Posted by sigismund on November 25, 2010, at 15:03:23
In reply to Re: NEW poll of the day » sigismund, posted by Free on November 25, 2010, at 14:53:11
You may have read this from the thread on native Americans? It's really just the last the last 5 or so sentences, but you need the rest to give you the sense.
This, of yours, brought it to mind...........
And yet there is only one great thing,
The only thing,
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world."
>For both the Ika and Kogi the earth is alive. Every mountain sound is an element of a language of the spririt, every object a symbol of other possibilities. Thus a temple becomes a mountain, a cave a womb, a calabash of water the reflection of the sea. The sea is the memory of the Great Mother.
>The life spun into being at the beginning of time is a fragile balance, with the equilibrium of the entire universe being completely dependent on the moral, spiritual and ecological integrity of the Elder Brothers. The goal of life is knowledge. Everything else is secondary. Without knowledge there can be no understanding of good and evil, no appreciation of the sacred obligations that human beings have to the earth and the Great Mother. With knowlege comes wisdom and tolerance. [......]
>One is called to the priesthood through divination. As soon as a child is born a mama (an enlightened priest) consults the Great Mother by reading the patterns that stones and beads make when they are dropped in water in ceremonial vessels. Those who are chosen are taken from their families as infants and carried high into the mountains to be raised by a mama and his wife. There the child lives a nocturnal life, completely shut away from the sun, forbidden even to know the light of the full moon. For eighteeen years he is never allowed to meet a woman of reproductive age or to experience daylight. He spends his life in the ceremonial house, sleeping by day, waking after sunset to cross in the darkness to the mama's house where he is fed. He eats twice more through the night, once at midnight and again shortly before dawn. His food is prepared only by the mama's wife, and even she may see him only in the darkness. His diet is a simple one: boiled fish and snails, mushrooms, grasshoppers, manioc, squash and white beans. He must never eat salt or foods unknown to his ancestors. Not until puberty is he permitted to eat meat.
>The apprenticeship falls into two distinct phases, each lasting nine years and thus mimicking the nine months spent in a mother's womb. During the first years the apprentice is raised as a child of the mama, educated in the mysteries of the world. He learns songs and dances, mythological tales, the secrets of Creation, and the ritual language of the ancients known only to the priests. The second nine years are devoted to higher pursuits and even more esoteric knowledge - the art of divination, techniques of breathing and meditation that lift one into trance, prayers that give voice to the inner spirit. The apprentice learns nothing of the mundane tasks of the world, skills best left to others. But he does learn everything about the Great Mother, the secrets of the sky and the earth, the wonder of life itself in all its manifestations. Because the initiates know only the darkness, they acquire the gift of visions. They become clairvoyant, capable of seeing not only into the future and the past, but through all material illusions of the universe. In trance they can travel through the lands of the dead and into the hearts of the living. Finally the great moment of revelation arives. After having learned for eighteen years of the beauty of the Great Mother, of the delicate balance of life, of the importance of ecological and cosmic harmony, the initiate is ready to shoulder his divine burden. On a clear morning, with the sun rising over the flank of the mountains, he is lead into the light of dawn. Until that moment the world has existed only as a thought. Now for the first time he sees the world as it is, the transcendent beauty of the earth. In an instant everything he has learned is affirmed. Standing at his side, the mama sweeps an arm across the horizon as if to say, 'You see, it is as I told you'.
poster:sigismund
thread:960272
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20101122/msgs/971302.html