The Hopi And The "Cleansing Of The World"

Written by Lawrence MF Sudbury - March 26th, 2011 -The eschatological theme is present not only in religions considered "traditional" but also in all those spiritual experiences, often hastily defined as "primitive", found in African or Native American tribes. Such systems, in contrast to the long-believed by many scientists, in fact, far from being simplistic, revealing, on the contrary, a very deep level of theoretical development and formal structure.

Concerning more specifically the spirituality of American Indians, is now said that their religious and spiritual assets are as highly complex and highly varied, since each of the hundreds of tribes in the area of the northern hemisphere has developed a its separate system of religious beliefs and practices [1].

As a matter of extreme generalization, however, we can say that Native Americans worship a wide range of spirits, mostly related to forces of nature, hence the lowest common denominator of profound respect for all components of the natural environment (ie not only the divine forces or human beings but also plants, animals, etc.), and that a considerable number of traditions, considers it essential that each individual seeking their own way to be as useful as possible for the community [2].

E 'in these common traits that we can locate several pieces of complex and ancient religion of the Hopi, whose overall characteristics are still difficult to decipher, varying, as is typical of each culture to oral transmission, from community to community and village a village, while maintaining a significant common substrate [3] and, in all likelihood, it represents only a part of a sacred doctrine handed down only within the core initiation ethnic and undisclosed to anyone who may have nothing, we can thus state to ' ethnologist Harold Courlander that "there is a real reluctance in dealing with religious rituals secret with anyone if they have interest" [4].

In addition, it is historically established that Hopi culture has always had a strong case against osmotic capacity of foreign beliefs (such as Christianity, which came into contact as early as the sixteenth century), often incorporated into their cosmology, if not in contradiction with some of its key elements, http://illuminatimatrix.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/window_rock_az.jpg?w=480&h=360in particular before the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 [5].

What, however, we know of their religious system is that the majority of the stories revolves around the cosmogonic "Tawa", the Spirit of the Sun that formed the "First World" and its inhabitants from the "Tokpella", the "Infinite Space" [ 6] and ordered his eldest son "Sotuknang" to shape the nine worlds and that he had planned to give birth to the "Spider Woman", a sort of messenger between god and man [7].

Within the primordial creative process, Sotuknang also gave rise to other minor deities, among which stand out Masauwu, Skeleton Man, the spirit of death and master of the "upper world" (or "Fourth World") to escape the good to escape the weakness of the "Third World" (after you explain the meaning of this "sequence of the Worlds"), the "Kachinas", the War of the Twins, the Coyote, the god of deception and the "Goddess of the Grain" , the "Great Mother from whose womb all men developed [8], so important in Hopi culture as to suggest to some scholars (most of the feminist movement) that were originally in a matriarchal society and her Spider Woman to be the supreme deity, only recently, in contact with the "white population", supplanted by the male god Tawa [9] (which is debatable, since, in reality, all the priestly functions and rituals have always been reserved for men).

What, in the Hopi religion, the more interesting is the so-called "Theory of the Four Worlds." According to it, the Earth as we know it would be only the fourth world to be inhabited by creatures of Tawa. In each of the previous worlds, the people, although initially happy, it would become more and more disobedient and have not lived according to the plans of the supreme God, devoting themselves to sexual promiscuity, fighting against each other and not living in harmony. For this, the more obedient they would be conducted by the Spider Woman in the world than this, with physical changes that developed in the course of the journey is about them that they were going to live on the world. In some cases (in fact majority), there is also the idea of a destruction of the world before, while in others, simply, it survives in chaos [10].

On the passage of men in this "Fourth World" in which we are now, there are at least two major versions. That prevailing reports that Spider Woman had a hollow reed growing in the sky to the new world and that humans will go up to emerge in an area of the Grand Canyon, while a second legend, Tawa destroyed the "Third World" with Widespread flooding and the Spider Woman rescued "the just" making them float in a large bamboo pole to a small dry area, from which, at the suggestion of the Spider Woman always, went east on other vessels until it reaches the cane mountainous area of the Fourth World.   In many cases, as reported by Harold Courlander, the first version is told to children, which, later on, once grown, is revealed the second version on the great flood [11].

All versions, however, agree that, once you are in the Fourth World, the Hopis were divided into groups (which went on to form the various clans) and proceeded to a series of great migrations, settling occasionally in the city later abandoned [12]. At times, the clans were united into larger conglomerations, which always ended to split again due to disputes, which are a recurring motif

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throughout the Hopi mythology right from the start of the First World.

During their migrations, the Hopi were scattered everywhere: in the far north, where they found a "second port" from which other populations were passed in the Fourth World (and, probably, this could refer to the passage of   peoples from Asia to America through the Bering Strait), in the far south (and, not surprisingly, many Hopi see Aztec, Maya and other Central American peoples as part of their clan lost, which is actually reflected in the similarity of some religious aspects, not least the cult of "Kachinas, spirits of nature in every where), but finally landed all the area north-eastern Arizona [13].

