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| CC Jean Stimmell September 25, 2015 |
The importance of bones:
Mircea
Eliade reminds us modern Western folks– addicted as we are to rational thought
and mathematical algorithms –why bones are so existentially important,
something traditional cultures have always known because, rather than being
cognitively divorced, indigenous people are intimately held within the embrace
of mother nature within the web of life.
"Indeed,
for the hunting peoples, the bone symbolizes the ultimate root of animal Life,
the matrix from which the flesh is continually renewed. It is starting with the
bones that animals and men are re-born; they maintain themselves awhile in
carnal existence, and when they die their "life" is reduced to the
essence concentrated in the skeleton, whence they will be born anew according
to an uninterrupted cycle that constitutes an eternal return. It is duration
alone, time, which breaks and separates, by the intervals of carnal existence, the
timeless unity represented by the quintessence of Life concentrated in the
bones. By contemplating himself as a skeleton, the shaman does away with time
and stands in the presence of the eternal source of Life.".[1]
The importance of trees:
Another sacred symbol to indigenous
cultures around the world is the cosmic tree which connects Earth with Heaven.
The shaman, separated from his community by the intensity of her religious
experience, lives on the sacred side of life which enables him to climb the Cosmic
Tree to the top where she can “commune with the Lord of the World."
To see the rest of my bony images,
check out Shaman and Sacred Symbols on my photography website.
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