Female Divinity in South America

Max Dashú

First there was the sea. All was dark. There was no sun, no moon, nor people, animals or plants. Only the sea was everywhere. The sea was the Mother. She was water and water in every direction and she was river, pool, waterfall and sea and so she was everywhere. So, at the beginning, only the Mother was. She was named Gaulchováng.

So say the matrilineal Kogi people of the Santa Marta mountains in Colombia. Descendants of the glittering Tairona civilization, they base their entire cosmology on a primordial Mother Essence from whom everything originates, in the darkness. She is the unborn and eternal source. She is the Mother of Songs.

The Mother was not human, or nothing, or anything. She was aluna. She was the spirit of what was to come and she was thought and memory. So the Mother existed only in alúna, in the lowest world, in the ultimate depths, alone.

The Kogi say that this power of aluna exists in everything, and gives rise to all that exists. (Montoya Sanchez, 63) After unknown ages, the Mother began to bring the first world into being. Lands began to form above in the darkness, and in successive worlds, spirit people without bones, and later a Father Sai-Taná, and people with limbs and heads. In the fifth world, the Mother commanded that the ancestral beings speak. Their bodies continued to take on form, and their blood. In the ninth world the ancestral pair found a great tree and heaven above the waters, and built a great house there.

The Kogi (also known as Kágaba) say that their ceremonial “house of the sun” is like this first house, a circular building with a womblike opening to the heavens. Since the Spanish conquest, it is known as cansamaria (“house of Maria”), although the Kogi did not convert to Catholicism. Another account says that the Kogi “believe that the world was created by the great mother Gauteovan who created the sun from her own menstrual blood, and who is also the origin of everything else in the world…” She is the Mother of Songs. (Trimborn, 86-7)

Other Colombian peoples echo this cosmogony of the primordial Mother. On the Guajira peninsula, the matrilineal Wayúu say that Night was the great mother, and heaven’s Light, the great father. Each had twins: his were the sun and moon; hers were earth and sea. Sun fertilized Sea and her son Rain fertilized Earth, from which all the spirits, plants, animals and humans came forth. (Vizcaino,13) The Wayúu speak of her as “the great mother Mma, the earth.” (Vizcaino, 83) As Renilda Martinez told the International Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992: “Wayúu elders tell us that we are children of Juya (rain) and Mma (Earth) and that the trees, mountains and animals are our relatives. We conceive of the earth as a fountain of sustenance. She is the creator of life...” (Martinez, 9)

The goddess Dobeiba was the primary deity in the Isthmus region of Colombia. A river and the country Dabeiba were named after her. She was a storm goddess and culture-giver. The “house of Dobeiba” was a temple full of gold and precious stones, said to be guarded by a puma, and people made pilgrimages to it. (Montoya Sanchez, 102-3) While the early missionary Petrus Martyr emphasized tales of a masculine creator, he admitted, “They believe that Dabeiba, the divinity universally venerated in the country, is the mother of this creator,” and noted that he was much less worshipped than she was. (Alexander, 191)

Similar 16th century accounts say that the people of Antioquía venerated the goddess Dabeiba. More recent testimony from the Catío people describes Dabeiba as a beautiful woman of ancient times who taught the people agriculture, how to weave baskets, mats, and fire-fans, how to make pots and body-painting and to dye the teeth black. Then she ascended back to the sky. She brings storms and earthquakes. (Montoya Sanchez, 60-1)

beaten gold pectoral with female breasts
Quimbaya breastplate of beaten gold, Colombia. See more:

Another important Colombian goddess tradition comes from the Chibcha. They revered an ancestral mother known as Fura-Choguá, “good woman” or, more frequently, as Bachué, “big-breasted one.” Soon after light appeared and the world came into being, she emerged from a mountain lake, carrying a three-year-old child. Bachué made her home in Iguaque, where she raised this son. When he matured, she married him, bearing four to six children at each birth. Their descendants populated the earth. She taught her people wisdom, how to live, and many arts, including agriculture.

