Kachina

A kachina (/kəˈtʃiːnə/; Hopi: katsina [kaˈtsʲina], plural katsinim [kaˈtsʲinim]) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo peoples, Native American cultures located in the southwestern part of the United States. In Pueblo cultures, kachina rites are practiced by the Hopi, Hopi-Tewa and Zuni peoples and certain Keres peoples, as well as in most Pueblos in New Mexico.

The kachina concept has three different aspects: the supernatural beings, the kachina dancers, and kachina dolls

Kachinas are spirits or personifications of things in the real world. These spirits are believed to visit the Hopi villages during the first half of the year. The local pantheon of kachinas varies from pueblo community to community. A kachina can represent anything in the natural world or cosmos, from a revered ancestor to an element, a location, a quality, a natural phenomenon, or a concept; there may be kachinas for the sun, stars, thunderstorms, wind, corn, insects, as well as many other concepts.

Many Pueblo Indians, particularly the Hopi and Zuni, have ceremonies in which masked men, called kachinas, play an important role. Masked members of the tribe dress up as kachinas for religious ceremonies that take place many times throughout the year.

Hopi Kachina figure

Hopi kachina figures or Hopi kachina dolls (also spelled katsina (plural: katsinam); Hopi: tithu or katsintithu) are figures carved, typically from cottonwood root

Except for major ceremonial figures, most kachina figures originated in the late 19th century. The oldest known surviving figure dates back to the 18th century. It was a flat object with an almost indistinguishable shape that suggested a head and contained minimal body paint.[6] Kachina figures are generally separated into four stylistic periods: the Early Traditional, Late Traditional, Early Action, and Late Action periods.[7]

Every symbol, color, and design on a Hopi kachina figure has definite meaning in connection with Hopi religion, custom, history, and way of life

The Art of Kachina Doll Carving - Tayron Polequaptewa

Kachina Dolls

Hopi Butterfly Maiden Katsina | Two Minutes with the Curator

Cecil Calnimptewa, Hopi Katsina Carver

The Art of Kachina Doll Carving: Cory Ahownewa

Kachina Carving

Minute Out In It: Cory Ahownewa - Hopi Kachina Carver

Katsina Dolls of the Hopi at the Heard Museum Shops

And no joke, there is a How it's Made episode on them

According to the 2011 census of India, about 7.9 million (7,937,734) out of 1.21 billion people did not adhere to any of the subcontinent's main religious communities of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, or Jainism. The census listed atheists, Zoroastrians, Jews, and various specified and unspecified tribal religions separately under the header "Other Religions and Persuasions".[1]

Of these religious census groupings, the most numerous are Sarna (4.9 million respondents), Gondi (1 million), Sari Dharam (506,000), Donyi-Poloism (331,000); Sanamahi (222,000) and Khasi (139,000), with all other religions numbering less than 100,000 respondents, including 18,000 for "tribal religion", 5,600 for "nature religion", and 4,100 "animists".[1] The Scheduled Tribes account 89.39% (7,095,408) of total ORP in India.[2]

In this contribution, I provide an ethnography of the Maya New Year’s pilgrimage and sacrifice ritual, in which a delicate relatedness between people and animate mountains is established, enacted, and expressed.

The material I use here for presenting this particular kind of life and animacy has been collected during my ethnographic fieldwork among the Akatek Maya. in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, one of Guatemala’s most mountainous, isolated, and traditional areas.

Firstly, I will provide an ethnography of the pilgrimage from Chimbán to the mountain of K’utataj, where a young turkey is sacrificed. The ritual takes place at the end of a delicate five-day period (Wayeb’ or Oyeb’ K’u) before the advent of the Maya New Year. It is consciously understood as paying respect to the mountains and asking for good weather, a plentiful harvest, and all the best in the year to come.

The settlement of Chimbán, with a population of about 1,600, is the religious centre of all Akatek traditionalists inhabiting the municipalities of San Miguel Acatán and San Rafael La Independencia. In their eyes, the importance of Chimbán stems from the rigour with which local ritualists perform costumbre (literally the ‘custom’), a set of rites inherited from the ancestors that must be followed. The number of ceremonies and feasts, just as the number of saints in the local church, evidences the ritualists’ good work and justifies Chimbán’s reputation as the ‘real centre of the world’, where there is ‘still something going on’, as I learned from the mayordomo who was holding the service.

