Tupã (mythology)

Tupã (also Tupave or Tenondete) is the word for God in the Guarani language, including the Guarani creation myth.[1] Tupã is considered to be the creator of the universe, and more specifically the creator of light. His residence is the Sun.[2]

As a post-conquest deity

According to Daniel H. Candido and Lucí H. Nunes of the University of Campinas Tupã was "not exactly a god, but rather a manifestation of" god, "in the form of thunder", and that the Jesuit evangelizers of the time would have mistranslated it as an actual divinity. The god in question would be Nhanderuvuçu, cited as the Tupi-Guarani supreme deity, with "Tupã" being mentioned only as a term for the phenomenon of lightning and thunder, described at different times as a "messenger" and "demon", while the term "Nhanderuete" would be more fitting as a comparison to the Christian god.[3]

Câmara Cascudo has spoken about Tupã being a "work of adaptation of catechism, that already existed in concept for the Amerindians, but as the "sound of thunder" (tu-pá or tu-pã), an unknown (and therefore feared) phenomenon. Osvaldo Orico was of the opinion that "the supreme being's voice was heard in storms", as tupã-cinunga, "the thunder", whose reflection was tupãberaba, "the lightning".

Myths

Marriage

Before the creation of the human race, Țupa wedded the goddess Arasy, the mother of the sky whose home was the Moon. According to the myth, Țupa and Arasy descended upon the Earth one morning after their wedding, and together they created the rivers and the seas, the forests, the stars and all the living beings of the universe. It is said that the location they stood while creating these things was atop a hill in Areguá, a small city in Paraguay near the capital of Asunción.

Țupa and Arasy met through a constellation of stars, and it took them years to find one another.

Creation of human race

After the creation of all the things in the earth, Țupa set to creating the first human couple on the earth. For his creation, Țupa used a mixture of clay, juice extracted from yerba mate, blood from the Short-tailed Nighthawk, the leaves of several kinds of plants, and finally a centipede. He made a paste of this mixture, using the waters from a nearby spring that would become Lake Ypacaraí. From this paste Țupa created a pair of statues in his image, and left them in the sun to dry and filled them with life. The newly created humans were placed in front of the gods, and the woman was named Sypave (literally "mother of the people") by Arasy, and the man was named Rupave (literally "father of the people") by Țupa.

Personality

Țupa was known for his personality. This is how many people remember him. He was a very seductive/sexual god(like most god of gods in mythology). This led to his many children. Țupa and Arasy counselled the humans to live peacefully, too procreate, and to live in love. Țupa then created the spirits of good and evil, Angatupyry and Tau, and left them to guide the people down one path or another and departed back into the heavens.

Further reading

References
  1. Specters of the West and the Politics of Translation by Naoki Sakai, Yukiko Hanawa
  2. COLMAN, Narciso R. (Rosicrán): Ñande Ypy Kuéra ("Nuestros antepasados"), 1929. Online version Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
  3. MYTHOLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY: A STUDY OF THE DEITIES RELATED TO THE OCCURRENCE OF SEVERE WEATHER Revistas - UFPR - acessado em 21 de junho de 2017
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