Warao · deity · Warao traditional religion; continuing · deity
Hahuba is the great Snake of Being of Warao cosmology, the serpent who lies coiled in the waters that surround the world and whose breathing keeps time with the rise and fall of the tides; three days after a child is born she sends a gentle breeze to embrace it. In Wilbert's account of the bell-shaped Warao universe she is the four-headed serpent-monster of the nadir, her heads crowned with deer-horns that mark the four cardinal directions, bearing up the earth-disk from below at the centre of the cosmos beneath the world-axis tree.
Domains
cosmic order and the nadir
tides and the encircling waters
Powers
to bear up the earth-disk on her coils at the nadir
Johannes Wilbert, Warao Cosmology and Yekuana Roundhouse Symbolism, in E. Magaña and P. Mason (eds.), Myth and the Imaginary in the New World (CEDLA / Foris, 1986).
Johannes Wilbert, Folk Literature of the Warao Indians: Narrative Material and Motif Content (UCLA Latin American Center, 1970).