Jemez
(shrine of the Stone Pumas + cave of the Horned Serpent)

REFLECTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

On this last journey informed by the DEATH sign, as i come to reflect on a quater-century of interactions with these two living shrines.

There at the edge of the Colorado Plateau, by the tectonic rift of the Rio Grande Valley, on the erosion-carved plateau of an aeonic supervolcano, a stone's throw from the birthplace of the atomic bomb, among the scattered ruins of Pueblo groups who built, carved, painted, and engaged with the supernatural at these loci of power:

• Shrine of the Stone Pumas *  which 26 years ago drew me out from the edge of the Continent and into the high desert. The woody artifacts of my life’s work vision now enwalled in its enclosure.

• Cave of the Horned Serpent **  which has served as personal Cave-Mouth and Cave of Origins, and where i once experienced immortality, Under the Hood of the Cobra / Into the Heart of the Jaguar.

Yes, it was the Serpent-Jaguar, and it was destiny. But it was also hubris, and from a Native American perspective, transgression. In acknowledgment, my Native brothers and sisters, i bow to you.

In this body becoming hollow

now starts a solitary cricket

and the night wind begins to blow

these entrails to smell of desert sage

eye sockets fill with stars ***

*   One of the very rare instances of full-size sculpture in Native North America. Built between 1200-1500 CE, possibly earlier. Still an active shrine for Keres Pueblos of Cochiti, other nearby Tewa Pueblos, and until recently, for the Zunis who made long-distance pilgrimages and had their own mythology attached to it.

In addition to erosion of time, the stylized sculptures were vandalized by local sphepherds prior to A. Bandelier's documentation of the site (1890). Large boulders comprised the enclosure, several of which are still standing. Today ruined beyond recognition (or was it always a jumbled pile of rocks?) it is difficult to make assessments. Mysteriously, in recent decades the site was reconfigured with an entrance oriented due East.

A point of recent fascination has been the irregular and unusual shape of the enclosure. Based on Bandelier's drawing of the site, one researcher sees a flattened rattlesnake head with the original entrance long corridor constituting the snake's body. It indeed could be seen that way - as if looking at the rough outline of a petroglyph from above. Yet there are no known instances of animal-shaped architecture in the Southwest, and very few anywhere else. Furthermore, the historical/anthropological/mythological arguments advanced by this researcher are unconvincing. And yet: how much would i like it to be true!

**   An aspect of the Mesoamerican Quetzalcoatl, the horned and feathered serpent appears in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico after 1000 CE and is found in Mimbres, Jornada Mogollon, Casas Grandes, and Pueblo rock art. He is inherently a being of travel, an expression of the axis mundi who offers a dynamic link between the celestial, terrestrial, and underworld realms, with a mythology pertaining to fundamental themes of emergence, maize, and fertility.

• Connected to rain and other forms of water, clouds, katsinam, lightning, conch shells, wind, maize, and the sun, he provides water that facilitates the growth of corn.

• Connected to Venus, stars, and warfare, and (sometimes) polical structure and leadership, he will take on the fearsome power of Venus as Morning Star. Conversely, he may assume the fiery, self-immolating canine figure of Venus as Evening Star.

• Linking these dual concepts is lightning, which the serpent assumes the form of: a phenomena widely connected with fertility and the growth of maize, and a weapon of star-related war deities known for their ability to make it rain.

Weaved in the complex symbolism of this supernatural is the cycling, entwined, complementary, dual forces of life and death. The awanyu, as he is known today by Tewa-speaking Pueblos, continues to play a role in their art and rituals.

― derived and paraphrased from Southwestern rock art authority Polly Schaafsma + collaborators

***   Shrine of the Stone Pumas / Fall 2001