Tupan
Also called Tupã, Tupa.
The Tupi-Guarani thunder demon, squat and wavy-haired, whose name the missionaries took for the Christian God and which now means sacred.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Guarani mythology
- Region
- Brazil (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Rain-Holders
- Symbols
- Thunder
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Thunder is image-domain Thunder denotes the voice of the high god heard as anger, assent or presence, a shock that disorients and wakes, and the herald of rain.
why
The Tupi-Guarani thunder demon, squat and wavy-haired, whose name the missionaries took for the Christian God and which now means sacred.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Behaviour
- Controls wind rain and thunder
why
He belongs to the thunder in the sense the older sources intend by calling him a demon, which is a power of the weather rather than a moral agent with intentions toward anybody.
Offensive powers
- Lightning control
why
Tupan is the old thunder power of the eastern Tupi-Guarani peoples of Brazil — the Tupinamba among them — and the descriptions give him an actual body rather than a principle: short-statured, man-shaped, the hair in waves.