ABSTRACT
Spirits require homage and food from human beings, while human beings, for their part, need life and plentitude, a dialectic described for other ethnographic regions including South America and North Asia. This chapter presents certain narratives in the textual repertoires of peoples of eastern Indonesia juxtapose specific motifs that recur with sufficient regularity to define them as a set. There are seven of these motifs: water; life and plentitude/abundance; an instrument of impalement or entrapment, an arrow, sword, rope, fishing line, or a fishing hook; the quest, usually circular; the social relationship of elder brother/younger brother; deception or an error; and visibility/invisibility. The chapter suggests that water may be construed as corresponding to the aforementioned 'penumbra' of our epigraph, an ambiguous substance by whose very ambiguity 'the clear visibility of things material' and 'their total extinction in the spiritual' merge, as spirit envelops matter with the mystery of 'soul suggestion'.
