Kóoch
Tehuelche · deity · Tehuelche traditional religion; continuing · deity
Kóoch (also paraphrased Weq'on, 'the truthful one') is the supreme, otiose creator of the southern Tehuelche cosmogony. Saddened by his solitude in the primordial darkness, his weeping is said to have produced the bitter sea and his sighing the wind that drove back the dark; he then made the Sun and the Moon so the nights would be less black. Having ordered the elemental cosmos he plays no further active part, the shaping of the present world and of human life falling to the younger god Elal. The mythic chronology preserved in the ethnographic record divides time into four ages, with Kóoch presiding over the second.
Domains
- creation cosmogony
- sky and firmament
- sea and waters
Powers
- to bring the elements of the world into order out of primordial chaos
- to set the Sun and the Moon in the sky so the nights would not be wholly dark
Epithets
- Weq'on
Relations
- creator of: Xaleshen, the Sun
- creator of: Keengenkon, the Moon