Rai Na'in
Tetum · numen · Tetum traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
The rai-na'in, 'owners' or 'lords of the land', are the tutelary spirits that inhabit particular features of the landscape — rocks, springs, great trees, pools and tracts of forest. As the true owners of the ground they must be recognised and propitiated with offerings before land is cleared, a house is built or a field is planted, and they afflict with sickness or misfortune those who disturb their places without leave. Localised and numerous, each bound to its own site, they are distinguished from the single maternal earth of cosmological ritual speech.
Domains
- land and place
- tutelary guardianship of nature
Powers
- own and command tracts of land and their features
- afflict those who disturb their places
Sources
- The rai-na'in are localised tutelary owner-spirits of the land who must be propitiated before land is used and who afflict those who disturb their sites.: David Hicks, Tetum Ghosts and Kin, 2nd ed. (Waveland Press, 2004) (secondary); Bernard A. G. Vroklage, Ethnographie der Belu in Zentral-Timor (Brill, 1952–53) (secondary)