Antü

Every morning the gold comes up over the Andes and crosses the whole reach of the visible sky, and the Mapuche kept a name for the thing that carries it. Antü is the sun, but he is also the light itself, and the wisdom inside the light, and the spirit that stands against the dark and against the heavy matter of the world below. He rides the day from one horizon to the other, and beside him goes Kueyen, the moon, the wife he chose. Their two lamps divide the sky between them. Everything that grows beneath them grows because he allows it.

He is the first of the Pillán, the ancestral thunder-spirits, and he rules the rest of them the way the head of a household rules his people. The Pillán work the middle country, where weather and volcano press against the living. Antü stands above all of that, in the Wenu Mapu, the land above, and from there he holds the order of the cosmos together. When the order held, it held because of him. The trouble is that it did not always hold.

The brightest of the Pillán wanted a wife from among the Wangulén, the star-maidens, and when he looked them over every one of them wished to be chosen, because his gold went undimmed even by fire. He chose Kueyen, the most luminous of them, and that single choice broke the peace. Peripillán, the red spirit of fire and Antü’s rival, had wanted what Antü had, and he resented that gold could shine where flame could not reach. Antü resented him in turn, because in the dark the fire burned brighter than the gold. The stories do not agree on who began it. The two Pillán went to war, and the spirits took sides, many Pillán and all the Wangulén ranging themselves behind Peripillán.

The fighting was long and it was violent, and the land could not hold still beneath it. The underworld shifted. The middle air shook. While the elder spirits fought, their sons grew to full size and turned on their fathers, wanting to take their places, and both Antü and Peripillán, furious at the betrayal, caught their giant sons by the long hair and flung them down. The bodies struck the rock, one falling in the eastern land and one in the land of the sea, and where they broke apart and sank they raised the first tall mountains. That is one of the things this story is for. It accounts for the cordillera.

Antü won. He threw the beaten Pillán down and sank them into the depths and piled rock and hill and mountain over them, and over Peripillán, the strongest, he heaped the tallest range of all. It was not enough to put the fire out. The buried spirits still strain to free themselves, and when they strain the ground trembles, and now and then their fire forces a way up through the stone and stands in a column of smoke and flame above a volcano. The Mapuche live among some of the most active volcanoes on earth, and this is the account they kept of them.

The Wangulén, terrified, wept and begged for mercy, and their tears fell across the new mountains, pooling into lakes and freezing into the snow on the high peaks. Antü relented. He did not destroy them. He only dimmed their light until it was thin and pale, so that none of them could rival Kueyen again. The cold white of the snowfields and the faint light of the lesser stars come from the same act of restraint.

For the dead sons there was a stranger mercy. Their mothers grieved so bitterly that Antü brought the two giants back, but changed, as enormous serpents. Peripillán’s son became Caicai-Vilu, the snake of the sea, and Antü’s own son became Trentren-Vilu, the snake of the land, and the two were set against each other as their fathers had been, locked into the old rivalry. The same convulsion that raised the mountains cracked the prison of the Wekufe, the malignant spirits, who slipped loose and went roaming. The world that came out the far side of the war was not the harmonious one that went in.

What Antü looks like is harder to say than what he does. The stories give him no settled face or body. They describe him instead by his quality, as radiance, as the gold the flame could not darken, as the brightest thing in a company of bright things. He is the day itself moving across the sky. When the Mapuche wanted to picture him, they looked up.

His power is the power of the sun and then some. He commands light and warmth, governs the upper world, rules every other Pillán, and his favour decides whether a season turns kind or cruel. The harvest answers to him. In the ngillatun, the great fertility ceremony, the community brings him offerings and prayers so the crops will come and the weather will hold, because a people who farm at the foot of the Andes cannot afford his indifference.

His limits are the ones the story already showed. He could defeat Peripillán but he could not extinguish him, and so the fire he buried keeps returning as earthquake and eruption, never quite finished. His victory loosed the Wekufe and split the world’s harmony, damage he did not undo. And his reach has an edge. When the moon slides across him and the sky goes dark, the Mapuche call it lay-antü, the death of the sun, and they pray, because even the lord of the day can be covered over, and no one takes it for granted that he comes back on his own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Antü in Mapuche mythology?

Antü is the Mapuche sun god and the principal Pillán, the chief of the ancestral thunder-spirits, who commands all the others. He represents the sun, light, wisdom, and spirit, and he rules the Wenu Mapu, the upper world, from which he keeps the order of the cosmos.

Who is Antü married to?

Antü is married to Kueyen, the moon, a Wangulén or star-spirit. He chose her from among all the Wangulén because she was the most luminous, and his choice set off the rivalry with the fire-spirit Peripillán that led to war.

What does the Antü myth explain about volcanoes and earthquakes?

After Antü defeated his rival Peripillán, he buried him and the other beaten Pillán beneath the mountains, heaping the tallest range over Peripillán himself. Their trapped fire was never put out, so when the buried spirits strain to escape the ground shakes, and their fire sometimes breaks through the stone as the smoke and flame of an erupting volcano.

What is lay-antü?

Lay-antü means “the death of the sun” and is the Mapuche term for a solar eclipse. When the sky darkens, the Mapuche pray, because the eclipse shows that even Antü, the lord of the day, can be covered over.

How did the Mapuche worship Antü?

The Mapuche invoked Antü during the ngillatun, a major fertility ceremony, offering sacrifices and prayers to secure good harvests and favourable weather. His light governed the growing season, so a farming people living at the foot of the Andes depended on keeping his favour.

Related Entries

Kueyen, Pillan, Caicai-Vilu, Trentren-Vilu, Wekufe, Cherufe, Ngenechen, Mapuche Mythology, Chilote Mythology, Caleuche, Pincoya, Inti, Guaraci