Rehue

A rehue (Mapudungun spelling rewe) or kemukemu is a type of pillar-like sacred altar used by the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina in many of their ceremonies.

The rehue is a carved tree trunk set in the ground, surrounded by a hedge of colihue (a Chilean native bamboo) and adorned with white, blue or yellow flags and branches of coihue, maitén, lengas and other trees native to the Mapuche homeland.

In form it recalls both a ladder and the human spine, having a series of steps (sometimes a mystical seven in number) cut into it, rising up from the earth toward a summit sometimes bearing a carving of a human face.

This is believed to contain power transmitted to it by Ngenechen, (the supreme being in Mapuche religion) and the machi's attendant pillan (supernatural beings bearing some similarity to the familiar spirits of Early Modern European witchcraft).

[2] Called "rehue" or "regua" in colonial chronicles, the word referred to the grouping of various Mapuche families (lof or lov) who occupied the same locality and shared the same rehue altar.