Seruhe Ianadi

Seruhe Ianadi, called 'the Wise', is the first of Wanadi's spirit-doubles (damodede) to come down to the earth. He descends bringing knowledge, tobacco, the maraca and the luminous quartz crystals (wiriki), and by smoking and singing he makes the first human beings. At his birth he cut his umbilical cord and buried the placenta; from that rotting afterbirth the malevolent Odosha sprang up, so that the very first act of creation also released evil and death into the world. Seruhe Ianadi is thus both the bringer of shamanic culture and, unwittingly, the occasion of Odosha's origin.

Domains

• shamanic knowledge
• first creation of humans

Powers

• to make the first human beings by smoking and singing

Epithets

• Seruhe IanadiMarc de Civrieux, Watunna: An Orinoco Creation Cycle, trans. David M. Guss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). (secondary)

Relations

• subordinate to: WanadiSeruhe Ianadi is the first damodede or spirit-double of Wanadi, an emanation through which the creator acts on earth.Marc de Civrieux, Watunna: An Orinoco Creation Cycle, trans. David M. Guss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). (secondary)

Sources

• Seruhe Ianadi 'the Wise' is the first spirit-double of Wanadi to descend to the earth, bringing tobacco, the maraca and shamanic knowledge and making the first people; from his buried afterbirth Odosha arose.: Marc de Civrieux, Watunna: An Orinoco Creation Cycle, trans. David M. Guss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980; repr. 1997). (secondary); David M. Guss, To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). (secondary)