Mario Toral and Mapuche cosmology

Mario Toral and Mapuche cosmology

According to Mapuche mythology, the god Chau created the sky and the earth, and filled it with animal and plant life. At the end, he created men, the Mapuches.

The god Chau (father), or Antü (sun), as he was also known, lived with his wife Kushe or Kuyén (which means witch or wise woman) and their two children. During the day, Chau went out to take care of his creations, while the goddess Kushe would do this at night.

Over time the god Chau and the goddess Kushe had more children, making their firstborn children jealous. Feeling enraged, they conspired against their father and mother to take the kingdom of the earth from them. When the god Chau found out, he was furious, and threw his children onto the ground. As they fell, their bodies shattered into thousands of pieces. Upon seeing them, their mother, the goddess Kushe, started to cry, and her tears filled the two holes that their bodies had left in the earth as they fell, forming two large lakes.

Hurt by the betrayal of his children, but repenting of his anger, the god Chau gathered their broken bodies and turned them into a winged snake called Kai-Kai Filu, who would be in charge of filling the seas and lakes.

But instead, full of rage and hatred against the god Chau and the Mapuches, Kai Kai Filu decided to terrorise the Mapuches by rapidly moving his tail and wings, causing natural disasters like earthquakes and tidal waves.

To protect his creations, the god Chau made a new good snake with a special clay. He called her Ten-Ten. Her task was to warn the Mapuches when Kai-Kai Filu started to get angry so that they could get to safety.

Some time later, the god Chau wanted to go down to the earth to personally check on his creations and see whether his plan to help them had worked. He appeared among the Mapuches disguised as an ordinary human being, and taught them how to work in the fields and respect time, the art of sowing and harvesting, how to choose seeds, how to preserve food. He also gave them a great gift, fire. This is how Chau gained another name… “the good come from heaven”.

The god Chau returned to his house and spent a long time without appearing again, so much so that people began to forget about him. The men started fighting among themselves and people no longer respected his teachings or advice. Not even his children’s descendants spoke of the gods with respect.

Desolate to see what had become of his creations, the god Chau asked Kai-Kai Filu to whip up the waters once again, causing a fearsome flood to scare the Mapuches and teach them a lesson. Ten-Ten, the good snake, also heard what the god was saying and made the agreed warning sound. Afraid, the Mapuches ran to take shelter on the mountain that bore the snake’s name, Ten-Ten, but the water had already begun to rise. Furious, the god Chau launched lightning bolts from the sky that hit all those who managed to reach safety at the top of the mountain. Only two managed to survive, a boy and a girl who had sheltered in a deep crack in the earth.

These would be the only two human beings left on Earth, who grew up without a mother or father, suckled and cared for by a fox and a cougar. All the Mapuches who were to come would be descended from them. However, the god Chau did not watch over them again, abandoning them to their fate. This is why it is said that it was possible that they were conquered by other peoples, such as the white man. Since then, the Earth has no longer been what it was. The crops are no longer as abundant, diseases proliferate, and children do not listen to their elders.

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+ The myth in the work

The work La creación del mundo según el mito mapuche (“The creation of the world according to the Mapuche mythology”) is a preparatory painting for the mural project Memoria Visual de una Nación (“Visual Memory of a Nation”), in which Toral recovers the collective memory of native peoples. In La creación del mundo según el mito mapuche, the elements and characters narrated in the myth are represented syncretically, combining different beliefs and schools of thought. These include the snakes Ten-Ten and Kai-Kai Filu, the god Chau and the goddess Kushe, and natural phenomena described in the myth, as well as the Mapuche people. There are also other elements that we invite you to identify and interpret.