Vagina Xanadu Redux

WARNING: PARENTAL ADVISORY :)

I think this is a subject that can keep on giving. I was surprised more people didn't respond to an earlier request for nicknames and innuendoes of body parts. I think it might be possible that Canadians, Australians and Brits swear more than Americans. I found a woman who responded to my post about the word vagina...she had a thoughtful experience..and that inspires me. A lot of people have a strong reaction to the c-word.

One of my favourite books ever, it is on my World Peace Reading List:(I know I know I'm an asshole for even writing such a list. Only losers believe in non-violent conflict resolution right?) One River by Wade Davis talks about a fascinating connection between vaginas, light, weaving, sustenance and astronomy. Its from a Kogi tribe in South America.

This is a very long excerpt, but aren't you curious how these all connect? This post is dedicated to two women. Camie who believes I live in Xanadu, and you're right, I do actually. I believe that telling our stories will help us see the GRID and FRAME we have been taught...and that there are other ways of looking at the system...and by doing so we can live together despite what our leaders do or don't do for us. We don't need to elect a new program. Programs are part of the trap.


And this is also dedicated to Dubious Wonder

From One River by Wade Davis

A sudden gust of wind ran up the valley. I glanced down the slop and saw climbing toward us an old man twisted with age.
"Look at those fields. What do you see?"Tim asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you notice anything about them?"
"No. Nothing special."
"Reichel saw the same fields, the same gardens. But he stayed long enough to see them harvested and to see them planted. This is how they plant a feild." He took a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket and sketched a rough rectangular figure, which he divided in two. The northern half of the feild, he explained, was the domain of the men, and the southern that of the women. The men grow cotton and maize, the women coco and manioc. The women plant a feild by beginning in the southeastern corner and working their way north until, reaching the center line, they turn again south, sowing lines of crops parallel to the sides of the feild. The men, in contrast, begin on the center line on the western side of the field and move east, planting horizontal lines of crops until, having worked their way back and forth across the entire feild, they finish their work at the northeastern corner.
"Now take these two tracings, and what do you have? Tim asked.
"I don't follow."
"You can'tsee.Here try this."He folded the paper in two, along the center line, and lifted it toward the sun. There. What is it?"
"A grid." I answered.
"No." he said. "A fabric. The garden is a piece of cloth. I have to show you something."
Tim turned and we went back into the hut. He rumaged through his gear and pulled out his journal.
"Everything begins and ends with the loom," Tim said, reaching into the fire for an ember to light a cigarette. he moved over toward the door. "For the Kogi, a person's thoughts are like threads. The act of spinning is the act of thinking. The cloth they weave and the clothes they wear become their thoughts. Listen to this." He opened his notebook and began to read.

I shall weave the fabric of my life,
I shall weave it white as a cloud,
I shall weave some black into it,
I shall weave dark maize stalks into it,
I shall weave maize stalks into the white cloth,
Thus I shall obey divine law.

"It's a Kogi prayer," Tim said. "I found it in one of Reichel's papers. You see, to us the loom is just a few poles, a simple piece of technology. But for these Indians it is something sacred-not the object but the act of weaving itself. Or at least the symbols that it invokes. In the simple act of making cloth, the weaver aligns himself with all the forces of creation."

According to Reichel-Dolmaloff, Tim explained, the loom is an image of the four corners of the world, with the point of intersection of the cross poles representing the sacred peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The loom is also the human body with the four corners representing the shoulders and hips, and the intersection of the poles being the human heart. Thus when a man crosses his arms, hands touching opposite shoulders, he embraces himself and becomes the loom of life. The earth itself, the surface of the land , is also a loom, an immense template on which the sun weaves the fabric of existence. In the four corners are the points of the solstices and the equinoxes, the loci between which the divine weaver moves each day and night creating the worlds of light and darkness, of life and death.

This idea of the sacred infusing the material world informs every aspect of life in the Sierra. When the Great Mother conceived the nine-layered universe, she also dreamed into being the first temple, egg-shaped like the cosmos. The temple floor is the world of the living, the thatch roof a model of the upper worlds, mirrored beneath the ground by an inverted realm like that of the cosmos. To this day the Kogi build their temples around this cosmic model. They are simple structures with high conical roofs supported by four corner posts. On the dirt floor, positioned between the central axis of the temple and each of the four posts, is a ceremonial hearth representing one of the four lineages founded at the beginning of time by the Lords of the Universe. In the middle is the hearth of Lord Mulkuexe, the representative of the sun.

When the Kogi build their temples, the alignment of these hearths is precise and critical. At the apex of the roof is a small hole, covered most of the year by a piece of pottery. The orientation of the temple is such that on a summer solstice, as the sun rises above the mountains in the morning, a narrow beam of sunlight falls on the hearth that lies in the southwest corner. During the day, as the sun moves across the sky, the beam of light moves across the floor until, just before dusk, it lands on the hearth in the southeast corner. Six months later, on the winter solstice, with the sun having shifted south, the beam of light passing through the roof touches the northwest hearth in the morning and in a similar fashion passes over the floor during the day, striking the northeast corner at dusk. On both the spring and winter solstices, the beam of light passes through the roof and slices a path equidistant between north and south, such that at the merdian point, with the sun high in the sky, the central hearth, the most sacred of the five, is bathed in a thin vertical column of light. For that moment a mama or priest has been waiting. He lifts a mirror to the sun, and as the light of the Father fertilizes the womb of the living, the priest with his mirror creates a cosmic axis along which the prayers of the people may ascend to the heavens.
Thus over the course of a long year the sun passes over the earth and weaves the lives of the living on the loom of the temple floor. He weaves by day and night, in this world, and during the hours of darkness in the world that lies below, the inverted realm of the black sun. Above and below, the sun weaves two pieces of cloth each year, one for himself and one for his wife. The first strands of the warp are laid down on the solstice, the first cloth is completed on the equinox.

(This can be found mirrored in temples/mounds in Ireland)

The chapter I quote from ends with this...

Tim lit a cigarette and stepped to the edge of the terrace. The moon was rising and the wind moved through the branches of the tree that rose above Adalbertos' house. Smoke was seeping out of the thatch. For a few minutes we remained quiet; then I heard Tim's voice once again.
"The Kogi have this word munse. Do you remember?"
"No," I said.
"It means dawn and it means vagina. It is also white light. The priests go to the highest peaks and sit with their backs to the mountains, their eyes ahead to the sea. They make offerings and they stay there until they feel a power surge through their bodies. That's when they see the light, munse. It comes on like a vision and then takes form. What they see is the vagina of the Great Mother, a cross that is shaped like a loom.