Awe for the everyday - tribal influences
Photographed the following from a book bought a while ago, called ‘Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World’, by David Maybury Lewis (Publisher- Viking):
Huichol tribe, Mexico:
“…the shaman leads the pilgrims on the sacred hunt for peyote, the hallucinogenic food of the gods. The pilgrims yearn for the feeling of being at one with the Ancestors, of losing themselves in a state of fusion with the universe and their fellow humans.”
——
Wodaabe tribe, Niger (West Africa):
“A man can have many wives but Wodaabe women can leave their husbands without stigma to seek a happier marriage.”
——
Makuna tribe, Columbia:
“The idea of the interconnectedness of all things is central to the tribal way of looking at the world.” … “The Makuna believe that human beings, animals and all of nature are parts of the same One.”
——
Aborigines, Australia:
“The Aboriginal system rejects our separation of the visible world into discrete objects, just as it denies that matter is the primary level of reality.”
——
The Xavante, Brazil:
Talking of rituals that transform children into adults: “They act out the death and rebirth of the initiate, which is a stressful process. His old self dies and he is separated from his society. He is in limbo. While he is in this marginal state he learns the mysteries of his society, instruction that is enhanced by fear and deprivation, and by the atmosphere of awe that his teachers seek to create.”
“The initiate, stripped of his previous identity, is held in the shadow world of betwixt-and-between.”
——
Dogon, Mali (West Africa):
“The way in which tribal art is woven into the fabric of society is rooted in something that the modern world has lost, a cosmic confidence in ourselves and in the whole scheme of things. Tribal art is a means of reconciling what is otherwise irreconcilable, of making the painful crises of life manageable - even of overcoming the ultimate disjunction between life and death. The Dogon masked funeral dances are great communal rituals that are as much about life as they are about death”…”The masks come from the bush, the source of power and wisdom, the wild place that contrasts with the civility of Dogon communities. For the Dogon, art must be lived.”
——
