Norman
Muller got me started by posting this photo: “Odds and Ends” Pomfret, VT
And you may note in the comments that Curt
Hoffman said, “Norman - This wall end is strikingly similar to some which Tim
MacSweeney has shown me in CT!” – which was exactly what I was thinking. I had
already sent Norman an email that included an attached image that isn’t the
best photo I ever took, but it shows a very similar sort of thing, possibly the
one Curt was thinking of:
….This just
may “possess symbolic content and contexts that can be studied from a semiotic
perspective as media of communication, as stimulants and reinforcements of
cultural values and behaviour, and as signs of ethnicity… a pattern of animal
ceremonialism to an ongoing program of cosmic renewal and maintenance that
included the animals and their "spirit masters" in the above-world as
key elements,” as Michael C. Wilson writes in “The "Placing" of
Identity in Nomadic Societies: Aboriginal Landscapes of the Northwestern Plains
of North America” - especially since I am tempted to interpret the above as possibly
an egg in the (a) Great Serpent's jaws.
The other side of this break or gateway in
this row of stones is what may be more familiar to readers here, that big triangular
boulder that resembles a snake-head at the end of a stone row (although this one is obscured by
another large and possibly moved boulder):
Stepping
back:
Twice is just a coincidence, they say.
Have I been noticing others (or searching my old photos for more that I sort of
remember)? Well, sure; here’s one more, for now:
“The
"Placing" of Identity in Nomadic Societies (2005):”
You are calling attention to the oval rock at the end?. I am drawn to a different rock: the small one next to the wall in Norman's picture. It does not look like it fell off the wall.
ReplyDeleteLook at the wall end in the last picture of "Pomfret Odds and Ends" below.
ReplyDeleteYes I do see the Manitou stone in the photo (and have seen it as a repeated pattern in other places) and I would agree it was purposefully placed where it still stands. I'm suggesting that behind that first Indigenous indicator Manitou is also another indicator, a stone stacking method, some Serpent Ceremonialism, a variation on the big solid stone head serpents...
ReplyDeleteThe last photo of the other side: looks disturbed.
Another variation is a serpent head composed of boulders and cobbles on a piece of outcrop (that you only notice a week later when you take another look at the photo at home): http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/12/perspective.html
ReplyDeleteIt suggests the egg shaped rock was there and the wall was built up to it.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to have arrived at the Age Old Question: Which came first? The Serpent or the Egg??
ReplyDelete