After a long time Bachué and her son-husband left Iguaque, calling the people to follow them to their lake in the mountains. There, friar Pedro Simon related, “she made a speech exhorting the people to live in peace and conservacion, to keep the laws and precepts she had given, which were not few, especially in the matter of the divine rites…” Then Bachué and her consort turned themselves into huge snakes and returned to the sacred lake. But people said that she appeared again in many places. All the Chibcha worshipped her, especially in agricultural ceremonies around food crops, and made images of her and her son. (Noticias Historiales by Fray Pedro Simón, Vol II, pp 228-9, in Montoya, 77) The only offering to Bachué was the burning of resinous incense at sacred springs. All snake divinities belonged to her veneration. (Trimborn, 92)

The Chibcha also revered the rainbow goddess Chuchabiba, who protected expectant mothers. The moon goddess Chía, whose temple in Cundinamarca was an important religious center. (Trimborn, 90) She was also known as Huitaca, who some see as a form of Bachué. She challenged the patriarchal prophet Bochica, who established institutions favoring men: “The goddess Huitaca appeared in this new situation that gave men more power, a beautiful woman of great resplendance who preached her rebellion against patriarchy and the necessity of a broad life, open, full of games, pleasure and drunkenness.” Bochica turned her into an owl, or alternatively, threw her into the sky where she became the moon. (Ocampo, 58)

gold statue of seated goddess holding double spirals Another Chibchan-speaking people, the Kuna of Panama, speak of Nana Dumat, the Great Mother, as the “Path on which we have come.” Her partner Baba helped her in the creation, and they form a unity. Nana Dumat gives birth to all life. The Nila, three beautiful women who descended from sky, were prophets who brought culture to the Kuna. (Olowaili, 2005)

In Ecuador, Cieza de Leon reported, the people of Manta venerated a goddess who lived in a huge emerald and healed diseases. Emeralds and other gifts were offered to her. The early Spanish writer Velasco said that she was called Umiña. (Estrada, 76ff) Garcilaso de la Vega wrote that this emerald was the size of an ostrich egg, and was displayed in the great festivals. People came from great distances to worship the goddess and make offerings, including emeralds which were regarded as her “daughters.” The Spanish looted the gems, but the Manteños had already hidden away the sacred one before they arrived. (Saville, 105)

During colonization, Catholic names were attached to indigenous goddesses. The most famous example in South America is the assimilation of Pachamama, the Quechua Earth Mother, to the Virgin Mary or her mother, Santa Ana. (See article XXX) A 1525 Spanish account refers to a goddess worshipped on Salango island off the coast of Ecuador. It says that her tent sanctuary was “draped with rich embroidered mantles, where they have an image of a woman with a child in her arms whom they call Maria Meseia: when someone has an affliction in some part (of the body), they make a copy of the part in silver or gold, and offer it to her, and they sacrifice sheep (alpacas) before this image at certain times.” (Relacion de los primeros descubrimientos de Francisco Pizarro y Diego de Almagra (1526), in Currie, 1994)

[Image, above left: Quimbaya, Colombia. More on Ecuador. Watch this space for additions on Peru.]

Venezuela and the Guyanas

Everything sprang from Kuma, and everything that the Yaruro do was arranged so by her—the other gods and culture heroes act according to her laws.—Anonymous Yaruro person, circa 1937

In Venezuela, the matrilineal Yaruro of the Rio Capanaparo venerate Kuma. She created the world with the help of two brothers, the water serpent Puaná and the jaguar Itciai, after whom the social moieties are named. Kuma lives in a western paradise which the shamans see in visions, and to which they make spirit journeys. She is depicted with upraised arms on the shaman’s rattle. A pole is set up around which “men and women dance in separate circles.” (Zerries, 252-3)

In the Orinoco delta, the Warao say the forest is a tribe of trees, bushes, and palms. The red cachicamo tree is Dauarani, the Mother of the Forest, and its guardian. Anyone who wants to fell a tree to make a canoe must seek her permission, and the consent of her daughter, the tree. Shamans ritually approach the tree-woman, who appears as a maiden wearing a comb and beaded necklace, and sing to her. The canoe carved from her wood is vulva-shaped, and the Warao, who call themselves Canoe People, compare its cargo to the fruits created by the Mother of the Forest. (Halifax, 144-5)

Along the coast of Surinam, the Cariña Caribs revere Amaná, a self-conceiving Mother whose essence is time. They say that she was never born, that she exists eternally. Amaná has borne all beings and can take any shape. She lives in the watery Pleiades in the form of a woman-serpent, renewing herself continually by sloughing off her skin. They call her a sun serpent, and another name for her is Wala Yumu, “spirit of the kinds.” She especially rules all water spirits. The Cariña call powerful rocks at the rivers’ headwaters Mothers. Shamans commune with these beings and with Amaná for visions and healing.

