Spider Spirit
Ni Vanuatu · deity · mythic · Recorded classification
Spirit-being (vui) in spider form; entered as type 'deity' since no spirit-class value is allowed. Counterpart/foil to Qat in the Banks Islands cycle.
Domains
- spiders
- origin of death
Powers
- completes Qat's hidden canoe with his web
Relations
- companion: Island-ShaperReciprocal of vanuatu_qat.companion — Marawa the Spider, first a rival at the canoe-building, became Qat's fast friend and rescuer.R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore (1891) (secondary)
Sources
- Marawa is a spider-shaped spirit-being (vui) of the Banks Islands who aids the culture-hero Qat but, by burying his own carved figures so that they rot, is held to have brought death into the world.: Codrington, R.H. The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore (1891), ch. 10 (primary)