Uraro, the Toad God (South)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · quartigod
Uraro is the toad-god who holds the southern quarter of the Warao world from his cardinal mountain, his realm stretching between the rising and setting of the winter-solstice sun. Wilbert records that the Warao reckon the god of the south the most powerful of the four world-quarter gods; lesser spirits in his service may be lodged in quartz pebbles carried by shamans in a calabash pouch. He is one of the four kanobotuma who hold up the bell-shaped sky beneath the supreme grandfather Kanobo.
Domains
- south world quarter
- winter solstice and storms
Powers
- to hold up the southern quarter of the sky from his cardinal mountain
- to lodge his minor attendant spirits in quartz pebbles carried by shamans
Epithets
- Uraro
Relations
- companion: Mawari, the Avian God of Origin (East)
- companion: Hoebo, the Scarlet-Macaw God (West)
- companion: Nabarima, Father of the Waves (North)
- subordinate to: Kanobo, the Supreme Grandfather
Sources
- Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions, 1993).
- 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).