Romhõsi wai hawi rowa õno re ihoimana mono : a criação do mundo segundo os velhos narradores Xavante

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2002

RESUMO

In this work, I shall present the results of research on the founding principles of the cosmogony of the Xavante people that I have developed with elder narrators and their translators. I intend to show that the major principie of creation of the Xavante world is transformation through which the creators bring into being the entities and ritual that constitute Xavante tradition. To do this, the creators have the power of romhõ and are referred to as romhõsi wa, those who have power romhõ. Xavante cosmogony narrates exactly how, through this power, the romhõsi wa act: they transform themselves into the moon, the sun, the animals and plants necessary for the life of the Xavante. I shall seek to show that they do this because they possess the principles of manifestation of certain cosmic possibilities that are contained in their ontological nature. This ontological quality confers to them the power to transform themselves into multiple beings manifesting themselves in their specific forms. The mythical beings conjugate in their very nature a double capacity to be and to become, for they manifest their phenomenal beings deriving from their very nature or essence. In the case of specific creators, they do this without losing their original nature. The romhõsi wa possess a pre-science of what it is they have to do in order to create the world, and it is this knowing rowa õno that will guide them, and each one of them will do what has to be done. The power of transforming themselves into beings derives from this ontological quality that allows the primordial beings to open the forms that are contained in principie in their ontological nature. These primordial beings are manifest in the world as human beings but contain within themselves the potential of transforming into multipIe beings that come into existence as such and, in the case of severa! primordial beings, they then retum to their human form. This leads us to examine the fundamental question of human form. What exactly does this mean in Xavante cosmogony, and how is it connected to the nature of the primordial beings, which Ieads us to examine more broadly the theme of humanity. By accompanying the modes in which the romhõsi wa creators act, I hope to make a contribution to the question of transformationism, rethinking what its real difference is with creatiotúsm. Guided by the Xavante elders and their translators, I have chosen from the vast corpus of cosmogonic stories, ten key myths with which I will work in this thesis. Of these ten myths, one of them (The Time of Darkness) actually contains two myths (the creation of the Moon and the Sun, and the story of the Sky) but which are told in the same narrative context, such that in fact we have eleven myths. These provide us with a valuable view of Xavante cosmogony and contribute to the understanding of other indigenous cosmologies. I hope to be able, in a future work, to expand the view of Xavante cosmology by considering other myths

ASSUNTO(S)

indios da america do sul - religião e mitologia humanidades xamanismo indios xavante antropologia filosofica religiões espiritualidade metafisica tradição (filosofia) etnologia cosmologia

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