Kerana
The
primary figure in most Guaraní creation legends is Tupã, the supreme god of
all creation. With the help of the moon goddess Arasy, Tupã descended upon the
Earth in a location specified as a hill in the region of Aregúa, Paraguay, and
from that location created all that is found upon the face of the earth,
including the ocean, forests, and the animals. It is also said that the stars
were placed in the sky at this point. Tupã
then created humanity (according to most Guaraní myths, the Guaraní were
naturally the first race of people to be made, with every other civilization
being born from it) in an elaborate ceremony, forming clay statues of man and
woman with a mixture of various elements from nature. |
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After breathing life into
the human forms, he left them with the spirits of good and evil and departed. The
original humans created by Tupã were Rupave and Sypave, whose names mean
“Father of the people” and “Mother of the people”, respectively. The
pair had three sons and a large but unspecified number of daughters. The first
of their sons was Tumé Arandú, considered to be the wisest of men and the
great prophet of the Guaraní people. Second of their sons was Marangatú, a
benevolent and generous leader of his people, and father of Kerana, the mother
of the seven legendary monsters of Guaraní myth (see below). Their third son
was Japeusá, who was from birth considered a liar, a thief and a trickster,
always doing things backwards to confuse people and take advantage of them. He
eventually committed suicide, drowning himself in the water, but he was
resurrected as a crab, and since then all crabs are cursed to walk backwards
much as Japeusá did. Among
the daughters of the Rupave and Supave was Porâsý, notable for sacrificing her
own life in order to rid the world of one of the seven legendary monsters,
diminishing their power (and thus the power of evil as a whole). Several
of the first humans were considered to have ascended upon their deaths and
become minor deities. Kerana,
the beautiful daughter of Marangatu, was captured by the personification or
spirit of evil called Tau. Together the two had seven sons who were cursed of
the high goddess Arasy, and all but one were born as hideous monsters. The seven
are considered primary figures in Guaraní mythology, and while several of the
lesser gods or even the original humans are forgotten in the verbal tradition of
some areas, these seven were generally maintained in the legends. Some of them
are even believed in down to modern times in some rural areas. The seven sons of
Tau and Kerana are, in order of their births:
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