The Jicara

My friend Kate lived for several years in Yuma, Arizona, and worked as an environmental lawyer on an Army base. She and her fiancé Ken made numerous trips down the Mexican coast visiting the tiny towns along the Gulf of California. One particular family befriended them, and welcomed them into their home repeatedly.

The years have been difficult. Ken died in a horrific accident, leaving Kate in great mourning. Then the Mexican family’s matriarch died, leaving behind a sad but kindly husband and two young kids.

But though Kate moved back to the D.C. area, she makes regular visits to the family in Mexico, and always brings interesting gifts for the kids (who are growing like weeds; it makes Kate feel very old).

Every year she sends me some memento from Mexico, most of them pieces of Huichol art. She has given me two blankets woven in the most amazing colors, a decidedly hallucinogenic wooden dog, and two intriguing crucifixes (blending several different religious traditions).

Perhaps the most recognizable type of Huichol art is the nieli’ka, or yarn painting (like the one depicted here). In traditional Huichol communities, nieli’kas are important ritual artifacts. They’re usually small square or round tablets covered on one or both sides with a mixture of beeswax and pine resin into which threads of yarn are pressed. Nieli’kas are found in most Huichol sacred places such as house shrines (xiriki), temples, springs, and caves.

In the past thirty years, about four thousand Huichols have migrated to cities, primarily Tepic, Nayarit, Guadalajara, and Mexico City. It is these urbanized Huichols who have drawn attention to their rich culture through their art. To preserve their ancient beliefs they have begun making detailed and elaborate yarn paintings, a development and modernization of the nieli’ka.

For the Huichol, however, yarn painting is not only an aesthetic or commercial artform. The symbols in these paintings spring from Huichol culture and its shamanistic traditions. From the small beaded eggs and jaguar heads to the modern detailed yarn paintings in psychedelic colors, each is related to a part of Huichol tradition and belief.

Due to longtime deliberate isolation and resistance to evangelism, the Huichol have retained much of their original culture and religion. They call themselves Wixáritari or “the people.” Huichol religion has four principal deities: the trinity of Corn, Blue Deer, and Peyote; and the eagle, all descended from their Sun God, Tao Jreeku.

One year Kate sent me this amazing yarn painting. It’s called The Jicara:

On the back, on the wood itself, the following is written:

El simbulo del cuadro Este cuadro represento una Jicara que inicialmente isieron las diosas en un lugar muy preciso donde primeramente se reunen. estando en uno obscuridad. Ela [ella] boran una bela [vela] para combertirlo. En una lus [luz] muy grande y loponen en el centro de una Jicara que para eyos [ellos] es el mundo la Jicara y asi eyos [ellos] sienten que tenen su luz. donde se acercan espiritu de deferente. y de estas Jicara ó de este mundo desprenden pensamientos Elaborado por el Artisto, Modesto Rivera Lemus (mi nombre en Huichol, Temay, significa hombre nuevo)

It took a while to get a decent translation. While it’s written primarily in Spanish, it’s clear that Spanish isn’t the artist’s original language. Moreover, there are a number of Huichol words in it, and I couldn’t determine what they meant. I’ve pieced together what I believe is the meaning, though I invite readers to offer better translations of the artist’s words:

The symbolism of the picture This picture shows a Jicara [a ceremonial gourd cup or bowl] that the Gods [literally, the Goddesses] initially created in the very place where they first met. Being in darkness, they set up a candle to combat it [the darkness]—it was a very great light—and they placed it in the center of a Jicara. For them, the Jicara is the world. And thus they feel that they have its light whenever they approach a different spirit, and from this Jicara—or this world—come thoughts. Elaborated by the artist, Modesto Rivera Lemus (my name in the Huichol language, Temay, means “new man”)

All the images, of course, have significance, and all the Huichol deities are represented. The green circles on the right are probably peyote, gifts from the sun god. Blue Deer, the Huichol trickster spirit, peeks from behind the candle; Eagle is descending to bring guidance; and the yellow-orange threads represent the hairs of Corn. We can also see Salamander, and Snake: fire and wisdom. And everything vibrates: with life, with thought, with power.

