Hoebo, the Scarlet-Macaw God (West)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Hoebo is the dread god of the western quarter of the Warao cosmos, embodied as a deified scarlet macaw and reckoned the supreme Hoa spirit. He is lord of a place of the dead and the patron of the hoarotu, the 'dark' singing shamans, who direct the wasting hoa sickness and ritually mark out human souls to satisfy his hunger. With Mawari, Uraro and Nabarima he is one of the four world-quarter grandfathers who hold up the sky, but his quarter is that of affliction and death.
Domains
- death and the west
- affliction and sorcery
Powers
- to claim and consume the souls marked for him by the dark shamans
- to inflict the wasting hoa sickness through plant and animal theophanies
Epithets
- HoeboJohannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (secondary)
Relations
- companion: Mawari, the Avian God of Origin (East)One of the four ancestral world-quarter gods of the cardinal mountains.Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (secondary)
- companion: Uraro, the Toad God (South)Fellow world-quarter god of the cardinal mountains.Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (secondary)
- companion: Nabarima, Father of the Waves (North)Fellow world-quarter god of the cardinal mountains.Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (secondary)
- subordinate to: Kanobo, the Supreme GrandfatherAs one of the kanobotuma he stands among the ancestral grandfathers beneath the supreme grandfather Kanobo.H. Dieter Heinen, The Kanobo Cult of the Warao Amerindians of the Central Orinoco Delta (LIT Verlag, 2012). (secondary)
Sources
- Hoebo is the scarlet-macaw god of the western world-quarter, lord of the dead and supreme Hoa spirit, served by the dark shamans (hoarotu) who mark victims for him.: Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions, 1993). (secondary); Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright (eds.), In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia (Duke University Press, 2004). (secondary)