Anguta (also called "His Father," Anigut, or Aguta) is the father of the sea goddess Sedna in the

Inuit religion Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and parts of Siberia. Their religion shares many similarities with some Alaska Native religions. Traditional ...

Status

In certain myths of the

Greenlandic Inuit The Greenlandic Inuit or sometimes simply the Greenlandic are an ethnic group and nation Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous to Greenland, where they constitute the largest ethnic population. They share a common #History, ancestry, ...

, Anguta is considered the creator god and is the supreme being among

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

. In other myths, Anguta is merely a mortal. He is a god of the dead in some myths.

Name

His name, meaning "man with something to cut", refers to his mutilating of his daughter which ultimately resulted in her godhood, an act he carried out in both myths.

Function

Anguta is a

psychopomp Psychopomps (from the Greek word , , literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are creatures, spirits, angels, demons, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is ...

, ferrying souls from the land of the living to the

underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. ...

, called

Adlivun In Inuit religion, Adlivun (''those who live beneath us'',Boas 1888, Sedna and the fulmar p. 589 from ''at ~ al'' below, ''-lirn'' in a certain direction, ''-vun'' possessive first person plural; also known as Idliragijenget) are the spirits of th ...

, where his daughter rules. Those souls must then sleep near him for a year before they go to Qudlivun ("those above us"), where they will enjoy eternal bliss. In some versions of the myth, only unworthy souls have to stay with Anguta in the land of the dead. In these myths, he pinches the dead to torment them.

References

Creator gods Inuit gods Psychopomps {{NorthAm-myth-stub

Status

Name

Function

See also

References