(Peterborough Ontario)
Norman Muller writes:
Being confined mostly inside for the past two months has given my mind freedom to roam, and recently I have been looking at photos I have taken plus those I have not, and have noticed a similarity among them: mainly that splits, cracks, and V- or U-shaped formations have female connotations, since the Earth, after all, gives birth to all kinds of life forms.
In the Anza Borrego Desert in California, one of the Indian tribes took a formation with a deep crack and carved the stone around it to resemble a female vagina (1st image). The same occurred at the Empie site in Arizona, where cracks were fashioned to resemble female labia (2nd image). At a site in Rochester, Vermont, we have a split boulder with a phallus-shaped rock inserted in the crack (3rd image). Further north, in Peterborough, Ontario, we have the area around a crack in the limestone bedrock pecked to resemble a woman menstruating (4th image: the color of the stone around the vagina is red).
In the article attached below about the "Terraced Boulder Site" in Pennsylvania, I illustrate some natural "V" and "U" shaped formations in outcrops filled with stones, again emphasizing the female nature of the form. Was filling the shape with stones to complete the female image a practice reserved for women of the Indian tribes to make them more fertile? It is impossible to tell. But there is little doubt in my mind that the enhancement of these shapes was not purient to the Indians who created them, but simply a ritual to enhance Mother Earth.
Anza Borrega:
Empie Petroglyph Site, AZ:
Rochester VT, Site R7-6:
This is reminding me of how, near the time I began editing the NEARA Journal, there were several photo examples of "Yonis" (female genitals) and "Lingam" (male genitals), from New England woods and from around the world, that I wanted to post. Several of the older ladies on the board of directors thought this subject was too delicate and inappropriate for a NEARA publication. So I was not allowed to publish those pictures.
ReplyDeleteI should have made an issue about it right then and there. Censoring highly relevant and legitimate topics because of some residual puritanical sense of "proper" could not be more inappropriate. I should have said: exchanging ideas is part of the mission but protecting sensibilities is NOT. I should have been more firm that anti-scientific tendencies should be routed out of the organization. That way when real controversies arose later (eg about site secrecy and about acknowledging the existence of burials) personal feelings would have been long gone. But no. NEARA has become more than a little bit toxic over the intervening years.
The second image you posted is the Empie Petroglyph site in AZ, not the Empire Site. And the final image below is from a site in Rochester, VT., which is called R7-6
ReplyDeleteNorman
Sorry to bother you, but it is the "Empie Petroglyph Site" not the "Empire Petroglyph Site."
ReplyDeleteNorman
Thanks for the corrections.
ReplyDeleteBeen inside too long?!
ReplyDelete