Moon

Shipibo · deity · mythic · deity

Oshe (Shipibo oxe, 'moon') is the male moon of Shipibo-Konibo oral tradition. In the widely recorded Panoan incest myth, of which the Shipibo tell their own version, a young man crept to his sister's mosquito tent night after night without revealing himself; to discover her visitor's identity she blackened her hands with the juice of the huito fruit (Genipa americana) and smeared his face in the dark. Recognized by the indelible stain at dawn, the youth fled in shame to the sky and became the moon, and the dye marks are still visible as the lunar spots. The Shipibo narrative belongs to a myth type whose versions and geographic distribution across Indigenous America were surveyed by Enrique Margery Peña, and the moon's masculine, transgressive character within Shipibo cosmology is analyzed by Peter Roe, who contrasts the nocturnal, seductive moon with the paternal and protective sun Bari.

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