Pulowi
Pulowi is the great female being of Wayuu religion and the counterpart of her husband Juya. She is subterranean and fixed where he is celestial and roaming: mistress and owner of the wild animals and of the marine wealth of the Caribbean (corals, turtles, fish), and patron of drought, wind and death. She is manifest in numerous named places, themselves called pulowi (holes, hillocks, springs), which the Wayuu avoid for fear of disappearing or sickening there; ethnographers distinguish a Pulowi of the sea and a Pulowi of the land. Through her messenger the wanulu she takes the blood and lives of human beings. The complementary opposition of Pulowi and Juya, husband and wife yet antagonists, is a classic comparative-mythology case analysed at length by Michel Perrin.
Children
Domains
- wild animals and the hunt
- drought and the dry season
- wind and the underground
Powers
- to own and release the wild animals and marine creatures
- to make people vanish or sicken at the places that bear her name
Epithets
- PulowiPerrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary)
Relations
- spouse: JuyáPulowi the subterranean mistress of game and Juya the wandering rain are husband and wife; their marriage and their opposition (drought against rain, earth against sky, death against life) organise the Wayuu symbolic world.Perrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary)
Sources
- Pulowi is the Wayuu subterranean female deity, mistress of wild game and marine wealth and associated with drought, wind and death, manifest in dangerous earth-places and wife of Juya the rain.: Perrin, Michel. The Way of the Dead Indians: Guajiro Myths and Symbols. Trans. Michael Fineberg. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. (secondary); Goulet, Jean-Guy. Guajiro Social Organization and Religion. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1978. (secondary)