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The World of Perception — Comparative Philosophy of the Ancient Mayan Bird Totems
Philosophy extends from literature to the study of art, religion, history and archaeology, and attempts to focus on the philosophical interpretation of the ancient Mayan bird totems. This article highlights the interaction between literature narration and cultural relic image narration, bringing methodological enlightenment to philosophical "comparison". The subjects focused on the mythological themes of hummingbirds and maidens, macaws and gods, the two main nodes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mind structure of bird totemism hidden in Maya culture by beginning with perception and then reinterpreting the bird totemism image. This paper not only emphasizes the "comparative" philosophy as an important evidence of theoretical interpretation, but also closes the gap between written text and artistic expression.
Ethno ornithological Perspectives on the Chol Maya
The Ch'ol Maya in the state of Chiapas, Mexico live in what could be called the -traditional‖ information age due to their sociocultural relationship with birds developed over millennia. Birds play a vital role in Ch'ol society as messengers and prognosticators, providing valuable information touching upon most aspects of daily life. In this paper we investigate the meanings associated with the actions and calls of various birds among the Ch'ol. This ethno-ornithological approach prioritizes ‗bird > human' interactions rather than the more common ‗human > bird' (indeed, ‗human > animal') anthropocentric relationships that traditionally dominate anthropological studies. Based on fieldwork data, we show how birds function as messengers of future events such as rain and drought, sickness, death, and as indicators of negative or positive things to come.
The conference that inspired this volume, 'Iconography without Texts', prompted a number of stimulating comments. One point, a rather critical one, asserted that an iconography without texts was, in a sense, impossible, for the reason that understandable imagery always required a separate set of retrievable narratives – with an emphasis on the word 'retrievable'. To express this in a different way, formally codified images usually presume codified meanings that are communicated by speech and recorded in written texts. If that speech or those discursive comments were accessible through texts, written or oral, then even ancient imagery could offer some way of imparting information in a manner consistent with what the makers intended. If inaccessible, however, the chance of accomplishing the task would be small or non-existent. Such a formidable array of obstacles affects many of the examples, from early basketry to Shang designs, that were discussed at the conference. However, this perspective is surely too categorical in dismissing the iconographic study of textless material. It is true that interpretations of this other, diverse body of imagery have variable quality of evidence or proof. Some enjoy multiple lines of support, others few. For us, a roughly construed narrative, if warranted by imagery and its sequencing, may not be canonical or final, but it is still an interpretation to be tested against other information. Some scholars might insist on texts. Our claim would be that, in oral form, such did indeed exist in the past or in culturally remote settings: human beings could not, over the past 50,000 years, survive without them, as these were the stuff of everyday discourse and survival. The key tasks are to determine how imagery might link to those texts and how that knowledge might be used to achieve an acceptable, if uneven, reconstruction of them. As was made clear in the conference, a promising basis for looking at meaning in this imagery is to acknowledge and accept the ad hoc, case-by-case nature of interpretation. Some data are favourable to the challenge, others not at all. The Shang bronzes examined by Robert Bagley have, according to his persuasive account, only a slim possibility of elucidation. 1 Perhaps they have none, especially if made murky by the perspective of 'shamanic' arguments. 2 And as Paul Bahn made
The Pre-Columbian world was filled with gods and supernatural powers that influenced the lives of mortals from cradle to grave -- and beyond. As creators of the 'natural world' -- the plants and animals upon which such people relied for survival -- the gods often had animal forms or familiars to represent them in man's earthly court. The power of the gods' animalistic strength, as carved into stone by Pre-Columbian artisans, was obvious even to the arriving conquistadors as Juan Diaz expressed above. The native cultures "sought their ancestors and origins in the close relationships between humans and animals." Man lived closer to the environment in Pre-Columbian times than in much of our modern world. The ancient people's "dependency on the environment gave rise to a sense of awe and respect for the entire universe."
Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya
Transcendent Wisdom of the Maya, 2019
While describing the anthropologic research experience with the highest Maya authorities and her journey to initiation as a Maya Shaman-priestess, the author puts forward the possibility of integrating a post-secular approach to Western theory and practice of religion. Part I, "2012: The End of a Cycle," leads in with a portrayal of life in the Maya Quiché administrative town of Chichicastenango. It then describes the author's attendance at key events and points out the antithesis between Maya and Western time and space conception, leading to many legitimacy questions. This first section portrays the one-and-only construction of a significant sculptural ceremonial plaza since the ancient Mayan times, symbolizing a political break-through by the Mayan Quiché leader not accomplished since those ancient times. Part II of the book begins as a personal journey (in 2014) and enters deeper into several cultural and spiritual concepts, such as constructing the universe; the significance of fire. This part describes spiritual traditions that the author partook as a family friend, and initiate or by officially accompanying the Mayan leader. It conveys Maya ritual attire and other less common detail of Maya life. It cites several Western theories which are inclined to the Maya concepts, such as Husserl-phenomenologist Jan Patočka's model of unity and a" Natural World, "Henri-Charles Puech's explanation of the Christian break with Greek cyclic thinking, and his outlook on the "world's heart" and Mircea Eliade's views of cyclic time. Referring to Kurt Hübner, the author supports the re-introduction of "mythos" into anthropology. In diary form, Part III illustrates the day-to-day process of the author's initiation toward becoming a Mayan Shaman-Priestess, with its prayers and relationship to the numinous forces. Included is an excursion elaborating on practical and theoretical conceptions of initiation: public-private, male-female teacher perspective, the question of death in initiation. Furthermore, the book gives some insight into Mayan knowledge, such as the Maya art of future telling concerning the calendar, Maya correspondence with the ancestors through the fire, and the Tzi'te beans' reading. The author has the right to publish only a part of the book. Please contact the author in case of further interest.
