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The Pleromatics Project
The cosmic feminine: [Aluna] , [Sophia], [Theotokos]
The Cosmic Feminine
Aluna
As these few selections suggest, this documentary film provides additional corroboration of the existence of the cosmic feminine in the deep psychic reality. Further, they illustrate Jung's point that the psyche carries a principle, "whoever knows God has an effect on him" (Answer to Job).
Kogi thought seems remarkably sophisticated: We see in the quotations from the priests hints of Platonic "forms", of Jungian archetypes, of a nonlocal reality which is a mindlike nuocontinuum, of Heisenberg's theory of the deep quantum reality as potentia, and of reality as pervaded by a fluidic nurturing psyche, a "pleroma." Our tendency is to think that their presentation sounds simplistic, but if so, it is because they are talking to us, and they think we are simple, in our ignorance or wanton disregard for these deep psychic truths. (db)
Notes from:
From The Heart of the World: The Elder Brother's Warning
Produced and presented by Alan Ereira, BBC, 1991
New York: Mystic Fire Video, 1993 (88 min)
[Box 1092, Cooper Station, NY NY 10276. 1-800-292-9001]
The isolated Kogi people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia are "the last functioning civilization of pre-Columbian America," a remnant of the ancient Tairona civilization who were builders of "The Lost City" rediscovered in 1973
Transcribed selections from the soundtrack:
(Quotations from the priests have been translated from Kogi to Spanish to
English.)
[A shaman-priest of the culture is called a "Mama," which means the Sun. Mamas are the enlightened ones, sons and daughters of the Sun. They watch over the community and maintain its purity. In this scene, a Mama is observing waves on the surface of water in a large bowl]
The Great Mother created the world in water. She makes the future in it. This is how she speaks to us.
We look after nature. We are the Mamas and do this here. And we Mamas see that you are killing it by what you do. We can no longer repair the world. You must.
You are uprooting the earth. And we are divining to discover how to teach you to stop.
In the beginning, the Great Mother divided up the earth. She sent you [the younger brothers] far away, far away, far away, and in this place, this place she put us. Then the younger brother came back again to this side of the world, he came back again, and he started to destroy, and he started to kill us....
She taught, the Great Mother taught, she taught us right and wrong, and still we have not given up living in the way, and knowing right from wrong as she taught us. We remember a teaching and live by it. The Great Mother taught and taught. The Great Mother gave us what we needed to live and her teaching has not been forgotten right up to this day. We all still live by it. But now they are taking out the Mother's heart, they are digging up the ground and cutting out her liver and her guts. The Mother is being cut to pieces, stripped of everything. From their first landing they have been doing this. The Great Mother too has a mouth, eyes, and ears. They are cutting out her eyes and ears. If we lost an eye we would be sad. So the Mother too is sad, and she'll end, and the world ends if you do not stop digging and digging. [The digging refers both to mining and to the rampant robbery of Kogi-Tairona tombs].
We work to take care of the world.
They've taken the Guardians (Spirits) of the sun and stars. The world will go black. ... If that happened and all we Mamas died and there was no one doing our work, well the rain wouldn't fall from the sky, it would get hotter and hotter from the sky, and the trees wouldn't grow and the crops wouldn't grow -- or am I wrong, and the crops would grow anyway.
In the beginning there was blackness, only the sea. In the beginning there was no sun, no moon, no people. In the beginning there were no animals, no plants, only the sea. The sea was the mother. The mother was not people, she was not anything. Nothing at all. She was when she was. Spirit. She was memory and possibility. She was Aluna.
We must show them how we work, and how we offer our tribute to the Great Mother, so that they know that we are here working for the younger brother too. The Mamas work not only for the Kogis but for all the people in the world. The Mama stands up. The Mama is not angry, not even with younger brother, although he did harm. The Mama must look after younger brother, and elder brother, the animals, the plants, and all that is natural, because the Mama has a duty to care for the future of all kinds of creatures, and all kinds of people.
NARRATOR: The Mamas want to teach us how the world was made. They say that we mutilate the world because we do not remember the Great Mother. She is not a distant god. She is the mind inside nature.
