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Comment by Miguel Sague Jr on October 27, 2013 at 11:58pm

This video interpretation of the Makiritare (Yekuana) creation narrative is not the complete presentation of the Watunna story recorded by De Civrieux. However it is a brilliantly expressed offering of some of the key portions of the tale.

     I wish the video would have presented the interaction between Frimene the divine woman who eventually turns into the WATER MOTHER SNAKE and her brother Nuna, the male version of the lunar entity that represents the source of harsh menstrual cramps. The confrontation between these two story characters revolves around Frimene's intention of protecting the stone egg Huehanna which holds the unborn germinal humanity. I also think I discovered a switch in chronology when the video presents Toad woman saving the two fish eggs which subsequently hatch into the hero twin boys. The discovery of the two eggs by Toad woman actually takes place after Frimene inserts the Huehanna stone egg orb into her own vagina to hatch it. After her interaction with her brother Nuna she turns into the Water Mother Snake and jumps into the Orinoco river. She is hunted by the Old People (the animals), and sacrifices herself to provide meat sustenance for those animals that can not live only on the vegetable food provided by Wanadi. When she dies and her spirit travels to the Spirit Lake, the Huehanna stone egg pops out of her serpentine ventral opening and cracks on some rough rocks on the riverbank. Fish eggs containing the germinal humans scatter from the broken Huehanna and are spread across the riverbank. Some eggs fall into the water and hatch as actual fish. But several fish eggs fall on the dry ground of the riverbank and continue too harbor the unborn souls of humans. Two of these eggs are discovered by Toad Woman and she hatches them. Twin boys are born from those eggs, and that is how she ends up raising them. Some of their adventures appear to reflect the adventures of the four quadruplets in the sacred narratives of the ancient Taino.

Click this LINK

to access the analysis by Lawrence E. Sullivan pages 284 and 285 of the book Eranos Reborn: The Modernities of East and West; etc

Here Lawrence covers certain parts of the Watunna story not presented in the film, including the interaction between Frimene and Nuna.

This second LINK accesses an analysis in Spanish of the symbolism of owls and other nocturnal birds in certain Indigenous mythological cycles. In the section titled "LAS RAPACES NOCTURNAS Y SU REPRESENTACION..." the author, Leonardo Paez quotes the segment of the Watunna in which Frimene escapes from her Moon-Spirit brother and turns into the sacred WATER MOTHER SNAKE.