion, 1964-2012, on the paired sky-deity and underground deity. (secondary)
Sources
- Karey is the thunder-deity of the Senoi peoples, whose storms answer breaches of the tolah prohibitions and are averted by a blood offering.: Skeat, W. W. & Blagden, C. O. (1906), Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 2, pp. 175-215. (primary); Dentan, Robert Knox (1968), The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya, pp. 21-24. (secondary); Benjamin, Geoffrey (2014), Temiar Religion, 1964-2012 (Singapore: NUS Press). (secondary)