To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rainforest

5. Origin and Design

5 • ORIGINAND DESIGN MYTHS OF THE ORIGINS OFARTIFACTS In writing about the nature of origin myths in tribal societies, Mircea Eliade calls attention to what he refers to as an underlying "paradisiac syndrome" (1960:63). He claims that tribal man periodically reenacts these myths in rituals and festivals in order to return (the "eternal return") to the conditions that existed at the time of the Beginning, in illo tempore. Characterized by a lack of division between Heaven and Earth, an unimpaired communication between animals and humans, and the absence of both death and physical want, these myths satisfy, however fleetingly, man's endless "nostalgia for Paradise, the longing to recover the Eden-like state of the Ancestor" (ibid.:45). To simply tell them allows one to participate in the eternal state of abundance they evoke. The performance of these myths provides for the sanctification of the event or object for which they are being sung. Byintroducing the original celestial models upon which the structures of the culture are based, man magically reenters the sacred space of creation that produced them. For Eliade, this immersion into the mythic space of the sacred is the result of a profound need to regularly regenerate Time. Unlike the linear historicity of profane time, that of the sacred mythic is cyclical, requiring annual renewal. For those who set their clocks by this cyclical Time, it is the only one worth recording; hence Eliade's conclusion that the desire for paradise, as represented by the sacred myth, is in essence a desire for the real or, as he states it, "an ontological nostalgia": "In short, through the reactualization of his myths, religious man attempts to approach the gods and to participate in being; the imitationof 92 paradigmatic divine models expresses at once his desire for sanctityand his ontological nostalgia" (1959:106). While the Yekuana have various origin myths that conform to Eliade's "paradisiac syndrome"—such as the Adaha ademi hidi for the garden and the Atta ademi hidi for the house—they also have many others which do not. Among the latter are myths describing the origin of such objects of daily use as canoes, weapons, instruments, and baskets . Although the action described in such narrativesclearly takes place in a mythic time when animals and humans could still communicate,it is far removed from the idyllic era of the Beginning. Gone now are Wanadi and the other culture heroes with whom he created the first structures. Humans, called So'to or Yekuana, are already awell-defined group, and though they still interact with other species, it is an interaction fraught with danger and hostility. Led mainly by shamans, they succeed in obtaining the objects necessary for culture by either waging war or deceiving those who already possess them. Assuch, the models these myths portray are not the cosmogonic ones of annual renewal, but rather the cultural ones of daily creation. Asthe origin myths of objects made daily, they describe the daily making of culture.The access to the sacred which they provide is not reserved for special occasions, but is translated into the everyday creation of culture itself. Whereas the myths of Wanadi's initial deeds explain the creation of the dualities extant in the world today, the myths describing the origin of man-made artifacts attempt to resolve them. The world they take place in is already deeply divided. Humans,surrounded by the forces of negativity and darkness, are barely able to exist. Hostile tribes of bloodthirsty monsters prey upon them from all sides. To emerge from this state of vulnerability and degradation, humans must both defeat these enemies and gain control of the secret weapons that give them their power. It is not enough to merely vanquish "death," humans must incorporate it into their very being ifthey are to survive.This then is the message repeated in myth after myth: Culture is a medium of synthesis through which the noncultural—darkness, death, rawness, poison—is converted into it to reproduce the whole. Assuch, these myths of origin serve as the perfect paradigms of transformation,symbolicallydepicting the daily operation of culture. The action they describe is inevitably one of movement from darkness to light, from chaos to order, from cannibal to human. In some instances it is not even necessary to return to the mythic era of the First People. For example, one brief account of the ORIGIN ANDDESIGN 93 making of...