As you look at the Jicara, and read the artist’s description, what do you see? What does it say to you?

Revisiting Questions of Linear Time and Object Permanence

In an earlier post about a fascinating (and more than a little surreal) discussion about quantum physics in an online humor and gossip forum, I mentioned that the thread had concluded.

Well, it keeps getting new posts periodically, and some of the comments have been fascinating, not to mention hysterically funny:

R37: “This is known as reality shifting. It happens all the time. Who hasn’t ‘lost’ something only to find it’s reappeared someplace you know you didn’t put it? It’s happened to me and lots of people I know and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it probably will!”

Roger: “Hello!!! Socks in the dryer anyone? I’m tempted to throw myself in there and see where I wind up. Somewhere I hope with lots of dimmer switches.”

R40: “What I find is that when I’m looking for something, the thing I’m looking for anticipates where I’m going to look next and, if that’s where it is, it moves itself. It keeps doing this until it gets bored and lets me find it.

“Also, anyone else have this experience: you’re in some room (typically one without windows, such as a basement, and it’s filled with stuff. You turn out the light and everything disappears! Where does it go? I figure probably to another dimension. In any case, it can’t be far because you turn the light back on and everything reappears, seemingly instantaneously. It’s weird.

“Don’t get me started about linear time! I was so tired last night, I fell asleep watching television. Several hours disappeared and suddenly was I thrust into the morning.

“People who live in reality are just boring.”

R45: “Do you even know what object permanence is? You can’t make up a definition of a well established term and then ask if we believe in it.”

R49: “I say find the crack-whore in the red wig (in whatever dimension she’s tricking in), and you’ll find the cigs.”

R51: “I first experienced either a reality shift or missing time back in the first grade. I was the MC of our cchool Christmas play (we could have Christmas plays back then). I read the Bible verses while the costume characters stood in tableau (I remember the Holy Virgin wearing her coke bottle glasses.) At the conclusion of the play I was told that I had to wait until the remainder of the class had changed but if I wanted I could stay in my suit and tie. Which of course I chose to do. I watched the other kids walk into separate boy/girl restrooms carrying their street clothes. I sat down on a stool backstage for what seemed like one second when the entire class came from backstage wearing their street clothes. I remember at the time thinking, ‘That was impossible,’ but I also had enough naive intelligence to know that adults wouldn’t even understand what I was talking about. One teacher told me, ‘Thanks for waiting, now let’s form a line and go back to homeroom.’ I have been told that I was daydreaming and ‘fell asleep’ and woke up at exactly the right time but I have done that and this was nothing like that , this was a skip on the DVD of time, one scene suddenly became another.”

R59: “I’m currently caught in a time warp where the Hallmark Channel is 15 minutes ahead of Comcast time.”

Colin Powell: “Anyone seen my reputation?”

R65: “So conventional notions of time and space are totally flawed, but it’s out of the question that OP had something else on his mind and just misplaced his cigarettes?

“I don’t buy it. If objects were constantly disappearing and reappearing in space or time, it wouldn’t only happen with little, easily misplaced personal effects, and it wouldn’t only happen when there was no one around to witness the de/rematerialization. There would be witnesses, documentation, corroboration etc. We would be missing a lot more than our keys, phones and spectacles.

“Reality is astonishing enough. There’s no need to spin your own brain farts into an episode of The X-Files. And this is coming from someone who would love love love to have some other dimension to blame for my own forgetfulness.”

R66: “This would fit nicely into the seemingly eternal Yin and Yang structure of perceivable existence. If existence is ‘reality,’ the non-existence (of energy and/or matter) would imply that there does exist and opposite of existence. And while I think the OP’s smokes are still in the sofa cushions somewhere, somewhere there’s a place where that sofa doesn’t exist and those smokes may be spiraling down to nothingness even now.”

R68: “Now I know why I finally found my cell phone in the freezer even though I haven’t been in the freezer for weeks. It just did that . . . well . . . that thing that you are all talking about. I think. Oh, what the hell. I’m getting another drink.”

