Anguta
{{short description|Inuit deity}}Anguta (also called "His Father," Anigut, or Aguta) is the father of the sea goddess Sedna in the Inuit religion.{{cite journal |last1=Turner |first1=Frederick |title=Bloody Columbus: Restoration and the Transvaluation of Shame into Beauty |journal=Restoration and Management Notes |date=Summer 1992 |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=70–74 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43439976 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|jstor=43439976 }}
Status
In certain myths of the Greenlandic Inuit, Anguta is considered the creator god and is the supreme being among Inuit.{{cite book |last1=Leeming |first1=David |title=Tales of the Earth: Native North American Creation Mythology |date=2021 |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=9781789145007}} In other myths, Anguta is merely a mortal. He is a god of the dead in some myths.{{cite book |last1=Falkner |first1=David E. |editor1-last=Hubbell |editor1-first=Gerald R. |title=The Mythology of the Night Sky |date=2020 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-030-47693-9 |page=184}}
Name
His name, meaning "man with something to cut",{{cite book |author1=Joel Rudinger |title=Young Adult Literature and Culture |date=Mar 26, 2009 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=9781443807326 |page=52 |chapter=The Path to Sedna}} 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, ferrying souls from the land of the living to the underworld, called Adlivun, 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.{{cite journal |last1=Wardle |first1=H. Newell |title=The Sedna Cycle: A Study in Myth Evolution |journal=American Anthropologist |date=1900 |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=568–580 |publisher=American Anthropological Association|doi=10.1525/aa.1900.2.3.02a00100 |jstor=658969 |doi-access=free }} 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.{{cite journal |last1=McMahon-Coleman |first1=Kimberley |title=Dreaming an Identity between Two Cultures: The Works of Alootook Ipellie |journal=Kunapipi |date=2006 |volume=28 |issue=1 |page=120 |url=https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol28/iss1/12}}
See also
- Pinga, another psychopomp in Inuit mythology
References
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{{Inuit religion}}
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