San Simon or Maximón features among the most famous contemporary Maya gods. Being a fusion of different deities and Catholic saints he is frequently cited as an example for the cultural continuity linking ancient and modern Maya religion. Recent examinations of a life-size Maximón in possession of the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg revealed a formerly unknown inscription on its body. These letters were obviously painted in a ritual context to consecrate and to animate the effigy. This discovery sheds some new light on the multiple meanings of this deity and its links to pre-Hispanic rituals practices. Taking this ethnographic example as a point of departure I will discuss comparative ethnohistoric data from the Nicarao of the early 16 th century, which offers us a new insight into the individual variability in the perception of Mesoamerican deities.
Coyote drums and jaguar altars: Ontologies of the living and the artificial among the K’iche’ Maya
Journal of Material Culture, 2020
For the current-day K’iche’ Maya of the Highland community of Momostenango, Guatemala, animals are conceived as having not human, but artificial souls: they are, in fact, objects that exist in the mountain dwellings of their gods. Conversely, artefacts like sacred altars are seen as being wild animals of the gods and ancestors, which can bring illness and death to people when not fed by ritual offerings. Based on this and other data that the author gathered during his recent ethnographic fieldwork among the K’iche’, in this article the author explores the ontological paradoxes of living beings and artefacts among current-day Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples of the past to propose a version of perspectivism that incorporates the ideas of technology, asymmetry and material culture to the more horizontal and personhood-based model proposed for Amazon cultures by Viveiros de Castro in his article, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’ (1998).
From Field to Hearth: An Earthly Interpretation of Maya and Other Mesoamerican Creation Myths
Pre-Columbian Foodways, 2010
Ancient Maya mythology may perplex the modern student. As recorded in inscriptions, mythological episodes are cryptically short, speak of obscure places and entities, and leave much to the reader who, if Maya, would have been so intimately familiar with the story that the details we find lacking were already deeply imprinted on their psyche. Nevertheless, from these esoteric textual fragments and associated imagery we may redact a rich mythological world whose symbolism owes much to the agricultural practices and foodways surrounding maize, still the staple crop of Mesoamerican peoples (Staller et al. 2006; see Anderson and Tuxill, this volume). This chapter adds to scholarship on Maya cosmology by proposing that maize agriculture and the activities that transformed this grain into a foodstuff played a major role in the formation of Maya and Mesoamerican mythology. I suggest that like other ancient societies an elaborate tradition arose around the cultivation, preparation, and lifecycle of this crop. In essence, like rice in Asia (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993) or bread in the West (Camporesi 1996), maize and the foods made from it were sacred. The quotidian activities surrounding its cultivation and preparation took on grander proportions within myth than the original domestic act. Nevertheless, it was through myth’s clear reference to domestic activities that the metaphors expressed therein had the potential to speak to a wide segment of society and became a useful medium for political and religious propaganda and, more importantly, an explanatory model for life’s mysteries.
Journal of Ethnobiology , 2017
For many cultures around the world, birds are viewed as seers who can foretell the future. Among the Ch'orti Maya of southern Guatemala, birds play an important role in many aspects of peoples' lives. Through an ethno-ornithological analysis based on fieldwork with the Ch'orti', this paper shows how birds function as the principal messengers of future happenings, prognosticating positive and negative events such as love, sickness, and/or death, and, perhaps significantly, rain. That birds can foretell information that is empirically beyond human abilities situates them in a category at once distinct from the gods in Ch'orti' thought, yet partakers in the divine. This paper argues for a classification of ''semi-divine'' for birds in Ch'orti' Maya culture, animals that can access the heavens through flight and convey messages from the gods that have a direct bearing on the day-today lives of the Ch'orti'. Having supernatural links also makes certain birds the animal of choice for sorcerers, thereby creating suspicion and mistrust of some birds by many Ch'orti'. The belief in the role of birds as prognosticators for future events is in a state of flux, however, as some in the younger generation have begun to discount certain signs given by birds as folklore and ''nonsense.''