Anhangá

Anhangá or Anhanga (tupi: Ahiag̃; maué: Anhang, "spirit"), is a figure present in the cosmovision of several native groups from Brazil and indianist literature.

In the Tupinambá culture
The Tupinambá people believed that Anhangá could take many different forms. Despite being a bigger threat to the dead, he would be seen often by the living, who could also have their bodies and souls punished. The mere memory of the suffering inflicted by Anhangá was enough to torment them. The tupinambás were said to fear this malignant spirit more than anything else. This spirit would be one of the biggest concerns when it came the time to prepare the dead for their journey to Guajupiá, the "Land Without Evils". Food offerings would be made alongside a fire to warm the body. Food was offered to sustain the dead as well as to ensure Anhangá would eat the food instead of the dead. The fire, meanwhile, had the goal of not only providing warmth, but also protection to the dead, as it would keep Anhangá away. The living would also encourage the dead who had already reached Guajupiá as to not let their fires go out.

In the Mawé culture
To the Mawés, Anhangás are portrayed as demons, followers of Yurupari. These creatures are known and feared for being able to take various forms to fool people, curse, possess, kidnap, kill and eat them. Anhangá either can't swim or is afraid of entering the water out of fear for Sukuyu'wera, the water protecting spirit, his enemy.

Protector of animals
Anhanga is described as a "genie of the forest and protector of the fauna and flora in tupi mythology", who "[...] doesn't devour nor kill. He avenges animals victimized by insatiable hunters".

It is said Anhangá takes the form of a white deer with fiery eyes and that he is the protector of the hunt in the forests, protecting animals against hunters, especially females with babies. When the prey was able to escape, the indigenous said Anhangá had protected it and helped it escape. "The Anhanga is a myth of verbal confusion. The Anhanga that made the savage shake in fear was the Anga, the wandering soul, the phantom, the spirit of the dead. Terrifying. It was incorporeal. It was the evil-thing, the fear without form, convulsive, trapping the shy ones inside theirs ocas [indigenous houses] by the heat of the fire, surrounded by the dark night of the tropics. The Anhanga of the eyes of fire and the body of a deer would be nume, the protector of the specie, totemic convention, the tupi's regional superstition, for it hadn't been transmitted to other indigenous peoples and, through passing it to the ones of mixed-race, had lost his function as a patron of the field hunts. [....] it is logic to think that the initial myth, the ur-mythus, would be only Anga, the soul without a body, spreading fear."

Tonicity
Regarding the variable pronunciation: "Machado de Assis, in Americanas (Machado de Assis), alerts to the fact that it follows the grammar prosody oxytone because it is commonly used in poetry, but that the true pronunciation of the word would be a paroxytone. [...] The original pronunciation seems to have been the paroxyton [anhanga], but anhangá begins to occur since the 17th century, being more used in poetry."

In Jesuit missionaryism
The missionary José de Anchieta, in his auto Tupi-Medieval, gives the name Anhangupiara, word created from the agglutination of the nouns anhangá and jupiara, to an angel, whose meaning in the Latin translation of the anchietan tupi would be the enemy of the anhangás.

Another jesuit, António Vieira, described "Añangá" in the Sermon on Incontinences, as a duplicitous entity worshiped by the indigenous folk.

Bantu false cognate
Another hybridization took place with banto: "The noun 'hunt' in imbundo is 'n'hanga' and 'hunter' is 'ri-nhanga'. As Anhanga is a hunting myth, it is natural that black hunters knew him in Brazil, assimilating it to the almost homophone words of their language."

In modern literature and contemporary missionaryism
Anhangá is present in the indianist works of Brazilian novelist Gonçalves Dias (1823–1864). In "O Canto do Piaga" and "Deprecação" Anhangá is characterized as a cruel and merciless entity, allied with the colonizers. In "Caramuru", the author presents Anhangá or Anhangás taking the roles of demons, as well as presenting Tupã taking a creator role in the creation of a colonialist myth paralleled to the creaton myth of the catholic doctrine.

Neo-Pentecostal churches with a strong presence in the mawé communities reinterpret Anhangá as an announcement of evil and a demonic manifestation, to be fought by prayers and chants.