III the Model
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III The Model The Cosmic Layer Cake Figure 3 depicts the model I have built out of the ethnographic date of many lowland groups and with which the specific Shipibo data can be compared. The depiction falls short for at least two reasons: It is overly schematic because not all features can be recorded legibly on a single diagram, and its dynamism is too static, or synchronic, because the time dimension it covers is limited to a single day. The following explication of the model fleshes out this cartoon to a degree, with more meat being added later. Although I am concerned with the short range of change a day encompasses, it is possible to refer to the problem of a longer periodicity. The daily circuit recapitulates cyclic alterations of much greater diachronic scope. South American cosmologies are dynamic in time, not static. The worlds depicted in Figure 3 are members of only one cyclic variation, the current one. These worlds are the successors of previous imperfect worlds, destroyed long ago by flood or fire (Civrieux 1970:21-22, on the Makiritare; Wagley 1977:176, on the Tapirapé), just as in the Andean and Mexican systems. They were populated by doomed creatures and imperfect protohumans who were turned to stone (Farabee 1924:83, on the Macusi). The base of these oscillations is a dyadic succession of a terrestrial flood ending the world followed by the extinction of life on the second world by celestial fire. In turn, the current world will also end in a way that repeats the initial emergence of mankind, 128 The Cosmic Zygote Figure 3. Schematic Rendering of the Model The Model 129 devoured by monsters (Powlison 1971-1972:72-74, on the Yagua), by having the huge demons become houses to swallow their human inhabitants (Weiss 1975:286, on the River Campa). All the periodicities used in the model recapitulate each other on ever-descending and narrowing levels, rather like the pattern Lévi-Strauss (1967) sketched for the Asdiwal-Waux cycle of Northwest Coast mythology. This primal cosmic periodicity is then linked to the yearly periodicity of the seasons through the analogous lowland contrast set: wet season-dry season. That, in turn, is linked to the monthly periodicity of -receptivity (Hugh-Jones 1974:159, on the Barasana). Last, all these levels are represented in the daily periodicity of the night-day cycle (Dumont 1976, on the Panare). On the diachronic level, then, the model of the South American lowland cosmos is like a sea of nested Chinese boxes, each smaller box replicating in a minor way the dyadic modalities of the next larger enclosing box. Therefore the system portrayed in Figure 3 of a set of related worlds represents merely a slice in time through a spiraling evolutionary trajectory of world clusters, the content and order of which could profitably be analyzed from a structuralist perspective. Whatever its preceding states, the general outline of the current cosmos must, according to the evidence available, be a multileveled one. It is composed of at least three layers: the world of material experience-our world- in the middle, with a celestial world above and an underworld below. These three layers are recorded for a number of groups like the Apinayé (Nimuendajú 1967:140), the Pichis region Campa (Elick 1969:222), the Desana (Reichel- Dolmatoff 1971:43), and the Tapirapé (Wagley 1977:169). This triple-tiered arrangement is also the minimal construction needed to account logically for such elaborations as the 4- - 45), the 5-tiered world of the Waiwai (Fock 1963:101-102), the 8-tiered Makiritare universe (Arvelo-Jimenez 1971:180) and the similarly constructed River Campa cosmos (Weiss 1975:256, fig. 8) and Cuna cosmos (Stout 1947:40), the 9-tiered Kogi worlds (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975:55), the complex 10-tiered universe of the Secoya (Ortiz Resanière 1975:54) and Campa- Nomatsiguenga (Shaver 1975:53), and, finally, the 11-tiered cosmos of the Yagua (Powlison 1977:57). That these more developed concepts are linked with the simpler triple-tiered configuration is shown by the fact that all postulate at 130 The Cosmic Zygote least one layer above and below the earth on which humans dwell, the major elaborations occurring in the sphere above the earth-the minimal arrangement needed to account elegantly for the appearance and disappearance of the sun and the moon. The symmetry of the worlds above and below the earth also complements other kinds of symmetries in the model. For example, the souls or spirits of the dead are found both in the underworld(s) (Shaver 1975:50, on the Campa-Nomatsiguenga) and in the sky world (D. Moore, personal communication 1978, on the Tupi-Gavião); or there may be two realms of darkness, one in the lowest underworld and one, paradoxically, in the highest heaven where the sun