Tuwale

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.

Domains

• sun and daylight
• death and fate

Powers

• burn and give light as the sun
• draw a mortal maiden down into the earth

Epithets

• Tuwale — the SunA. E. Jensen, Die drei Stroeme: Zuege aus dem geistigen und religioesen Leben der Wemale (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1948). (primary)

Relations

• lover: RabieThe Sun sought the maiden Rabie in a courtship that turned coercive and fatal: thwarted by her family's deception, he drew her into the earth, whereupon she became the moon.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)

Sources

• Tuwale is the personified Sun of the Wemale, a great celestial dema who in the myth of Rabie sought the maiden, was cheated with a substituted pig, and in anger drew her down into the earth, so originating death and the moon.: A. E. Jensen, Die drei Stroeme: Zuege aus dem geistigen und religioesen Leben der Wemale (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1948). (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)