animals, the sun, the moon, and the thunder. He then with-
drew to the twelfth heaven. Nonetheless, he looks over
human activities, especially the longhouse ceremonies, for
the center post of the cult house is the staff that he keeps in
his hand. Témaukel remains rather indifferent to the affairs
of the SelkDnam of Tierra del Fuego. He did not complete
the work of creation but deputized Kénos, the mythical an-
cestor, to raise the sky and provide moral instruction. He
now lives in the stars. Absent from cult, he still interests him-
self in moral behavior and punishes the wayward with sick-
ness and premature death. The pre-Zoroastrian conception
of Ahura Mazda ̄ depicted him as a divine being who creates
only through the mediation of the spenta mainyu (“good
spirit”).
The paradoxical coupling of power and passivity within
the supreme being of the sky may be made known in sexual
terms. Or the coupling of power and passivity may be ex-
pressed in terms of the alternations of the bright sky of day
and dark sky of night. Thus Puluga, though omniscient,
knows the thoughts within human hearts only in the light
of day. In the Banks Islands, it is believed that at the begin-
ning night did not exist. Qat spread the night over the earth
so that creation remained obscure. However, after a while the
situation did not suit him, and, with a red obsidian knife
(dawn), he cut into the darkness. The rays of sunlight that
enter through the roof of a house are said to be his spears.
Among a western group of San, the supreme being, called
Kággen, produces darkness by spreading the bile that spills
when he splits open the gallbladder of an antelope. Upset by
the darkness, he creates the moon.
The power of transcendent height is continued in the
supreme beings who dwell on the tops of mountains. Well
known are Mount Olympus of Greek mythology and Harab-
erazaiti in Iranian belief. In Palestine, Mount Tabor and
Mount Gerizim stand as high holy places. Himinbjörg
(“heaven’s mountain”) figures importantly in the Norse
Eddas. Ngenéchen, divinity of the Araucanians of Chile and
Argentina, lived on top of volcanoes with his wife and chil-
dren. In the same area, the god Pillán, who lives on moun-
tains in the middle of the sky, seems to have served as a
model for Ngenéchen.
Just as mountains symbolically express access to the
transcendent realms of infinite power, so other paradigmatic
symbols reveal the place of contact with the otherwise inac-
cessible source of life. In particular, the cosmic tree or world
tree is a startling image of access to the dwelling of the high
god. Flathead Indians believe that the roots of the cosmic
tree reach down into the dwelling place of the evil being,
Amtep. At the upper end lies Amotken (“the old one”), a
good celestial creator. Rites are often celebrated in connec-
tion with an image of the cosmic tree. Thus, during the
Turco-Tatar horse sacrifice, the shaman carries the soul of
the victim to Ülgen, the supreme being, by scaling nine
notches cut into a birch tree. Ascending the tree, the shaman
reports his voyage through the nine heavens. Contact be-
tween this world and the celestial powers is reflected also in
images of the Milky Way, the ladder reaching to heaven, and
the liana. The climax (“ladder”) in the mysteries of Mithra
had seven rungs fashioned of seven different metals. Cultures
in North America, Oceania, Africa, and ancient Egypt all
possess myths concerning ascent to heaven along a cosmic
ladder.
In Misminay, near Cuzco in Peru, the Milky Way is
conceived of as a stream of semen that flows through the cen-
ter of celestial space just as the Vilcanota River, its terrestrial
counterpart, flows through the center of the earth. As the
Milky Way encircles the world, it descends into the ocean
in the west, absorbing the earth’s waters, and travels under-
ground to rise in the eastern sky. Taking the form of rain,
fog, and hail, the heavenly water-semen falls into the head-
waters that feed the Vilcanota River. The Milky Way also
contains female elements, the yana phuyu (“dark spots”),
which are the sources of various animal species.
Celestial bodies and elements are often portrayed as the
more active constituents and expressions of a supreme being
himself. Nurrundere, thunder-voiced god of the Australian
Narrinyeri, produces the rainbow when he urinates. The
Xhosa of southern Africa believe that hail falls when Utikxo
arms himself for battle. On Timor, monsoon rains come
forth from Usi Neno, a supreme being with strong solar as-
pects, as a result of the effort he expends in his intercourse
with Usi Afu, goddess of the earth. In Indonesia, in the
Ambon Islands, the supreme being called Upu Lanito (“lord
heaven”) sets stars in the sky as a sign that he has gone to
warn the sun and moon about an impending attack of nitu
(“spirits”). There are abundant accounts that describe the sky
as the face of a supreme being; the sun and moon are his eyes.
It shall be seen that the more active divinities tend to
specialize in one life-giving activity or sphere (e.g., crops, ani-
mals, the dead, military organizations, cosmic laws, or the
laws of a kingdom) rather than to remain, as do supreme be-
ings, vague and passive sustainers of life in general. In many
instances, their activities are expressed in independent my-
thologies of active supernatural beings who overshadow the
remote and transcendent supreme being. The end result is
that there exist religious systems wherein the supreme being
is supplanted by more active and specialized deities or, alter-
natively, wherein the formal expression of the supreme being
itself is presented not as remote and transcendent but as quite
intensely involved with the specific life processes of the uni-
verse. In the latter case, the form of the supreme being ab-
sorbs attributes from other important and more active super-
natural beings like the culture hero, the trickster, or fertility
gods.
Activities. It has been seen that supreme beings are su-
preme by virtue of their unique nature, not necessarily by vir-
tue of their achievements or exploits. Supreme being, by its
very nature, underlies all that is; its character stands in a di-
rect relationship to what exists, what is ontologically true. In
this connection, supreme beings are often invoked as witnessSUPREME BEINGS 8871