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

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

in the Tupi and

Guarani language Guaraní (), specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guarani ( "the people's language"), is a South American language that belongs to the Tupi–Guarani family of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of ...

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, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the univers ...

, 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 or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 t ...

and his residence is the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

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, 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 God. Tupã, according to Câmara Cascudo, 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. Osvaldo Orico was 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, Tupã wedded the goddess Arasy, the mother of the sky whose home was the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. 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 harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

one morning after their

wedding A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...

, and together they created the

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of ...

s and the

sea The sea, connected as the world ocean or simply the ocean, is the body of salty water that covers approximately 71% of the Earth's surface. The word sea is also used to denote second-order sections of the sea, such as the Mediterranean Sea, ...

s, the forests, the

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

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 the capital of Central Department in Paraguay, located from the capital, Asunción. The city lies between Ypacaraí Lake to the east and hills to the west. Areguá is known for its colonial architecture and historic cobblestone st ...

, a small city in

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to t ...

near the capital of

Asunción Asunción (, , , Guarani: Paraguay) 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 ...

. After the creation of all things in earth, Tupã set to creating the first human

couple Couple or couples may refer to : Basic meaning *Couple (app), a mobile app which provides a mobile messaging service for two people *Couple (mechanics), a system of forces with a resultant moment but no resultant force *Couple (relationship), tw ...

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. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay pa ...

, juice extracted from

yerba mate Yerba mate or yerba-maté (''Ilex paraguariensis''; from Spanish ; pt, erva-mate, or ; gn, ka'a, ) is a plant species of the holly genus '' Ilex'' native to South America. It was named by the French botanist Augustin Saint-Hilaire. The lea ...

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 in the cir ...

from the

Short-tailed Nighthawk The short-tailed nighthawk (''Lurocalis semitorquatus'') is a species of nightjar in the family Caprimulgidae. It is found in Mexico, in every Central American country except El Salvador, in Trinidad and Tobago, and in every mainland South Ame ...

, the leaves of several kinds of plants, and finally a

centipede Centipedes (from New Latin , "hundred", and Latin , " foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', lip, and New 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, 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 cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...

References

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

As a post-conquest deity

Myths

Creation of human race

Further reading

References