Open To Interpretation
"In sum, the following pages explore the material culture of seeing in both Mediterreanean and Mesoamerican Worlds, and the ways certain objects were understood to sculpt sight: visual manipulations that could influence the social world. Yet this is not simply a story about optical-social effects in the past. As I argue in the final pages, the shield painted higa on Magliabechian 55r continues to radiate its apotropaic powers, shaping perceptions of the page on which it is depicted. Five centuries after being created, this black and white detail still warps the human gaze.
The Higa and Tlachialoni:
Material Cultures of Seeing in the Mediterratlantic
Byron Ellsworth Hamann
Academia.edu
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(this Tlaloc image from wiki is holding another version of a rain stick-Tlaloc, god of rain)
Like many creatures, snakes are most active (and also mate) in the rainy season, and in particular rattlesnakes - only found in the Americas - make a highly evocative sound with their rattles that is distinctly reminiscent of falling rain. This sound is easy to reproduce with hundreds of seeds pitter-pattering down over little wooden pegs studded along the length of rainsticks, a sound described by one of Mexico’s most famous musicologists, Samuel MartÃ, as ‘unos sonidos ligados, muy sugerentes y misteriosos, que nos recuerda el rumor del agua o de la lluvia’ (1968: 56). Such sounds served to add what Arnd Adje Both calls ‘magical support’ to ritual practices.
Moreover, rattle sticks accompanied summer rain dances, involving snake-shaped choreography, in which ‘leaping, with its vertical design, was associated with rain’ (Kurath & Martà 1964: 88).
... ... ...
Frank Neumann has written an entire academic article on ‘The Flayed God and his rattle-stick: a shamanic element in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican religion’, in which he documents how several investigators have noted ‘the importance of the rattle-stick as an item of shamanic equipment’ (1976: 253) and he gives examples of its use in shamanic ritual not only in Mexico, past and present, but ‘throughout the entire hemisphere’ (op cit: 260). In one instance, quoting the Mexican chronicler Alvarado Tezozomoc, he records how ‘such a rattle was used in connection with drums to imbue the [Aztec] warriors with power and incite them to fight’ (op cit: 258); it is still used today in Zinacantan in the form of a ‘summoner gourd’ to restore power to the patient in curing rituals. Interestingly, the gourd is filled with exactly 52 grains of corn (13 each of white, yellow, red and black) - sacred numbers in ancient Mesoamerica.
Izikowitz (1970: 122) too traces the common shamanic use of gourd rattles through South America, noting that it coincides loosely with the spread of maize culture round the Americas.
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/artefacts/chicahuaztli-rattle-staff
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Notes: Game on...on the radio...Rays at Angels...second game of double header...Angels won the first game...Angels 7-Rays 6...Ray up in the night cap...Rays 3-Angels 0 )...top of five...Angels should be out inning, but rookie Adams dogged one in the outfield...two out, runners at corners...looking for Higa, carry over thought from last post...another hit, run scores, and a play at the plate on the fifth run...appealed...runner safe...Rays 5-Angels 0...bottom of fifth...Angels with a home run...for goodness sake...the Higa search became completely engrossing...first I found the rain stick, then I went back to the pay walled papers about the Higa, and Academia let me see one!....Hamann's "tackyness" and "skulpted sight" are genius!...I have, or had, a rain stick somewhere...really neat sound...between the sound of the sea in a conch shell, and a rainstick...I think Hurricane Hilary has lessened to the point of not much rain...and, disaster struck the Angels since I was "gone"...Rays scored a bunch...two more on the board...Seventeen to One!...lol...Rays 17 Angels 1...it's top of eighth...Rays with 19 hits...note the candy stripped staff...the candy stripes are on the Mixtec Kneeling Warrior...for sometime...Ohtani up...bottom of eighth...Ohtani waps a double...gives the crowd something to cheer about...and what they came for, to see Ohtani!...and Drury hits a home run...Rays 17-Angels 3...time to feed the critters...and a snack...bbk with report...
:)
DavidDavid
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