The Black-Winged Flying Fish, mavaeng so panid, is the lord and eldest of the flying fish and the divine founder of the Tao flying-fish cult. In the central Tao ritual myth the great fish appears, commonly in a dream, to an ancestor who had been cooking and eating the fish improperly and had fallen sick, and summons him to the shore. There the fish reveals the correct order of the sea: which fishes are true fish fit to eat, which are reserved for men, for women, or for elders, which are forbidden, and the seasons, taboos, and rites by which flying fish must be summoned, caught by torchlight, dried, and consumed. This revelation establishes the rayon, the flying-fish season that structures the Tao ceremonial year, together with its summoning rites and the elaborate classification of marine life. The Black-Winged Flying Fish is thus the archetypal animal-lord whose covenant with the ancestors underlies Tao subsistence and law.