Uraro, the Toad God (South)
Warao · quartigod · Warao traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
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
- UraroJohannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, 1993). (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: 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
- Uraro is the toad-god of the southern world-quarter, holder of the southern cosmic mountain and reckoned by the Warao the most powerful of the four cardinal gods.: Johannes Wilbert, Mystic Endowment: Religious Ethnography of the Warao Indians (Harvard University, Center for the Study of World Religions, 1993). (secondary); 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)