An item of great interest in the myth of the great migrations of developing a very special figure: the "Lost White Brother". According to the story on the entry in the "Fourth World", during this step a mysterious "Pahana" ("Elder Brother") would leave the Hopi to go to the east. One day he will return and all that is evil will be destroyed, and will begin a new era of peace throughout the world [14] (which appears to be intimately connected with the Aztec story of Quetzalcoatl and other Central American legends). At the beginning of the sixteenth century, it is likely that the Hopi have believed that the arrival of the conquistadors were, in fact, linked to the return of the "white prophet" but, it appears that at the first contact with the Spaniards, they realized error [15].

It remains, however, that many Hopi tribal leaders have always predicted that the coming of the white man would indicate the end of the fourth world, although it was never clarified whether this order should be considered final or just a change to a " Fifth World.

Another sign commonly found Eschaton omen since the sixteenth century, is the crossing of the earth by "iron snakes" and "rivers of rock." On the ground, will also be woven a kind of giant spider web and the rivers become blacks [16].   According to one interpretation   speculative very common and very disturbing, the "Iron Snake" would be the railways, the "river rock" the highways and the giant spider web power and phone lines or even the world wide web, but this interpretation is questionable for its clear construction a posteriori [17].

In any case, all the prophecies all agree that the sky will fall "in a great place to collapse" and that in heaven we will have a big impact that will collapse or the appearance of a "Blue Star", while the Earth become a cold wasteland of desert sand, rocks and icy water. Then"the white man will battle against other people on their land, particularly those from which all wisdom is derived, and there will be smoke in the deserts, and signs that great destruction is coming" [18].

Many will die then, but those who understand the prophecies will take the steps necessary to increase their chances of survival, such as going to live in the places of the Hopi people, and so will be safe.

E 'at this point that the Pahana will return to plant the seeds of wisdom in the hearts of people, and so the threshold will open the dawn of the Fifth World (which, according to some versions, three more will follow [19] ).

It is not difficult to see that, even within a culture so far removed from what are commonly considered the cradle of Western thought and Eastern Europe, we find some common elements of all systems-eschatological religious   the "usual" return to Eden (as atavistic desire of purification global) and "senescit mundus" (as justification "degeneration" of the presence of evil in the world), the subject of the proceedings "clean up" the final (as a mechanism of fair pay and smoothing moral contradictions), the messianic element in this case turning point and   agent re-establishment of proper natural order, a temporality "para-cyclic (cyclic or completely in the version in which the worlds follow one another) with the transition from one era to another.

The only new element is the identification of the system with the Edenic way of life of the Hopi people, but it is an easily explained once again in political and psychological terms, if by departing from sensationalist interpretations that tend to see in the prophecies Indian signs of a future major conflict between the Western (white people, mind you, were already known to the Hopi at the time of the final wording of the prophecy itself, and it is drawn up in written form) and the East (which resulted in the first form of civilization) [20], we think rather than ethnic pride inevitably arises from a situation of constant inter-tribal conflict for the conquest of pastures and hunting grounds, leading to a national exaltation, then probably intensified its contact with the European conquerors so far unrelated to the previous framework belligerent.

Notes:

[1] K. Nerburn, The Wisdom of the Native Americans, New World Library, 1999, p. 8

[2] Ibid, passim

[3] C. Vecsey, The Emergence of the Hopi People, in "American Indian Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 3, 1983, pp.70 ff.

[4] H. Courlander, The Fourth World of the Hopis: The Epic Story of the Hopi Indians as Preserved in Their Legends and Traditions, University of New Mexico Press, 1987, p.201

[5] J. and S. Page, Hopi, Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2009, p.21

[6] H. Courlander, quoted, p.17

[7] F. Waters, The Book of the Hopi, Penguin Books 1963, p.30.

[8] D. Wall, V. Masayesva, People of the Corn: Teachings in Hopi Traditional Agriculture, Spirituality, and Sustainability, "American Indian Quarterly vol. 28, no. 3, 2004, pp. 435-453

[9] Thus, for example, in P. Gunn Allen, The Sacred Hoop, Beacon Press 1992, p.19

[10] JD Loftin, Religion and Hopi Life, Indiana University Press 2003, pp. 88-91

[11] H. Courlander, Quote, p.205

[12] Ibid, p.35

[13] JD Loftin, quoted, pp. 93 ff.

[14] H. Courlander, quoted, p.31

[15] R. Friday Locke, The Book of the Navajo, Hollaway House 2001, pp.139-140.

[16] JD Loftin, quoted, pp. 98-99

[17] Ibid, p. 103

[18] AW Geertz, The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion, University of California Press, 1994, p. 114

[19] Ibid, pp.11-12

[20] For example in K. Kaltreider, American Indian Prophecies, Hay House 1997, pp. 79-91