Tupã or Tupan (also ''Tupave'' or ''Tenondete'') is the word for
God in the
Tupi Tupi may refer to:
* Tupi people of Brazil
* Tupi or Tupian languages, spoken in South America
** Tupi language, an extinct Tupian language spoken by the Tupi people
* Tupi oil field off the coast of Brazil
* Tupi Paulista, a Brazilian municipalit ...
and
Guarani languages, including the
Guarani creation myth.
Tupã is considered to be the creator of the
universe, of humanity and of the spirits of good and evil in Guarani mythology referred to as Angatupyry and Tau respectively. Tupã is more specifically considered the creator of
light and his residence is the
Sun.
As a post-conquest deity
Tupã was not actually a god, but rather a manifestation of God, in the form of thunder, according to Daniel H. Candido and Luc H. Nunes of the University of Campinas; he asserts that the Jesuit evangelizers of the period would have misinterpreted it as an actual divinity. The god in question is Nhanderuvuçu, the Tupi-Guarani supreme deity; "Tupã" is solely used to refer to the lightning and thunder phenomenon, which has been called both a "messenger" and a "demon" at various times throughout history; the term "Nhanderuete" would be more suitable to compare to the Christian God.
Tupã, according to Câmara Cascudo, is an adaptation of catechism, which also existed in concept for the Amerindians, but as the "sound of thunder" (tu-pá or tu-pã), an unknown (and thus 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
Creation of human race
Before the creation of the
human race, Tupã wedded the goddess
Arasy, the mother of the
sky whose home was the
Moon. According to the myth, Tupã and Arasy descended upon the
Earth one morning after their
wedding, and together they created the
rivers and the
seas, the forests, the
star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
s 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
Areguá () is the capital of Central Department in Paraguay, located from the capital, Asunción. The city lies between Ypacaraí Lake to the east and hills to the west. Areguá is known for its colonial architecture and historic cobbleston ...
, a small city in
Paraguay near the capital of
Asunción.
After the creation of all things in earth, Tupã set to creating the first human
couple on the earth. For his creation, Tupã 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
Centipedes (from New Latin , "hundred", and Latin , " foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', lip, and New Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, an ...
. He made a paste of this mixture, using the waters from a nearby spring that would become
Lake Ypacaraí. From this paste Tupã 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 Tupã. Tupã and Arasy counselled the humans to live peacefully, to procreate, and to live in peace. Tupã 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
heaven
Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...
s.
Further reading
*Lapenda, Geraldo (1953).
Etimologia da Palavra "Tupã"'. Biblioteca Digital Curt Nimuendaju.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tupa (mythology)
Guaraní deities
Creator gods