Apuku

Forest and nature spirits, often tied to trees, animals and wild places.

In Winti, apuku are connected with the forest and everything that lives there. They belong to the forest pantheon, the busi winti, and are seen as forces of the wilderness: of trees, shrubs, animals and places far from habitation. In Surinamese experience the forest is a place of life and abundance, but also of what is unknown and untamed.

Apuku are known in the tradition as wilful. They can be protective and helpful, but also teasing or demanding, and are sometimes described as small in stature. In some stories they attach themselves to a person or a family. Much of what is told about apuku differs by family and by region, and practitioners often speak about them with caution.

According to practitioners, apuku often appear in dreams through animals, trees or places far from habitation: a path leading into the forest, a large tree, an animal looking at you, or a voice among the leaves. A dream with strong forest images is therefore not read only as landscape. The question is what was present there and how it felt: curious, inviting, warning or repelling.

A dream in which you get lost in the forest is read differently in Winti than in a Western dream book. Where a Western reading thinks of insecurity, a practitioner also looks at whom or what you met in the forest, and whether you were given something to take away.

Dreamkin does not establish that a dream comes from an apuku. We describe how practitioners often read such dreams. Someone who finds a dream with forest images weighs heavily does best to discuss it with someone who knows the customs of their own family.