“Le-Hev-Hev” a Melanesian Goddess…‘she who smiles so that we can draw near and she can eat us’ …Painting Goddess has once again brought me back to myself, after a week of painting aliens and feeling alienated and gloomy The Sun has come back! Prints and cards are available in my shop.
About Le-Hev-Hev: Before a departing soul could pass to the afterlife, the Melanisians said, it had to confront this goddess, who tried to trick the soul with games. Drawing on the sand in front of her, she challenged the soul to complete her diagram. Should the dead one be unable to do so --or did so incorrectly -- Le-Hev-Hev had the soul for dinner.
The Malekulans who honored Le-Hev-Hev considered her a goddess, not a monster, offering her boars so she would not eat human corpses. Her earthly forms were the spider, the crab, and the rat; she was also embodied in female genitalia. Her name has been roughly translated as “she who smiles so that we draw near and she can eat us.” ~ from The Book of Goddesses & Heroines by Patricia Monaghan