Like many other divine women of the Americas, Amaná bore twin brothers. Tamusi, ancestor of the Cariña, the pleiades constellation was born at dawn, and moonlight is sacred to him. Yolokan Tamulu, “grandfather of nature spirits” was born at dusk and has to do with darkness. These twins are complementary powers, but Tamusi is more closely associated with Amaná and her Pleides constellation. (Zerries, 245-7)

The Cariñas have a saying: “If there were no spirit to cause everything to be as it is, there would be nothing.” In their philosophy, spirit precedes matter: “We believe that the aula [word, speech] of every wala [species] has existed from the very beginning, and that it created the physical aspect. Every wala in the visible world is the physical counterpart of a flowing wala [melody] which gives it life. The sound which a creature makes is the expression of its vital principle.” For the Cariña, every “kind” has its “boss” spirits. The Arawakans have a similar concept and “use either the suffix oyo (‘mother’) or kuyu or kuyuha (‘wildness or shyness of an animal’).” (Zerries, 267-9)

In the beginning Amana rode a wave which was the milky way. She is also described as riding a turtle. She created the sun for warmth but did not anticipate how hot it would be, and it burned the moon. She has to keep immersing the sun in the ocean to protect the earth from its scorching rays. Her two sons help her fight its heat. During the day, Tamusi cuts away sun ray serpents and casts them into space. At night Tamula covers the sun with layers of darkness. (www.godchecker.com/pantheon/south_american-mytholog.php?deity=AMANA)

In the origin story of the Caribs, a Warrau man warned his sister not to bathe at a pond when she was in her courses. But she disregarded him and was captured by the great water-snake Uamma. She then conceived. Her brother got suspicious when he saw her bring home large amounts of bullet-tree seeds, without ever taking an axe to harvest them. Spying on her, he saw the Uamma snake come out of her vagina, climb a tree, and shake it so that the seeds fell down. Then the snake slithered down and went back into her body. The brother brought helpers the next day to kill the serpent. They struck as he was descending the tree and chopped him to pieces. In grief the woman collected all the pieces, which each grew into a Carib person. This new people lived in harmony with the Warraus, exchanging gifts of food. The snake’s wife, now a very old woman, still wanted revenge for the snake’s slaying, and told the Caribs to kill a child sent to them with food. This sparked a blood feud, and the Caribs prevailed. In the Warrau version of this story, the ending is peaceful, with friendship and paiwarri drinking. (Roth, online)

The Arawaks of Guyana told of a creator pair: the male Kururumany formed men, and the female Kulimina formed women. After these people populated the land, they fell into corruption, and so death was decreed for them. Kulimina may have been the sister of the masculine creator, since he is described as having two wives, Wurekaddo (“She who works in the dark”) and Emisiwaddo (“She who bores through the earth”). The second name refers to the cushi ant, a red ant that burrows in the earth. (Alexander, 259; Roth, online)

Traditions of the Amazon basin may provide a clue to the ant’s significance. The Kayapó say that the little red ant is the relative of manioc and guardian of the women’s fields. She keeps the bean vines from choking the manioc by chewing through them. So Kayapó women often paint their faces with the ant pattern. (Nimuendaju, online)

Mothers of Manioc, Mothers of Animals

Many rainforest peoples hold ceremony to honor the Manioc Mothers, and invoke her like the Mundurucú shamans in Brazil: “Mother of manioc, show favor to us. Let us suffer no famine; we call on you each year with our prayers. We have not forgotten you.” (Zerries, 276)