lives (Powlison 1977:59, on the Yagua). Summarizing this symmetry of the model is the prevailing symmetry of good and evil. However many superimposed worlds there may be, good is always associated with the upper levels and increases as one goes higher, whereas evil is always linked with the lower realms and increases as one goes downward.1 Thus the benevolent but otiose supernatural of the Makiritare, Wanadi, occupies the highest heaven in their cosmology while they believe that Cajushawa, is on velo-Jimenez 1971:176). The same holds true for the Campa-Nomatsiguenga cosmos, where the upper levels are generally more favored than the lower ones and where the spirits have plenty of piari ndeed it is an evil fate for the souls of the dead to be caught in their ascent through the celestial layers and be thrown back to earth, or at least a lower level, by the menacing Tsirontsiro, thus establishing a high : low : : fortunate : unfortunate equation for Campa-Nomatsiguenga cosmology not unlike that derivable for many other groups, including the Shipibo (Shaver 1975: 49-50). Despite the fact that this discussion shows that a single sky or multiple celestial layers above the earth are invariant, it should be structurally possible to collapse the original trinary system into a binary one by grouping the water- earth spheres with each other as one set and opposing them to the sky as the other category. This action would result in a cosmos of only two spheres. It can be done in two ways. Either the underworld becomes the under surface of the earthly plane-its bottom side- (Makiritare) system or, as with the Tupi-Kagwahiv, it can be merged into the earthly plane and thus be located below its The Model 131 surface. In this system, the interior of the earth itself functions as the can best be decoded using the model; for even in the systems said to lack an underworld all the associations of superimposed earthly and celestial planes follow the same order as if there were an underworld. Let me begin with the Kagwahiv anomaly and then proceed to the Makiritare one. The Kagwahiv myth in question is paraphrasable from many sources as follows: The Kagwahiv had an ancient chief and paj , who once lived on earth, but, angered by the incessant quarreling among his children, he took his house, his best land, and all the best game and fish and lifted them all into the sky. As he did so, the central house post fell out as the house rose and turned into a cayman; a falling mortar turned into an electric eel; a fire fan into a stingray, and so forth. His sons and wives accompanied him but the rest of the Kagwahiv were left below. In looking for a place to settle, successively explored all the realms of the universe. First he tried the lower sky, but that was occupied by vultures; then the water, but that was full of fish. Then he went into the earth, but that too was occupied, by spirits. He then went inside wood, but there was honey there. Finally he tried the sky a second time and ascended to a higher level of it, above the vultures, and there he found a peaceful spot to move his house to. Only the shaman, pajé, can ascend the levels of the universe, and then only in trance as a part of a curing ceremony. The first group of spirits he encounters in his flight are the añang ds the spirits of fish; then, of land animals and birds; and then others. Attaining the level of the Sky People, he converses with them one by one until he finally reaches and talks with their chief, himself, to ascertain the cause of his p 1978a: 17, 1979:125-126, 128; personal communication 1979) Kracke then adds a structural argument based on a comparison between this myth and a Barasana myth (T. Langdon 1978) that I later refer to to argue that the Kagwahiv do not conceive of an underworld: levels-the earth and the underworld-evil water [region]-are collapsed, with the main focus of evil located somewhere on the earth level rather then under it. In might be transposed to the earth/sky relationship. For example, the Barasana myth in which Woman Shaman opens the 132 The Cosmic Zygote door to the underworld and various household implements turned into anacondas, caymans, piranhas, etc., seems to correspond to [the] Kagwahiv myth in which -and the house- post fell out as the house rose and turned into a cayman [and other household implements] int transposition implies the lack of an underworld in [Kagwahiv] mythology. None of my informants mentioned one. (personal communication 1979) I am persuaded by this argument, but I suggest that this Kagwahiv case is a special situation produced from a transformation of the model rather then a de novo phenomenon, because all of the associations of the triple-tiered model and from it fall below all noxious pests-caymans, electric eels, and stingrays- that are normal denizens of the subaquatic underworld and parts of its ruling Dragon.