Yhi

The Sun Goddess

Domain: Sun, Light & Creation
Alignment: Neutral Good
Element: Light
Relics of Power: First Light of Dawn

Speak with Yhi

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5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Aboriginal Australians

Region

Australia

Period

65,000 years ago – present

The ancestral beings of the Dreamtime are revered by Aboriginal Australians, possibly the oldest continuous culture on Earth. These beings are believed to have created the landscape, the laws, and life during the Dreaming. Their stories are kept in rock paintings, songs, and rituals passed down over tens of millennia.

At corroborees, songs and body-painted dances re-enact the journeys of the Dreaming ancestors. The songlines, singing tracks, map the sacred land from memory, and places like Uluru remain living sanctuaries under the care of their traditional custodians.

At a glance

Yhi (recorded phonetically by nineteenth-century ethnographers as Yhi and standardized in modern Yuwaalaraay/Gamilaraay orthography as Yaay) is the prominent female solar deity and ancestral creator spirit in the cosmological traditions of the Euahlayi and Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) peoples of northern New South Wales, Australia. In Australian Aboriginal cosmology, unlike classical Greco-Roman mythology where the sun is male, the solar orb is universally conceived as a vigorous and radiant woman, whereas the Moon (Bahloo) is personified as a male ancestral being. In traditional narratives documented by Catherine Langloh Parker from elder informants on the Narran River, Yhi performed the foundational role of awakening the dormant earth during the Dreaming: descending upon the cold, barren world at the request of the Supreme Spirit Baiame, her light and vital warmth caused vegetation to germinate and summoned animals, birds, and reptiles from deep subterranean caves into living activity. Beyond her creative role, Yhi is renowned for her relentless celestial pursuit of Bahloo, the Moon-man: after Bahloo spurned her amorous advances, the solar goddess vowed to chase him perpetually across the vault of heaven, an eternal journey that explains diurnal cycles, lunar phases, and solar eclipses, which occur when the two heavenly bodies converge and struggle in the sky.

7 min read · Reviewed on September 29, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The rising sun, the light, the flowers and the waking of the earth

Family

Yhi

Unions

Bahloo

Genealogy according to K. Langloh Parker, Australian Legendary Tales (1896); The Euahlayi Tribe (1905, pp. 7, 60–63); Ray P. Norris (2016); Duane W. Hamacher & Ray P. Norris (2011)

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Parker, K. Langloh, Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies. translation: London: David Nutt; Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade, 1896. read
Parker, K. Langloh, The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia. translation: London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1905. read
Parker, K. Langloh, More Australian Legendary Tales. translation: London: David Nutt; Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade, 1898. read

Studies

Norris, Ray P., Dawes Review 5: Australian Aboriginal Astronomy and Navigation. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 33, e039, 2016. open
Hamacher, Duane W. & Norris, Ray P., Eclipses in Australian Aboriginal Astronomy. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 14(2), pp. 103–114, 2011. open
Fuller, Robert S., Norris, Ray P. & Trudgett, Michelle, The Astronomy of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi Peoples and their Neighbours. Australian Aboriginal Studies / arXiv:1311.0076, 2014. open
Reed, A. W., Aboriginal Stories of Australia. Sydney: A.H. & A.W. Reed / New Holland Publishers, 1965. open

Name and epithets

The Indigenous Australian theonym Yhi represents the nineteenth-century European transcription of the word for 'sun' in the Yuwaalaraay (Euahlayi) and Gamilaraay (Kamilaroi) languages of the Pama-Nyungan family in north…

In the ancient sources

Australian Legendary Tales: Folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs, 1896. Pioneering ethnographic compilation by Catherine Langloh Parker transcribing oral accounts from native speakers in the Narran River basin.

The myths

The Awakening of the Dormant Earth in the Dreaming. As preserved in Narran River oral traditions documented by K. Langloh Parker and popularized by A. W.

Worship and archaeology

Religious life regarding Yhi was free from built temples, hierarchical priesthoods, or material sacrificial offerings, which did not exist in south-eastern Australian Aboriginal societies.

How the god was depicted

In visual and material culture, Yhi and solar entities are traditionally symbolized through concentric circular motifs, radiated disks, and geometric ochre designs pecked into sandstone rock platforms, painted in rock s…

What scholars debate

Gender Polarity in Australian Ethnoastronomy. Anthropologists have extensively examined the contrast between Australian Aboriginal astral gender assignments and classical European models: while Indo-European cosmologies…

After antiquity

In modern Australia, the narrative of Yhi is honored as an essential chapter of First Nations cosmological heritage.

Did you know?

Unlike northern hemisphere mythologies where the sun is male and the moon is female, in Aboriginal Australian tradition the Sun is universally personified as a vibrant woman and the Moon as a man.

Codex relic

First Light of Dawn. The radiance with which she woke the sleeping world, making life spring up wherever her light touched.

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