In Ecuador, the Canelos Quichua honor Ningui, who is the soil of their fields, the chagra mama “Garden Mother.” She is also Mother of clay and ceramics, and the very spirit of culture.
For the Shuar (“Jivaro”) of eastern Ecuador, Ningui is the Earth Mother. She taught Shuar women agriculture in ancient times. After planting their crops, Shuar women hold dances and ceremonies for five nights to honor Ningui, asking her to make their manioc grow. They also call on her in tobacco feasts which women hold for each other, to give young women strength after their first menses and to reinvigorate older women. They plant manioc during these ceremonies, chanting incantations over the cuttings. (Zerries, 277)

The women call on Ningui through the nantára, a stone of unusual shape which contains the female soul of the manioc. They paint the first manioc cutting red, and the honoree places it against her vulva. All the women planting manioc sits on a tuber. Once they have finished planting, they place a ceremonial digging stick into the ground, dance, and pray to Ningui.

The Witoto celebrate the Okima festival to honor the manioc spirit and ancestors with dancing and stamping tubes, flutes and torches. In this ceremony “the women mimic the gait of the moon woman as she leans on her staff made of a food plant ‘like ñame (yam)’.” The Witoto say that manioc began with a girl called Dark or Blind who conceived by a spirit. She gives birth into a pot and doesn’t look at the child. When she returns some time later, a manioc tree is growing there. (Zerries, 278)

The Manioc Mother belongs to a broader spectrum of guardian spirits. Every kind of animal has its “mother” who nurtures and protects it. The Camayura of Brazil call them mama’é. Manioc has three Mothers, who are represented by posts representing the tools of manioc farming, as well as the fishy mama’é who gave the people manioc and farming technology long ago. (Zerries 279-80)

The sacred female in Brazilian archaeology Female icons in terracotta appear in large numbers at sites along the Amazon river, especially the Tapajós region, Santarem, and the Marajó island where the river empties into the south Atlantic. Large clay sculptures over a meter tall are also known from the Amazon region.
Two sets of small figurines from the Tapajós river valley
A blissfull woman in the triangular-legs pattern typical of Santarem, and parts north as far as the Caribbean islands.	An owl-faced urn from the Amazon river, adorned with coursing spirals.

Among the Tupí peoples of Brazil, the title Cy (“mother”) addresses female spirits of land, water, and heavenly bodies. In the 1750s, the missionary João Daniel wrote about sacred stones in a forest sanctuary, which the Portuguese destroyed. He said the sun was venerated as Coara Cy, “mother of day,” and the moon as Ja Cy, “mother of fruits.” People celebrated when the new moon appeared. “These two heavenly bodies were regarded as divinities, creators.” (Palmatary, 15-16)

For the Mundurucú, Putch ˆSi (“mother of game”) is a power who lives in upland springs where rivers originate. She roars when she moves, and the animals follow her. She appears in the form of a tortoise or coatá monkey, as well as in stone wirakuá. Shamans keep tortoises as her avatars, feeding them möri paste of manioc and scented water in order to propitiate Putch ˆSi. The most gifted shamans made shamanic journeys to visit her manifestations, making offerings and calling her so that hunting would go well. The Game Mother kills those who break her law by eating her special animals, disrespecting animals they kill, or wasting their flesh. (Zerries, 260-1)

The Mundurucú also propitiate Asima ˆSi, “the mother of fish” who rides on an alligator and is the guardian of all aquatic animals, including mammals.(Zerries, 265) In Ecuador, the Canelo say that a certain kind of tick attracts game, and bring it on hunts. They call this tick Aischa mama, “mother of game.” (Zerries, 262)

Women, Serpents, and the Waters

A widespread South American theme connects divine women to sacred lakes and serpents. The Chibcha culture-giver Bachué comes from the lake as a woman and returns as a snake. The Caribs say they are descended from a woman who carried a water-snake in her vagina. The Venezuelan goddess Maria Lionza is either carried off by a serpent or becomes one when she gazes into a lake (see below). Brazilians speak of the water-mother (mae d’agoa) and Peruvians about the Yacumama, a river spirit who is a two-headed serpent.

