Cultural Perspectivas
By Tim Hazell, Oct 20, 2006

Intuition, utterance, symbol

We wish to give you vast and strange domains Where the mystery of flowers offers itself to all those who wish to pluck it In those places are new fires, in colors not yet seen Flames and colors we must make real. —Guillame Appolinaire

Divergent cultures and civilizations develop out of a nucleus that is common to aggregates of people who form settlements, achieving social stratification. These include a trinity of things, persons and ideas. Through trial and error, basic elements must become integrated and adapt to one another, or a community will be unsuccessful in establishing and propagating itself. More than an assemblage of persons who are interdependent on talent and the labor pool of a cooperative for survival and quality of life, traditions imply connected systems. A human working apparatus that innovates through the productive exchange of information engenders material objects and intellectual property of aesthetic value. Art and science represent ideas, as well as commodities that germinate from an intuition. 

In aboriginal societies, communication through mimetic gesture, sign systems and “language” developed from the premise that there were invariant principles—representing a kind of unity, and infinite choices—a form of variety that determined how any system of information exchange could function. Animals exclusively—and humans under conditions of stress—use holophrastic “utterance” as a means to convey states such as fear, hunger and surprise, using a single exclamation or cry. These sounds must invoke many levels of meaning at once. When the intent is to convey nonverbal states of feeling, color or scent may perform similar roles. Among birds, fish and insects, certain colors initiate courtship while others pinpoint sources of food. The systems present in natural phenomena impose legibility on the processes of holophrastic sound and symbol usage. Both must charge and concentrate expressions, leaving as few gaps in our understanding as possible. 

Initial states of imaging and the evolution of language faculties in first religions and cultures led to myths, legends and early interpretations of reality. Visualizations of spirit power, profiles of shamans, carnivores and herbivores as prey of the hunt are universal arrangements of motifs that may have constituted the first human sign systems. With these powerful codes for conveying social, economic and moral information, speakers for their communities were capable of expressing the transition between worlds. Antediluvian beliefs in the revitalization and maintenance of supernatural beings grew out of ancient psychologies for insight that went beyond secular mythology. 

Human metamorphosis and transference are essential characteristics of folk biology and physics. The proposition at the heart of rustic intuition is that the soul can enter and animate any living creature or inorganic object at will. Flight and an exchange of form take place voluntarily or under stress of a superior power. In ceremonies involving hallucinogenics, shamans routinely assume exotic personalities, impulses and desires. Once in a new host, seers take on the mystical roles of their chosen mode of being. The democratic union imparts magical qualities and strengths to both human and nonhuman participants. 

Folk science does not acknowledge physical limits to the individuality of matter. The grandeur of a separation of animate and inanimate form into body and spirit gives rocks, promontories, aquifers and groves distinction as thrones of invisible phantasms. They, in turn, become dynamic forces of equipoise and disequilibrium in constant danger of triumphantly slipping from our control. Entire native communities trace their lineages back to minerals, animals and plants, seeking alliances with them. Transference is essential to philosophies of totemism and animistic thinking. Formulas to ensure success in rituals that determine cycles of daily living, hunting and agrarian travail govern actions of native clans. Shamans or medicine men give counsel in all matters and prescriptions for good conduct. An important aspect of this exchange of prayer and obligation in ancient America was the ball game. The ballet between two opposing teams was sacred, a profound expression of dogma linked with chains of cause and effect
. 

Among the Cherokee, spells were preserved through oral traditions for the purpose of sanctifying a tournament about to begin. An accord with certain phyla of both plant and animal kingdoms was crucial to avoid divine retribution. Natural phenomena as animate and cognizant members of one tree of life played vital roles in symbiosis. This invocation from the A`yűninď manuscript is one of those used by shamans in taking ball players to water before the competition: 



“This Concerns the Ball Play—to Take Them to Water with It.

(HIÄ' A`NE'TSÂ UGŰ'nWA`LĎ AMÂ'YĎ DITSŰ'nSTA`TĎ.)



Listen! Ha! Now where the white thread has been let down, quickly we are about to examine the fate of the admirers of the ball play. They are shaking the road which shall never be joyful. The miserable Terrapin has come and fastened himself upon them as they go about. They have lost all strength. They have become entirely blue.

But now my admirers of the ball play have their roads lying along in this direction. The Red Bat has come and made himself one of them. There in the first heaven are the pleasing stakes. There in the second heaven are the pleasing stakes. The Pewee has come and joined them. The immortal ball stick shall place itself upon the whoop, never to be defeated. As for the lovers of the ball play on the other side, the common Turtle has come and fastened himself upon them as they go about. Under the earth they have lost all strength.”


Tim Hazell is a multidisciplinary artist in the areas of painting, music, theater, education, writing and research, specializing in Latin America. He may be contacted at hazel@unisono.net.mx  or at his website, www.timhazell.com