Chichiní
Chichiní, the Sun, stands at the head of the traditional Totonac pantheon as documented by Alain Ichon among the Sierra Totonac of Puebla in the 1960s. Creation narratives recorded in the Sierra Norte de Puebla relate that a poor boy threw himself into a great fire and rose into the sky as the Sun, while his hesitant brother became the Moon; the Sun thereafter rules the day and the ordered, life-giving side of the cosmos, assisted in the east and south, which the Totonac associate with his birth and vitality. In the colonial and modern period the Sun was syncretically identified with Jesus Christ, and he was believed to require regular offerings of incense and devotion to sustain his vital force. Ichon records that the Sun is regarded as the son of the divine mother Natsi'itni.
Parentage
- parent: Natsi'itni
Domains
- sun
- life giving light
Powers
- to give light, warmth, and life to the world by day
Relations
- sibling: PapaThe Sun and the Moon are brothers in Sierra Totonac cosmogony; the Moon hesitated before the sacrificial fire that the Sun braved, and their continuing celestial rivalry is said to cause eclipses.Beaucage, Pierre, and Xóchitl Rojas Mora. 'Cosmologías nahua (maseual) y totonaca (tutunakú) de la Sierra Norte de Puebla (México). Primera parte: el tiempo de la creación.' Anales de Antropología 55, no. 2 (2021): 143-159. (secondary)
Sources
- Chichiní, the Sun, is the supreme deity of traditional Totonac religion, born from a boy who leapt into the primordial fire and honored daily as the giver of light and life.: Ichon, Alain. La religión de los totonacas de la sierra. México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista / Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1973. (secondary); Beaucage, Pierre, and Xóchitl Rojas Mora. 'Cosmologías nahua (maseual) y totonaca (tutunakú) de la Sierra Norte de Puebla (México). Primera parte: el tiempo de la creación.' Anales de Antropología 55, no. 2 (2021): 143-159. (secondary); Harvey, H. R., and Isabel Kelly. 'The Totonac.' In Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 8, Ethnology, Part Two, edited by Evon Z. Vogt. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. (secondary)