Ethnographic and ethnohistorical studies support the notion that Andean peoples share an animistic ontology (cf. Descola 2013), that is, they believe the world is inhabited by countless non-human agents and interpret numer- ous phenomena that we (Moderns) attribute to natural mechanisms as efects of their intentional actions. hese sentient beings can be a variety of things, including plants, celestial bodies, rocks, artifacts, places, or relatively abstract but omnipresent entities, such as Pachamama.

Depending on the region and period, travel rituals reported in the literature may engage diferent kinds of non- humans, including ancestors and accompanying spirits, Pachamama, moun- tains, outcrops, springs, archaeological sites (chullpas), special objects (e.g., igurines, amulets), pack animals (if they are used), and the road itself (Lecoq 1987; Mariscotti de Görlitz 1978; Nielsen 1997; Pimentel 2009; West 1981, among others).

In 1995, a caravan we traveled with from the southern altiplano to the Tarija Valley carried two bulky bundles containing ritual paraphernalia to perform the necessary rituals along the journey, including eight kichiras (dried llama hearts stufed with clippings from diferent parts of the bodies of sacri- iced animals), kowa (an aromatic shrub commonly burned in ritual contexts) incense, lard and cornmeal to shape llama igurines (virauñas), miniature bags illed with maize kernels and cornmeal, lamingo feathers, unkuñas (ceremo- nial textiles for altars), red yarn to “dress the altars,” coca leaves, alcohol, and wine, among other elements (Nielsen 2011).

The most common ritual presently conducted at abras in the Andes involves adding rocks to the apachetas, cairns developed on the highest point of the trail by the repetition of this gesture over time.

The apacheta ritual was described in early colonial sources

This demonstrates that these practices—or some of them—are of pre-Hispanic origin, at least in the Central Andes.

This study, based on fieldwork in rural Lanquín, Guatemala, discusses cultural continuity and the sense of historicity through agricultural rituals and worship of the agricultural deity Tzuultaq’as.

The conceptualisation of Tzuultaq’a can be traced to the K’iche’ creation mythology, Popol Vuh, commonly known as the bible of the Mayas.

The spirit of Tzuultaq’a has managed to endure. As Stefan Permanto (2015: 76) observes in his fieldwork in the municipality of Chisec in Alta Verapaz, “the beliefs and ritual practices concerning the Tzuultaq’a were never completely eradicated”.

Prior to sowing, the man first conducts a ceremony and has candles lit in the temples. Then, back at home, he burns copal on the eve of sowing [as an offering to the deities, Tzuultaq’as]; before dawn, he grabs a planting stick to plant the maize seeds, as has always been done since the time of antiquity. (FM June 2015)

The reference to his birth place, Rube-hal, invokes both a cave, known as Rubehal, one kilometre away from his hut, and a Tzuultaq’a who supposedly resides in the place. Responding to my further queries about Tzuultaq’as, he explains, “Tzuultaq’a is our belief, different from yours. They are the own-ers of land.” The term Tzuultaq’a encodes a two-fold semantic reference: animistic spir-ituality and dominant territories. He further explains, “Tzuultaq’as are how we name our mountains/hills, where there are rains, and the thunders are heard. Tzuultaq’as have different names, such as Rubehal, Saqik, and Sebach” (FM June 2015). Thus, where the Tzuultaq’a dominates or the mountain and valley meet invokes a personal and ethnic reference to one’s origins.

The ceremony involves offering candles and burning copal pom as tribute to the Tzuultaq’as. The incense of the burning copal carries messages to the deities in prayers: “I’m pleading and I’m confrming. [...] And our copal is burning, so is the candle, which I am submitting to you as a gift to make the request for your permission.” The prayers are to the Tzuultaq’as, who sustain human life with food and drink from the sacred plant, maize.

Many Nahua people today trace their ancestry to the ancient Aztecs. However, 500 years of sometimes violent history separates the 16th-century Mesoamericans from the modern people. This long time span makes it surprising that many beliefs and customs of the contemporary Nahua and other Native American groups today so closely resemble the descriptions recorded by Spanish chroniclers.

In order to win the favor of these spirits, people must periodically travel to these sacred sites and deliver gifts to the beings who reside there. Because of these beliefs, both the ancient and modern people of Mesoamerica organize pilgrimages to visit the sacred locations in the regions where they live.