MAMA: Where does the idea of Earth come from? Where do we get the idea of water? Why do we have a word for it? These things were conceived in the beginning, before the dawning, these were ideas, water and earth. We can only have ideas of things that have already been conceived in Aluna. Before the dawning, before there was anything, we were conceived in the water of Aluna. So were the trees, the mountains, everything.
And then the Mother began to spin out her thoughts. She heaped up a spindle before the dawning, and the Mother spun nine new worlds. She gave birth to nine daughters. Each world had its own color. And she gave birth to sons, the lords of creation. One was Seranque. And then she wondered, how would we create a living thing? It was hard to understand how to make a human. The mother and her children had to think very hard. How does an eye work? How does a foot work? And when she was done, the ninth world was peopled. But this was before the dawning,. There were still no people, no plants, no animals, no sun. Only the Mother. Only Aluna.
The Mother bled. She had her period. She was fertile. And the world was fertile. Her blood is gold. It remains in the earth. It is fertitity. Gold and water, blood and water, are necessary for the life of all things. And then human beings were made, to care for the living things. The plants. The animals. This is why people were made.
MAMA [to a weaver]: When you start to weave, you should concentrate on what you are doing and not let yourself be distracted by other things, so settle down. Think hard. Think about the cloth because you are making the clothes that we wear. The cloth you make is an offering, and it says a great deal about what kind of man you are. Clothes speak to the [paths?] of the world, so you have to weave them well and carefully, thinking only of what they mean. The cross of the loom shows the beams linking the corners of the world. It is the cross which sustains the earth. [The Mother?] gave us a copy of this in the loom so that we would remember it.
[N: describing the men's ceremonial house; the lime of seashells is used in the paporo, emblem of the feminine carried by Mamas; the shells are prepared in a ceremonial fire, set between two upright sticks called cabos (guards) which symbolize the defense of the order which sustains all life. Cabo is also the name of the guards who supervise the workers ("vassals").]
All Kogi life is enclosed by this order. The floor of the niuwhe, the men's house, is the ninth world, the material world. The wooden "guards" [*] in the house, supporting men's hammocks, suspend them between this world and others. These other worlds are seen in rings around the roof. At the center, everything descends from the crossbeams on which the universe was built. This order is built into the fire, nine shells for the nine worlds, the nine children of the Great Mother.
[* The two uprights of the house project above the cone of roof, above the central equal-armed crossbeams at the apex.]
M: The [Great Mother?] says in our history, Mama says that here in this land, there was only and everywhere throughout the land the elder brother, all following the words of the Mama, and knowing, all, that a payment must be made for whatever we take from the land. This applies to everything Not even the air we breathe nor the water we drink, for all of it, of nature or machines, when you take, you make a payment. But then Seranque created a younger brother. He didn't listen. He did not understand. He would dig in the earth, tear at the earth, wound the mother. And Seranque said, we will send him away. We will make a division, the sea. The elder brother here, in the heart of the world, the younger brother there across the sea, where he will not harm the heart of the world. And he was given knowledge of machines, and sent away.
[All living things have guardians. One must ask the guardian's permission -- to plant, harvest, etc.]
[Mamas are selected by divination; the special education lasts for nine years. Formerly, Mamas were selected as infants, ritually washed, then kept in dark seclusion in a special house or cave close to the mother until nine years old; the mother also submits to special discipline, especially in her diet when breast feeding. A Mama observes a meditation period of nine days.]
N: By the roadside at the entrance to the Lost City is a carved stone. It seems to be a map of the complete system, covering the whole mountain massif. But although there are many ancient roadways, they do not fit the map. The map stone is clearly important. But what is being mapped? ...
The Mama has to work in a world visible only to the mind's eye, the world of Aluna. The offerings he learned to make in the dark are now made in the light of day, creating harmony in the spirit world and in this one. The stone paths of the ancestors are traces of the spirit paths which the Mamas walk in a space we do not understand. These are the paths on the map stone. They do not match the material pathways, they are lines of thought, not lines on the ground. But there are points where the two worlds used to meet. At these sacred places, gold was hung from the trees. Immortal gold carried the mystery of life from Aluna into matter. Humans could make this journey by meditating on the gold, and dancing with it. And body ornaments of gold helped humans play their part in the dance of life.
MAMA: The world does not have to end. If we act well, the world can go on.
The cosmic feminine: [Aluna] ,
[Sophia], [Theotokos]
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