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Entries in anthropology (22)

Tuesday
Sep112012

a 4,000 year old story

After three years exploring Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Orphan and Elf looked at a world map.

Our creative and healing work here is complete for now, said Elf.

I agree, said Orphan. I feel restless and need renewal. Where shall we go?

Make it new day by day. Make it new. Let's see, said Elf, tracing the map. Did you enjoy Turkey four years ago?

Yes, their hospitality is kind.

Ok, how about an ancient eastern town near the Black Sea with mountains? Pine, maple and evergreen forests? Fresh air, olives, tomatoes, cheese, hot bread and pastries? The Greeks and Romans lived there.

Sounds perfect for our never ending adventure. It's on the Silk Road. Did Marco Polo visit there?

Yes. He passed through. Like us. Maybe we will meet him or a wandering relative. We will share tea dancing silver spoons with new friends.

To travel is better than to arrive.

Ok. Let's go to Trabzon.

Tuesday
Aug072012

long distance? give me information...

In a remote Cambodian jungle village along The River of Darkness they carve images of their dead.

The Chunchiet animist people bury their dead in the jungle.

Life is a sacred jungle.

Animists believe in the universal inherent power of nature world. The Tompoun and Jarai, among animist world tribes have sacred burial sites.

The Kachon village cemetery is one hour by boat on the Tonle Srepok River from Voen Sai. It is deep in the jungle. Many go in. Few come out.

The departed stays in the family home for five days before burial. Once a month family members make ritual sacrifices at the site. The village shaman dreams the departed will go to hell.

In their spirit story dream the shaman meets LOTH, Leader of the Hell who asks for an animal sacrifice. The animist belief says sacrificing a buffalo and making statues of the departed will satisfy LOTH. It will renew the spirit and return it to the family.

After a year family members remove old structures, add two carved effigies, carve wooden elephant tusks, create new decorated roofs and sacrifice a buffalo at the grave during a week long celebration with food and rice wine for the entire village.

New tombs have cement bases and carved effigies with cell phones and sunglasses. Never out of touch. See your local long distance carrier for plans and coverage in your area.

The future is brighter than a day in a sacred jungle.  

Tuesday
Mar202012

Taureg

Tuareg Berbers in flowing blue robes meandered through his dream.

A hustler on his bike materialized out of thin air.

“Where are you going? Come have a look at my shop. Only five minutes by bike. Great prices. You don’t have to buy.”

“Why should I?” 

“Great morning prices.” 

Five hundred years ago this guy would have been on a camel in his burnoose tending his flock in the Sahara. He’d be planning to invade Spain, married to a beautiful Berber girl with dark seductive eyes, had ten kids and conquered the Iberian peninsula in his spare time.

Now he was on a 50cc imported European bike wearing castoff designer jeans with slick black hair and grinning with all his teeth, a distinctive character trait.

Used to multiple dimensions and shifting frequencies the wandering ghost was passing through the transition machine being assaulted by monosyllabic well meaning idiots taking him for a fool.

Only the fool and children spoke the truth.

All the hustlers were released on parole for good behavior. They were out. They had no idea who, what, when, why, where and how he’d arrived in their jurisdiction. They lived in an inverted paradigm. He was a hunter gatherer of words and images. Hunting with a singular flair, a cunning intelligence — Metis — a hybrid form.

Wednesday
Feb292012

Tiwa language - Taos

She said, It’s a patriarchal society, no women sit on the fifty member tribal council, Tiwa is the language on the Pueblo and a pure oral transmission,

Nothing is written down,

Sacred words, Tiwa means—wee-who, she said, It means when you give, expect nothing in return,

When you give you open that corridor of energy for yourself and your kind or your people, your vibrations, and it is filled with goodness,

Great powers or awareness are within it so that it descends upon you and places in you whatever that gift is that your supposed to get, That’s what giving does, It awakens placement, It brings down clarity,

We are people from the Source, the center of the circle of light, The No-Form creates the form, In the Tiwa language there are no nouns or pronouns,

Things have no distinct concrete existence, Everything is in motion and seen in it’s relationship to other motions,

The power is not in words but in sounds made in saying and pronouncing words, Each of us is a ceremony, a vibration of All-That-Is, We are the vast self.


Saturday
Sep102011

jungle mumble

Namaste,

hominids know so much 
understand so little
pigments paint animals
traps, black time marking combs
seals, bison, ice age melts bones

hunters

bows, arrows, spears, traps
coal, ash, bark, blood, animal fat
50,000 years of experimentation
still creating in the dark

gatherers
animal skins, fishing hooks, bone sewing needles
fingers grasping
finer points
migration
settlements, social laws, rules, order

invent a religion

game theory
follow the leader

Metta.