Lightning-Maker
Toba · deity · timeless · Recorded classification
Toba/Qom (Gran Chaco). English 'Lightning-Maker' leads; Toba Qasoǵonaǵa (also written Kasogonagá, Casogonagá). The 'ǵ' represents the Toba/Qom velar/uvular fricative. A weather deity; usually feminine in the literature, though gender is variably reported. Distinct from the rainbow / Water-Python serpent associated with the great floods of Chaco cosmogony.
Domains
- thunder and lightning
- rain
- rainbow
Powers
- shoot lightning and send rain
- falls from the sky and must be helped by humans to return aloft
Epithets
- Kasogonaga The sky-being of rain and weather, who hangs above and looses the stormsAlfred Métraux, Myths of the Toba and Pilagá Indians of the Gran Chaco (secondary)
Sources
- Kasogonagá (Qasoǵonaǵa) is the Toba weather being of thunder, lightning and rain, appearing as a colorful animal whose mouth emits lightning; in myth she falls from her cloud and rides smoke back to the sky.: Métraux, Alfred (1946). Myths of the Toba and Pilagá Indians of the Gran Chaco. Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 40. (secondary)