Nabarima, Father of the Waves (North)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
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
- NabarimaJohannes Wilbert, Warao Cosmology and Yekuana Roundhouse Symbolism, in Myth and the Imaginary in the New World (1986). (secondary)
Relations
- companion: Mawari, the Avian God of Origin (East)Fellow world-quarter god of the cardinal mountains.Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (secondary)
- companion: Hoebo, the Scarlet-Macaw God (West)Fellow world-quarter god 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)
- 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
- Nabarima ('Father of the Waves') is the terrestrial god of the northern world-quarter, seated on the Naparima promontory in Trinidad at the northern edge of the Warao world.: 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)