Pueblo View of Death and the Relationship of Rain :: Pueblo Culture Cultural Essays

Pueblo View of destruction and the Relationship of RainWorks Cited MissingOne of the fundamental elements of Pueblo demesneview isThe excogitation of a dual division of time and space between the upper orb of the living and the lower world of the dead. This is expressed in the comment of the suns journey on its daily rounds. The Pueblo believe that the sun has two entrances, variously referred to as houses, homes or kivas, situated at each extremity of its course. In the morning the sun is supposed to emerge from its eastern house, and in the even out it is said to descend into its western home. During the night the sun must plump underground from west to east in order to be micturate to arise at its accustomed place the next day. therefore day and night are reversed in the upper and lower worlds ... (Titiev 1944). lifetime and death, day and night, summer and winter are seen not simply as opposed but as involved in a corpse of alternation and continuity-indeed, a fundame ntal relationship of cycles. These opposites condition what we can call a bipartite view. For black at that place is white and for something like the heavens there must be a corresponding underworld below us.As part of this bipartite view, death is birth into a new world, and numerous Pueblo burial practices parallel those of birth except that quartette black lines of draw separate the dead from his home in the village while four white lines of cornmeal mark the walls of a newborn babys home.This world and the world of spirits are transformations of each other. At death a cotton plant mask - a white cloud mask - is placed on the face of a dead person. The spirits of the dead return to this world as kachinas. All kachinas are believed to take on cloud form of what Pueblo call to be cloud people and their spiritual essence, or navala, is a liquid that is manifested as rainfall. When the kachinas (as ritual figures) depart, they are petitioned, When you return to your homes bring this means to them that, without delay, they may have mercy for us with their liquid essence rain so that all things may grow and life may be bountiful. Everything, in Pueblo belief, is dependent on rainfall, which, when combined with Mother Earth, is the essence of all things. Hence navala is also the essence of the individual self, conceived of as a liquid, and a Pueblo lead say, I have the liquid essence of my fathers, to express the English look of being of the same flesh and blood.