and god of hurricanes. He unleashes the rains and assures fer-
tility for animals, crops, and humans. In Iran, the meteoro-
logical divinity Verethraghna is dramatic and fertilizing. As
illustrated by creators specializing in vegetation, the form of
a supreme being may itself contain aspects of these fecunda-
tor beings. In such cases supreme beings maintain a more ac-
tive role in the mythic imagination, but at the cost of losing
something of their unchanging nature.
On the one hand, the passive involvement of a supreme
being in the very ground of being in all its forms may give
rise, eventually, to his usurpation or transformation by dy-
namic figures specializing in one or another specific life form
or process: fertility and fecundator gods. On the other hand,
in a parallel but separate development, a supreme being’s su-
pervisory capacity, his general omniscience passively ex-
pressed, may develop into more active and concrete expres-
sion in the form of a sovereign god. Whether such a
sovereign god is the result of a process in which a supreme
being, for example a sky god, absorbs the traits of a cos-
mocrat, or vice versa, must be reviewed on a case-by-case
basis. In all these cases, however, the emphasis of the resul-
tant form no longer falls on the supreme being’s transcen-
dent supervision of the universe but on his active guardian-
ship of the norms of world order.
Certain sovereign divinities enforce the most general
cosmic or “natural” laws inherent in the structures of the uni-
verse. Varun:a, called Sahasra ̄ks:a (“thousand-eyed”) in the
R:gveda, is the universal king (sam:raj), who guards the norms
of world order. By virtue of his own nature, his power is over
all existence. Unlike the champion gods of fertility, who vio-
lently conquer their specialized domains, Varun:a reigns
through his innate relationship to r:ta (the cosmic, ethical,
and ritual order of the universe) and through his mastery of
magico-spiritual influence (ma ̄ya ̄), which allows him to bind
with his “nets,” “ropes,” and “knots” those who transgress
that order. In other cases, a sovereign divinity may be inter-
ested less in cosmic processes than in human moral action.
In such instances, he may send forth moral commandments
and laws and punish breaches of the ethical order. As sover-
eign, a supreme being may even interest himself in the details
of socioethical behavior, upholding the proper performance
of customs and mores.
The cosmic pillar that upholds the universe, or the co-
lumna universalis, is often associated with the sovereign
being, himself the upholder of cosmic order. As an axis
mundi, like the cosmic tree and mountain, it points to as-
pects of the sovereign that preserve celestial powers and asso-
ciations. During their Winter Ceremonial, the Kwakiutl
people of the northwest American coast wrap a cedar “canni-
bal pole” in red-cedar bark to endow it with nawalak
(“supernatural power”). Projecting through the roof of the
house, the forty-foot post is considered to be the Post of the
World and the insignia of the great divinity Baxbakualanux-
siwae (“man-eater at the mouth of the river”). It is an image
of the great copper pole that upholds the heavens and pro-
vides passage between the spatial realms of the cosmos. The
Saxons maintained a cult of a cosmic pillar called Irminsul,
one image of which Charlemagne destroyed in the village of
Eresburg in 772. It was the “pillar of the universe” that sup-
ported all existing things. Horace reports the existence of
such a pillar and similar associated beliefs among the Ro-
mans. In Vedic India, as reported in the first book of the
R:gveda, a similar pillar was called the skambha. The Achilpa,
an Aranda group of Australia, carry a sacred pole that they
call kauwa-auwa, and they wander in the direction in which
it leans. It is a replica of the pillar fashioned by the god Num-
bakula who, after covering it with blood, ascended along the
kauwa-auwa until he disappeared into the sky.
Cult. In his most removed form, as noted above, a su-
preme being usually inspires no regular public cult. A relative
absence of cult seems to characterize many of those celestial
supreme beings whose passivity borders on otioseness. To a
great degree this is true of Thakur (among the Santa ̄l of
India), Synshar (among the Khasis), Kari (among the Se-
mang), Sammor or Peng (among the Sakai of the Malay Pen-
insula), Pirman (among the Benwa-Jakun of Johore), Tuhan
Allah (also among Jakun groups), Muladjadi (among the
Batak of central Sumatra), Petara (among the Sea Dyaks of
Borneo), Opo-geba-snulat (on the Indonesian island of
Buru), Lowalangi (on the island of Nias in Indonesia), Hin-
tubuhet (in New Ireland), Ndengei (in Fiji), Takaro (on
Malo Island, near Malekula), Gueggiahora (among the Ca-
macâes in Bahia, Brazil), Wendé (among the African
Kaguru), Zame Asizame Ôyô (among the Fang of West Afri-
ca), Mpambe (among the Anjanja south of Lake Malawi),
Ruwa (among the Chagga of Mount Kilimanjaro), and Yela-
faz (on the island of Yap).
In fact, those celestial supreme beings who do call forth
a regular cult seem to be exceptional cases. Among them are
Agunua, venerated at Haununu on the southwest coast of
San Cristobal in the Solomon Islands, and Tabuarik, who,
together with his lightning-wife, De Itji, is celebrated in a
cult that features sacred stones (for instance, on Nikunau in
the Gilbert Islands). More often supreme beings are invoked
spontaneously, and even frequently, by individuals or by a
community in extreme circumstances of famine, earthquake,
drought, and so on. When this irregular aspect of worship
first came to scholarly attention, it led investigators to under-
value the importance of supreme beings. Unable to take seri-
ously the profound truth of myth, early investigators were
incapable of seeing that the absence of regular public cult was
related to the supreme beings’ associations with the ground
of all being.
A supreme being is often associated with initiatory so-
cieties that focus on the knowledge of mysteries. In such se-
cret initiations, many of a supreme being’s celestial attributes
are maintained. Such appears to be true among Native Amer-
ican tribes of California who possessed what was called the
Kuksu cult, wherein the masked initiates impersonated spir-
its of the dead. The sound of a bull-roarer imitated the voiceSUPREME BEINGS 8873