Nahua pilgrimages are organized by a ritual specialist called a tlamatiquetl in the Nahuatl language. The word means “person of knowledge,” and anyone can aspire to become such a shaman-priest if they are willing to undergo the long grueling apprenticeship. To organize a pilgrimage, a person of knowledge must first notify friends and helpers in his or her own village and in neighboring communities.

The most important features of pilgrimages involve the construction of elaborately decorated altars and the dedication of offerings to selected spirit beings that are related to crop abundance. Including all of the time spent preparing for it, a pilgrimage may last 10 days or longer. During a pilgrimage, the participants get very little sleep.

About one third of the way to the top, the people stop to rest and decorate an altar dedicated to the cloud spirits. After an hour or two, they resume their climb and stop again at a flat place about two-thirds of the way up. Here they decorate yet another altar to water. Nearby are two small clefts in the rock, said to be the homes of Apanchanej and her thunder spirit companions. It is from these openings that they send rain to the farmers’ fields far below.

Extremely good description of many different aspects of Korean folk beliefs and religion.

East Greenland Drum Dancing

Inuit Drum Dancer @ Kulusuk / Greenland

• this one has translation and storytelling

Trommedans fra Qaanaaq

Grønlandsk trommedans i Sagnlandet Lejre 2012 - 2 Inuit Drum Dance

A few days ago I made this post, linking to a group performing in parades during the holiday of Fasnacht in Luzern, Switzerland.

But what is Vuotisheer? Vuotisheer is a mythological phenomena that occurs in the southern German speaking areas of Europe. In tellings, it is fairly diverse, but is imagined as a group of noisy, unruly and even dangerous spirits or people, roaming the country and appearing during holidays. These stories go all the way back to the 16th century.

As a wider European phenomena it resembles other traditions of noisy spirits roaming the country, especially by flying. Due to its name, and behavior, it has been identified as the army ('heer') of Odin, through his German name, Wodan. This interpretation was put forth by 19th century historians, notably Jacob Grimm. The identification of Vuotisheer as Odin is still very popular among professionals. However, an increasing number of voices believe this interpretation is tenuous at best, and that the "Vuotis" is an archaic term for "furious".

Nevertheless, the Vuotisheer group I linked earlier seem to subscribe to the interpretation of Vuotis as Odin, from their icon showing both an eight-legged horse and a wolf.

Links and ressources, mostly in German:

Auszug aus der Sagenwelt des Kantons Luzern bezüglich Sträggele, Türst und Vuotisheer

• folktales from the group's website

Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol 3 [English]

• Note that Grimm actually argues for the identification of the Vuotisheer as Odin more through it's aspects such as flight and noise and similarity with other phenomena in which Odin appears

Anton Birlinger, Aus Schwaben. Sagen, Legenden, Aberglauben, Sitten, Rechtsbräuche, Ortsneckereien, Lieder, Kinderreime. Neue Sammlung

• folk tales from Swabia

Der Geschichtsfreund : Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins Zentralschweiz

• discussion and categorization of early Vuotisheer stories

Wolfgang Golther, Handbuch der germanischen Mythologie

• Similar to Teutonic Mythology

I have a pretty good understanding of this topic and I'd say she is spot on.

When reading Cory Doctorow's recent essay "The tedious power of stroytelling", I had a breakthrough in my understanding of folklore:

A huge part of folklore is imbuing the environment with intent where there is none.

As a species, we humans want to believe that we live in an ordered (and perhaps just) universe, where things happen for a reason. That someone intended for things to happen as they did. As a trained physicist, I know that this very often not the case - but this assumption is hard to shake. Thus, we come across folkloric narratives like these:

• "My cattle have fallen ill. A witch must have cursed them!"
• "This rock formation is spectacular. It must be a petrified giant!"
• "I suffer from sleep paralysis. A night hag is tormenting me!"
• "My infant child has a disability. It's actually a changeling which has been switched for my real child!"

And before we dismiss such notions as the superstitious relics of bygone ages, we should remember that we haven't really changed - the folklore just takes on new and different forms. For what else are modern "conspiracy fantasies" than a particularly toxic subset of folklore? That "vaccines cause autism" is just another modern take on the changeling myth. We cannot accept that things often happen that are outside of conscious human control, and then we come up with new stories that add human intent.

What are your thoughts on this?