Tuwale

Wemale and Alune · deity · Wemale and Alune traditional religion; continuing · deity

Tuwale is the Sun personified as a male dema, one of the two great celestial powers of the Wemale together with the moon. His principal narrative is the myth of Rabie, a companion death-myth to that of Hainuwele. Desiring the maiden Rabie, Tuwale came to claim her; her people, unwilling, tried to fob him off with a pig in her stead. Enraged at the deceit, the Sun caused Rabie to sink slowly into the earth, and though her kin clutched her by the hair she slipped from their grasp and was lost below, thereafter rising as the moon. Through this act Tuwale is the agent of the first human death. In some tellings of the Hainuwele cycle a lordly being who instructs Ameta in dreams is likewise identified with the Sun, linking the two great myths of West Seram.

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