R72: “If any of you bitches do happen to fall through the space-time continuum, please be kind enough to stand to one side so that those of us in a hurry to get to nowhere can get there faster. TIA!”

R87: “Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. They simply assume shapes, and the shapes change. Don’t tell me you never imagined Schrodinger’s Cat as a cube. That’s like saying you never checked out other guys in the showers. Let’s face it: physics is a slippery slope.”

R88: “It is not, perhaps, as slippery as you would imagine it, R87.”

OP: “We forgot to mention that gravity is not constant either. I started weighing myself every morning and, wow. I can gain or lose eight or ten pounds per day. Or, more accurately, per night. I can go to bed weighing 215 and wake up weighing 207. (Oh shut up, I’m 6’5” so I’m not that fat.) This is pre-pee and pre-dump, so the weight’s not leaving that way. Could I sweat out 8 pounds of water a night? I think not. The scale is consistent, the floor’s not warped, and (just in case) I place the scale in exactly the same place every time. I can only conclude that gravity is a fickle, fluctuating bitch.”

R94: “Time is an artifact of our three-dimensional physical existence, which is limited to the five senses and our relation with matter within that construct. But there are many other forms of existence beyond three, which is where we graduate to once our physical bodies are no longer necessary.”

R97: “I may not believe in object permanence. I am studying art in college right now, and we’re heading into the 20th century. Why are the objects in Dali’s, Picasso’s, and Matisse’s paintings so non-literal? Why did they paint them that way? I think that they may not have believed in object permanence, and that things could change form and be manipulated, possibly in other dimensions that overlap ours. Who knows. I think bringing this up is going to make my fall semester very interesting.”

Frankly, I’m with OP on the gravity problem. It explains so much.

The Sky Pillar

The news report was bizarre on so many levels. First, the opening salvo: “An amusement park in China has built what it claims is the world’s largest penis.”

That’s right, an amusement park.

Then the eye-popping photo:

The rest of the news story raises more questions than it answers:

The 30ft erection, named Sky Pillar, has been built at Longwan Shaman Amusement Park in Changchun city. Builders wrapped more than 6,500ft of straw around the steel structure which stands on an altar atop 1,250ft high Qinlong Hill. “It is a totem of shamanistic culture, which originated in this city,” says the president of the park, Cheng Weiguang. Legend says a shaman hero named Ewenki vanquished a cruel female ruler and gave her a penis totem, telling her to respect males and not kill them at will. After this, the ruler set a penis totem on top of the hill, reports the East Asia Economic and Trade News. Shi Lixue, director of the China Folk Culture Association, backed the project, saying, “It symbolizes our ancestors’ pursuit of happiness and prosperity.” And, although some tourists said they felt uncomfortable about the statue, others were unmoved. “It’s just a pillar. I don’t care. It can be a symbol of the park,” said one mother who was visiting the park with her child.

OK, I’m 51 years old, and I’m getting the giggles over the name of the park: Longwan. How appropriate.

Then there’s the wonder of a “shaman amusement park.” Are there flying horse rides? Do talking wolves lead visitors into dark caves? Do they sell peyote buttons or ayahuasca at the refreshment kiosks? Do they have healing huts?

Is the hero Ewenki related to the nomadic Evenki people living in the Tungus region of northern Russia and northern Mongolia, from whom we get the term shaman?

From ancient times in India, the phallus or lingam has been used in the worship of Shiva. In fact, in some iconography, Shiva was depicted as a phallus or cosmic pillar, and is often the focus of the Hindu temple and frequently situated within a yoni, indicating a balance between male and female creative energies. And phallic worship has been practiced in ancient Greece, Rome, Sumer, Egypt, Scandinavia, Japan, and the Americas.

But I’m not sure it so nakedly represented the “pursuit of . . . prosperity” as it apparently does here.

And why does the mythology have Ewenki vanquishing a “cruel female ruler” and telling her to “respect males and not kill them at will”? Is this the old tension between the ancient Goddess religions and the newer ones with male deities? Is it about the conquest of matriarchy?

As titillating as the whole topic is, I really wish I could find more information on this particular, um, erection. I think there’s more here than meets the eye.