Gnowee- Aboriginal Australian GodDeity"The Sun Woman"
Description
Gnowee lost her son in the dark world before the sun existed. The Wotjobaluk mother lit a great bark torch to search for him, and its brilliance was so fierce it illuminated the entire world — she has carried it across the sky every day since, still searching, the torch we know as the sun.
Mythology & Lore
The Searching Mother
In the Dreamtime, Gnowee lived with her young son in a world without sunlight. People gathered food in darkness. One day, Gnowee went out to gather yams, the edible roots that were a staple of Wotjobaluk life. She left her son behind, and when she returned, he was gone. He had wandered away into the darkness.
To search for him, Gnowee lit a great torch made of bark. It blazed with such brilliance that it illuminated the entire world, driving away the darkness that had hidden everything. With this torch, Gnowee climbed into the sky to look down upon the world from above, traveling from the eastern horizon to the western, her light revealing everything beneath her.
She never found her child. But she did not stop looking. Every morning Gnowee rises in the east to begin her search, her torch lighting the world as she crosses the sky. Every evening she sets in the west. The sun is Gnowee's torch, and daylight exists because a mother refused to give up.
Night and the Underground Passage
Gnowee's journey includes the nighttime passage beneath the earth, from the western horizon where she sets to the eastern horizon where she rises again. During this underground passage her torch is not visible from the surface, and the world is dark. She is still traveling, still searching, but her light cannot reach the world above until she emerges again at dawn.