Sacred lakes also figure in Brazilian legends about amazons called Icamiabas. Many indigenous peoples of the Amazon had traditions about the Women-Living-Alone, the Women-Without-Husbands, the Masterful-Women. (Alexander b, 285) The Waurá of the Xingu river still celebrate rituals in their memory. (Schultz, 142) The great Amazon river is named after the women warriors encountered by Spanish soldier Orellana. The chief Aparia asked him whether he had seen the amazons, “whom in his language they call Coniapuyara, meaning Great Ladies.” (Van Heuval, 117) This name could be rendered as “masterful women.” (Spruce, 457) Other sources translate it as “Great Lord” (Alexander, 285, among others) or as “mighty chieftains”—but they ignore the meaning of conia (cunha), “the Tupí word for woman.” (Southey, 86) The “mighty women” title, like the Waurá ritual and similar traditions, suggest a supernatural status for the Coniapuyara / Icamiabas.

A very widespread Tupí tradition says that there is a sacred lake near the source of the Nhamundá (Jamundá) river. It is called Yaci-uaruá, “mirror of the moon.” Every year the Icamiabas hold a greenstone frog in triangular shape ceremony to honor the moon and the Mother of the Muiraquitãs who lives in the lake. The women purify themselves, and when the moon shines on the waters, they plunge deep into the lake to receive muiraquitãs from the goddess. These are jade amulets, often in the form of frogs, and also fish, tortoises, and other shapes. By some accounts, the Icamiabas scooped up clay from the lake bed and shaped it into these forms. Once exposed to air or moonlight, the muiraquitãs hardened into stone. Another version holds that the Icamiabas caught little underwater animals and froze their forms by dropping a little of their own blood onto them. (Palmatary, 75)

rounded frog greenstone amulet These “greenstones” or “amazon stones” were sacred and highly valued, worn and gifted and traded as far north as the Carib country. Early colonial reports place the muiraquitãs around the Nhamunda and Tapajos rivers. Many sources refer to their healing properties. In 1851 the traveler Castlenau related that “The Indians attribute to them the greatest medicinal powers.” Tapajós women used them to prevent disease and to conceive. Nursing mothers preferred pale and yellowish stones which were said to increase the flow of milk. (Palmatary, 79-80) In Guyana they were often worn by chiefly women, as Sir Walter Raleigh remarked: “…commonly every king or cacique hath one, which their wives for the most part wear; and they esteem them as great jewels.” (Raleigh, 202; emphasis added) Centuries later, Fernando Sampaio called the muiraquitã “a symbol of feminine power.” (de Camaris, online)

In southern Brazil, the Paressí creation story begins with the stone woman Maisö, when earth and water and light did not yet exist. She placed a piece of wood in her vagina, causing the muddy river Cuyaba to pour forth, followed by the clear waters of the Paressí. Then Maisö created the earth by putting land in the rivers, and gave birth to many stone people. Among them were the couple Darukavaitere and Uarahiulu, who procreated the sun, moon, and stars and placed them in the heavens. They also brought forth parrots and snakes and the first human Uazale, ancestor of the Paressí. (Lowie, 172)

Guaraní Cosmology

There are several versions of the creation story by the various Guarani peoples. Many accounts feature a sole masculine creator, perhaps under Christian missionary influence, but others say that creation was a joint effort of Tupã the sun and Arasy the moon. They descended to earth, to the hill Arigua, where they created seas and river, woods, stars, and all the beings of the universe. They formed humans from clay mixed with various natural elixirs and water, both making a statue in their own likeness. The people came to life with the sun’s rays, and sat before their creators who named them.

