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Shipibo, Amazonia, Peru:
In the beginning there was only darkness, and in the middle of that darkness
was a giant Anaconda named Ronin who encircled the Tree of Life in the universe. This Anaconda reflected back on her beautiful
skin and began to sing the geometric patterns she saw, which then materialized to create the Heavens, Stars, Earth,
Sun, Moon, and all the Creatures that inhabit these realms. A world made of song was the result of this action, and now every
person and every living thing is imbued with their own distinct song pattern.
---Unknown, Shipibo, Amazonia. Woven Songs of the Amazon, Healing Icaros of the Shipibo
Shamans.
The Anaconda People, Amazonia:
Mankind was born at the Amazon River mouth and then travelled
upstream in a huge canoe shaped like an Anaconda. At certain spots the people went ashore and, at specific points acquired
the essential characteristics of their society. There is a location where they danced for the first time; another
where they learned the first songs; a spot where the forest was cleared for the first garden; a place where they
built their first communal houses; and another spot where the first ceremonies were performed. The Amazon is the River
of Life, because every point along the river has it's name and particular significance in their culture. Every turn in
the river is a reminder of the Anaconda's form and, at the same time, Mankind's and Nature's origin in a replica of
the Milky Way.
---Unknown, Tukano, Amazonia.
Barasana, Amazonia, Columbia:
The origin was a great journey from the East, in sacred canoes brought
up the Milk River by enormous anacondas. Within the canoes were the first people, together with important master teacher
power plants, gifts of Father Sun. On the heads of the anacondas were blinding lights, and in the canoes sat the Mythical
Heroes in hierarchical order: chiefs, wisdom keepers, warriors, shamans, and, finally, in the stern, servants. All were brothers,
children of the sun. When the snakes reached the centre of the world, they lay over the land, outstretched as rivers, their
powerful head forming river mouths, their tails winding away to remote head-waters, the ripples in their skin giving rise
to rapids and waterfalls. Each river welcomed a different canoe, and in each drainage the Mythical Heroes disembarked and
settled, with the lowly servants heading upstream and the chiefs occupying the mouth. Thus, the rivers of the Vaupe's were
created and populated by different peoples. In time, the hierarchy of mythical times broke down, and on each of the rivers
the descendants of those who had journeyed in the same sacred canoe came to live together. Still, they recognized each other
as family, speakers of the same language, and to ensure that no brother married a sister, they invented strict rules. To avoid
incest, a man had to choose a bride who spoke a differet language.
---Wade Davis, Ethnobotanist and Anthropologist, Light at the Edge of
the World, A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.
Makiritari, Venezuela:
The woman and the man dreamed that God was dreaming about them.
God was singing and clacking his maracas as he dreamed his dream in a cloud of Tobacco smoke. Feeling happy but shaken by
doubt and mystery. If God dreams about eating, he gives fertility and food. If God dreams about life, he is born
and and gives birth. In their dream about God's dream, the woman and the man were inside a great shining egg, singing and
dancing and kicking up a fuss because they were crazy to be born. In God's dream happiness was stronger than doubt and mystery.
So dreaming, God created them with a song: "I break this egg and the woman is born and the man is born. And together they
will live and die. But they will be born again. they will be born and die again and be born again. They will never stop being
born, because death is a lie."
---Unknown, Makiritare, Venezuela. Watunna: Mitologia Makiritare, Monte
Avila.
Caribbean Islands:
Two mischievious twins stole a gourd which they found hanging on the
doorway of a Curandera's home. The Medicine Woman saw the twins steal the gourd and tried to stop them but they
ran away. While running the twin holding the gourd dropped it spilling the contents. So much water flowed from the gourd
that it caused a great flood, which covered the land so only the tallest mountain peaks were visible. These are now known
as the Caribbean Islands.
---Unknown, Taino, Caribbean, Dr. Manuel C. Torres.
Kogi, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Columbia:
At the first dawning when the Earth was still soft, the Great Mother stabilized
it by thrusting the enormous spindle into the centre, penetrating the nine levels of existence. The Lords of the Universe,
born of the Great Mother, then pushed back the sea and lifted up the Sierra Nevada around the world axis, thrusting
their hair into the soil to give it strength. From her spindle, the Great Mother uncoiled a length of cotton thread with which
she traced a circle around the mountains, circumscribing the Sierra Nevada, which she declared to be the land of her children.
