Tupã or Tupan (also ''Tupave'' or ''Tenondete'') is the word for

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

in the Tupi and

Guarani language Guarani (Avañe'ẽ), also called Paraguayan Guarani, is a language of South America that belongs to the Tupi–Guarani branch of the Tupian languages, Tupian language family. It is one of the two official languages of Paraguay (along with Spa ...

s, including the Guarani creation myth. Tupã is considered to be the creator of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

, 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 Light, visible light, or visible radiation is electromagnetic radiation that can be visual perception, perceived by the human eye. Visible light spans the visible spectrum and is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400– ...

and his residence is the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

. A contest was run by the Centro Paraguayo de Informaciones Astronómicas in Paraguay in 2019. This bestowed the star HD 108147 with the name Tupã in December 2019.

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'' (Tupi) or ''Ñanderuvusu'' (Guarani), 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 concept of God. Tupã, according to some sources, 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. Some writers were 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 Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligenc ...

, Tupã wedded the goddess Arasy, the mother of the

sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

whose home was the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

. According to the myth, Tupã and Arasy descended upon the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

one morning after their

wedding A wedding is a ceremony in which two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnicity, ethnicities, Race (human categorization), races, religions, Religious denomination, denominations, Cou ...

, and together they created the

river A river is a natural stream of fresh water that flows on land or inside Subterranean river, caves towards another body of water at a lower elevation, such as an ocean, lake, or another river. A river may run dry before reaching the end of ...

s and the

sea A sea is a large body of salt water. There are particular seas and the sea. The sea commonly refers to the ocean, the interconnected body of seawaters that spans most of Earth. Particular seas are either marginal seas, second-order section ...

s, the forests, the

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

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 a creative city and the capital of Central Department in Paraguay. It is known for its production of strawberry products, pottery, colonial architecture and historic cobblestone streets. The district lies between the Ypacaraí Lake and t ...

, a city in

Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...

near the capital of

Asunción Asunción (, ) is the capital and the largest city of Paraguay. The city stands on the eastern bank of the Paraguay River, almost at the confluence of this river with the Pilcomayo River. The Paraguay River and the Bay of Asunción in the north ...

. 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 Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

, juice extracted from

yerba mate Yerba mate or yerba maté (), ''Ilex paraguariensis'', is a plant species of the holly genus native to South America. It was named by the French botanist Augustin Saint-Hilaire. The leaves of the plant can be steeped in hot water to make a bev ...

blood Blood is a body fluid in the circulatory system of humans and other vertebrates that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells, and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. Blood is com ...

from the Short-tailed Nighthawk, the leaves of several kinds of plants, and finally a

centipede Centipedes (from Neo-Latin , "hundred", and Latin , "foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', "lip", and Neo-Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, ...

. 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 Tau (; uppercase Τ, lowercase τ or \boldsymbol\tau; ) is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless alveolar plosive, voiceless dental or alveolar plosive . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 300 ...

, 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 cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tupa (mythology) Guaraní deities Creator gods Thunder gods

As a post-conquest deity

Myths

Creation of human race

Further reading

References