Shinto

The God of Hell and the People of the Sun

According to Chamorran native legends of Guam, Fouha Rock, pictured above, was the first place created in the world. Being an oral culture without a cannon, there are various versions of the myth. One version has it that the rock was created from the body of the first female who made the sun shine.

Another version has it that a God of fire, had a fiery pit where he created souls to use as slaves. One day there was an explosion in hell, and a soul escaped to Guam as the rock pictured above which, softened in the rain to become a man. Finding himself alone he created others from the earth and gave them souls made of the sun. The God of Hell realised that one of his slave souls had escaped and came to Guam where he met a child and thinking that it was the soul that he was missing, he tried in vain to return it to hell. "The child became a man and told Chaifi he couldn't destroy him or the many other souls created since they came from the sun."

The Japanese have a similar myth in which a deity goes to hell and escapes, then makes ancestor of the Japanese with a soul made of the sun or mirror, or both,

Legend aside, Chamorrans lived naked in Guam for a long time until the Spaniards arrived with Catholicism more than three hundred years ago.

Another, semi-Catholic, Guamanian foundation myth has it that the naked people of Guam attempted to welcome an effigy of the virgin mother to Guam but were thwarted, three times. On the fourth attempt, they put on clothes to hide their nakedness, and were then able to accept the effigy of Mary, which stands to this day in the Cathedral in the capital of Guam. It is thought that it may be a statue from the prow of a Spanish ship.

Did the God of Hell re-enslave the people of the sun?!

Image "Puntan yan Fu'una by Guampedia Foundation, on Flickr