Nabarima, Father of the Waves (North)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · quartigod
Nabarima, whose name means 'Father of the Waves', is the terrestrial god of the northern world-quarter of the Warao cosmos. He is seated on the promontory of Naparima Hill in southern Trinidad, the northern boundary-mountain of the Warao world, in the quarter that the cosmology assigns to the northern ocean and the Butterfly Goddess between the rising and setting of the summer-solstice sun. He is one of the four world-quarter grandfathers (kanobotuma) who hold up the sky beneath the supreme grandfather Kanobo.
Domains
- north world quarter
- sea and waves
Powers
- to hold up the northern quarter of the sky from his cardinal mountain
- to father and command the waves of the northern sea
Epithets
- Nabarima
Relations
- companion: Mawari, the Avian God of Origin (East)
- companion: Hoebo, the Scarlet-Macaw God (West)
- companion: Uraro, the Toad God (South)
- subordinate to: Kanobo, the Supreme Grandfather
Sources
- 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, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions, 1993).