Thus, the spindle became a model of the cosmos. The disk is the Earth, the whorl of yarn is the trerritory of the people,
the individual strands of spun cotton are the thoughts of the sun.
---as told by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, Ethnographer. Wade Davis, Ethnobotanist
and Anthropologist, Light at the Edge of the World, A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.
Aborigine, Australia:
The Aborigines accepted life as it was, a cosmological whole,
the unchanging creation of the first dawn, when earth and sky separated, and the original Ancestor brought into being all
the primordial Ancestors who through their thoughts, dreams and journey's, sang the world into existence. The Ancestors
walked as they sang, and when it was time to stop, they slept. In their dreams, they conceived the events of the following
day, points of creation that fused one into another until every creature, every stream and stone, all time and space, became
whole, the divine manifestation of the one great seminal impulse. When they grew exhausted from their labours, they retired
into the earth, sky, clouds, rivers, lakes, plants and animals of an island continent that resonates with their memory. The
paths taken by the Ancestors have never been forgotten. They are the Songlines, precise itineraries followed even today
as the people travel across the template of the physical world. As the Aborigines track the Songlines and chant the
stories of the first dawning, they become part of the Ancestors and enter the Dreamtime, which is neither a dream nor
a measure of the passage of time. It is the very realm of the Ancestors, a parallel universe where the ordinary laws of time,
space and motion do not apply, where past, future and present merge into one. A dream by Western definition is a state
of consciousness divorced from the real world. The (Aborigine) Dreamtime, by contrast, is the real world, or at least one
of two realities experienced in the daily lives of the Aborigines.
---Wade Davis, Ethnologist, Anthropologist, Light at the Edge
of the World, A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures.
Old Europe:
Pandora, to the Greeks, is what Eve is to Christianity. To ancient cultures
predating Greece, she was the first woman. Her name has been translated to mean 'the gift of all,' 'rich in gifts,' or 'all
giving.' The original sense of the myth is more clearly reflected in pre-Hellenic oral traditions, in which humankind was
said to be given a vessel sealed by God that contained 'goods' rather than 'evils.' Because of human curiosity and eagerness
Pandora opened the vessel lid, and the powers of God flew heavenwards and to the four corners of the Earth. Pandora quickly
put back the lid, but all except one power had escaped. And that was the power of 'Hope,' which would continue to be in human
possession.
---Michael Tappan, Archetypal Psychotherapist, Colorado.
New World:
"It is a truly creative universe in that the future is not
pre-ordained but spontaneously and freely made by every being, from elementary particles to galaxies, from microbes to the
giant redwood trees, all mutually entangled in a universal wave-function that never collapses, but like a constantly changing
cosmic consciousness maintains and informs the universal whole."
---Dr. Mae-Wan Ho.
Origin of disease and medicine:
In the old days the beasts, birds, fishes, insects and
plants could all talk. They and the people lived together in peace and friendship. But as time went on the people increased
so rapidly their settlements spread over the whole earth, and the animals found themselves beginning to be cramped for
room. Man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears and hooks, and began to slaughter large animals, birds and fishes for their
flesh or their skins. The smaller creatures, such as the frogs and worms, were crushed and trodden upon without thought. So
the animals resolved to consult upon measures for their common safety. It was decided
to begin war at once against Man.
The Bears, in council, proposed making bows and arrows. One bear had to
be sacrificed for the good of the rest in order to offer its insides for the bowstring. But when tested the long bearclaws on
the string spoiled the shot. So the Deer held council and decided to send rheumatism to every hunter who killed an Animal
if the hunter did not say a prayer and ask pardon for the offense. But some hunters learned to turn this aside by
building a fire behind them on the trail home. Then the fishes and reptiles determined to make humans dream of snakes or eat
raw or decaying fish so they would lose appetite, sicken and die. But some humans were so dull when sleeping they didn't
dream. Finally the Birds, Insects and smaller Animals began to devise and name many new diseases.
When the Plants, who were friendly to Man heard what had been done by
the Animals they determined to defeat those evil designs. The Trees, Shrubs, Herbs, Grasses, Mosses and Weeds agreed to
furnish a remedy to counteract each disease that had been named by the Animals. Thus came medicine to counteract the
evil wrought by the revengeful Animals. So to this day when the doctor does not know what medicine to use for a sick
person the Spirit of the plant tells him.
---From the Cherokee oral tradition collected by James Mooney, Ethnologist,
on the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina.
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