Lahatala, more anciently titled Upu Lanite or 'Lord of Heaven,' is the supreme sky-being of the Central Maluku religious world to which the Alune and Wemale belong. He is conceived as remote and sovereign, upholding the order of the cosmos while rarely intervening in the narrative myths, which are carried instead by the active dema-deities such as Satene, Tuwale and Hainuwele. The name Lahatala is an adaptation of the Arabic Allah taala, adopted in the historical period as Islamic and Christian contact reshaped the older religion; sources differ on how far the personified high god belongs to the archaic dema-stratum that Jensen documented, which foregrounds the slain and departed dema rather than a creator. Under either reading he is the attested apex of the West Seram cosmology as recorded.