Mawari, the Avian God of Origin (East)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Mawari is the creator-god of beginnings who presides over the eastern quarter of the Warao cosmos. He manifests as a swallow-tailed kite, and at the foot of the cosmic World-Tree-Mountain of the east he thinks into being the great cosmic egg, fashioned of hardened tobacco smoke, from which the ordered world issues. As the eastern member of the four world-quarter grandfathers (kanobotuma) he helps hold up the bell-shaped sky from the cardinal mountains, beneath the supreme grandfather Kanobo.
Domains
- creation and origins
- east world quarter
Powers
- to bring forth the cosmic egg from solidified tobacco smoke by thought
- to appear as a swallow-tailed kite bearing rattle and bow
Epithets
- MawariJohannes Wilbert, Warao Cosmology and Yekuana Roundhouse Symbolism, in Myth and the Imaginary in the New World (1986). (secondary)
Relations
- companion: Hoebo, the Scarlet-Macaw God (West)One of the four ancestral world-quarter gods (kanobotuma) who together hold up the sky from 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 ('our grandfathers'), Mawari 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
- Mawari is the avian god of origin of the eastern world-quarter, who takes the form of a swallow-tailed kite and creates the cosmic egg from solidified tobacco smoke.: 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). (secondary); Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions, 1993). (secondary)