Mulua Satene
Mulua Satene is the primordial ruler of humankind in the Wemale cosmogony, the second great figure of the Hainuwele complex. When the nine families killed Hainuwele and Ameta brought her the murdered maiden's arms, Satene resolved to abandon a humanity now capable of killing. On the Maro dance ground she built a gate coiled nine times, and standing upon the trunk of a dead man she made every person pass through it: those who passed became the two great moieties of West Seram, the Patasiwa of the Nine and the Patalima of the Five, while those who leapt or failed became deer, pigs, birds and spirits. Having thus fixed the order of peoples, she declared that humankind would henceforth be mortal and would meet her only by dying, and she withdrew to the mountain realm of the dead, over which she reigns. Her act completes what Hainuwele's death began, converting a single murder into the permanent conditions of death, reproduction and social division.
Domains
- death and the dead
- primeval sovereignty
Powers
- ordain that humankind shall die
- divide humankind into moieties and into animals and spirits
- rule the mountain realm of the dead
Epithets
- Mulua Satene — the Lady Satene, Ruler of HumankindA. E. Jensen, Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples, trans. M. T. Choldin and W. Weissleder (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 88-171. (secondary)
Sources
- Satene, the primeval ruler of mankind, responded to Hainuwele's murder by erecting a ninefold spiral gate, driving humanity through it to divide them into the Patasiwa and Patalima moieties (and into animals and spirits), decreeing mortality, and then departing to become ruler of the dead.: A. E. Jensen and H. Niggemeyer, Hainuwele: Volkserzaehlungen von der Molukken-Insel Ceram (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1939). (primary); A. E. Jensen, Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples, trans. M. T. Choldin and W. Weissleder (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 88-171. (secondary)