Arasy spoke first, and when the humans replied, it was again the woman Sypavê who spoke first. Tupã told both to love each other and have many children, take care of them, and that they’d have everything they needed. Arasy interrupted, saying that people need to work, or their life would be a slow death. So Tupã agreed. They instructed the first people on how to live, to avoid unnecessary harm to living things and to tattoo their faces to remind them of the sacred. They told them that Earth is their mother and the Moon is her sister. (Colmán, online)

The Tavyterã speak of an earlier divine generation, Our Great Grandfather who suckled himself and raised his wife out of his ceremonial crown. This was Ñande Jari Jusu, Our Great Grandmother, Great Golden Flaming Ritual Staff. The two quarreled, and Grandfather decided to leave the earth. In his anger he wanted to destroy the earth, but Ñande Jari succeeded in protecting it by singing the first sacred song, to the beat of the takuára (women’s ceremonial staff). (Grünberg, 4)

Another Guarani story says that a great flood destroyed the previous world, but the ancient grandmother Chary Piré survived through her shamanic power. “As the floodwaters rose, Chary Piré stamped out a dance beat with her rhythm stick and sang a powerful chant without stopping.” She caused a palm to grow between heaven and earth, and took refuge at its top with her son. (Sullivan, 187)

As the divine Grandparents had quarreled, their children had a similar disagreement, and Our Father left Our Mother, Ñandecy. (Grünberg, 4) Some stories say they fought over her having made love with another. In one version, Ñandecy could not believe that the corn her husband sowed had ripened immediately. Annoyed, she told him that another man had fathered the child she was suckling, and he left. Later she and her child went looking for him on the path of tigers.

The Tiger Grandmother gave them shelter and hid them from her grandchildren. But the young tigers found and killed Ñandecy. Later her son with his magical twin avenged her death by killing the tigers. [Colman, online] This theme of a divine woman who has twin sons and then dies is a common theme in stories across the Americas. The Guyana Caribs tell a very similar story about a mother slain by the tiger and avenged by her twin sons. (Roth, online)

(Right: Porãsy, daughter of the divine grandparents, sacrificed herself to destroy the seven monsters sired by Tau. The text is Guaraní, a living native language.)

young woman clad in ornaments looks back toward demonic figure

Ñandecy went to the world of the ancestors, and rules the land-without-evil, in the waters to the east. A parrot meets all comers with food and judges them; only the humble can enter. While the male creator has withdrawn far away, Ñandecy cares about humans. Thus she became the focus of Guaraní millennial movements after the European conquest. (Zerries, 241)

The Sun and Other Sky Women

The Toba people in northern Argentina say that the sun woman Aquehua lives in the heavens with other star women. She weaves a ladder of her hair so the jaguar man can reach her in heaven. She becomes whitehaired and old, but is annually renewed by this encounter. Or, in another version, she does battle with the jaguar who is trying to eat her. (Monahan 1994, 192)

The matrilineal Tobas say that in the beginning women lived in the sky and the stars were their houses. Men lived as half-animals on the earth below. One day the sky women decided to go down to earth to look around and taste its fruits. They descended by long cords many times. Once while the men were out hunting, the women came to their hut and ate all their food. The men couldn’t figure out what had happened, so they set someone to keep watch. The rabbit-man fell asleep and didn’t see what happened. The parrot-man saw how the women came down from the sky, but one of them threw a stone and broke his beak, so he was unable to tell what he saw. The eagle-man was stunned by the brilliance created by the cord brushing against the earth and his speech was too confused to understand. Then the bird-man stood guard, and when he saw the women descending, he flew and cut the cords, trapping those who had landed.

The men were attracted to the sky-women and wanted to have sex with them. The fox man grabbed the prettiest and carried her to his hut, but soon came out screaming and holding his crotch. He said the woman had bitten him with the teeth in her vulva. The men saw that the women used these lower teeth to chew their fruit. The bird-man invited the women to sit crosslegged on the ground in a circle. Then the men built a fire and danced hard all night, beating the ground with their feet and making the ground vibrate. At dawn they collapsed in exhaustion. The women got up and went over to them, but the teeth remained stuck in the ground where they had sat. Then men and women got together and had human children.

As for the women who remained in the sky, the sun woman Aquehua stayed close to the earth near her sisters. Sometimes she moves quickly, like a young person, which makes the days short and cool. Other times she goes slowly like an old woman, and the days are long and hot. She regenerates herself, turning from young to old and then young again, and will until the end of time. (Bernardo, online)

Among the star women of the Toba are “three old women who live in a large house with a garden.” They are the stars in Orion also known as the Tres Marias. Star Woman (the planet Venus) produces the Magellanic Clouds by pounding carob into flour in her heavenly mortar. (Metraux, 365)