Kokopelli
Kokopelli is the name of a religious symbol that has been handed down in the form of rock art by the Anasazi and various prehistoric Indian peoples in the southwestern United States . This human-like figure is shown as a flute player , often with a hump and usually with a pronounced phallus . Kokopelli is believed to be the fertility deity and is often depicted along with other symbols associated with fertility of farmland, hunted game, and human sexuality .
The name Kokopelli comes from the Hopi spirit Kookopölö (one of the Kachina spirits), which stands for the fertility of people and crops. It has generally been used by ethnologists for these prehistoric images since the beginning of the 20th century , although there are clear differences in representation and function, as well as great similarities. Today Kokopelli is a universal symbol of the region and its culture in the southwestern United States and is featured in thousands of advertisements.
Diffusion and development
The Kokopelli is the most commonly depicted human-like figure of the Anasazi and their direct and indirect successors. It is used both as petroglyphs painted on the rock, such as petroglyphs , carved into the surface of the rock, found in the Southwest, primarily on the Colorado Plateau to the Four Corners , rare in other parts of Utah , Colorado , New Mexico and Arizonas , as well as occasionally beyond the borders in Nevada , Texas , Oklahoma and in the far north of Mexico . The greatest density is achieved with around 175 pictures of the Kopopelli in the Taawaiki site on the Black Mesa in Arizona and with at least 130 flute players on the Santa Fe River near La Cienega in New Mexico.
Rock carvings of flute players can be found very early in the southwest. At least five figures in southern Utah date from the Archaic Period and can be attributed to the Barrier Canyon Style , which dates from 4000 to 500 BC. Is dated. In the basketmaker culture of northern Arizona, their prevalence increased significantly before the year 500. These first images of flute players without further attributes can simply represent human musicians without religious significance. Individual flute players with an accentuated phallus are probably already associated with fertility rituals, but still deviate sufficiently from the humpbacked, flute-playing figures, which are known as Kokopelli. The development of the figure with all relevant attributes probably took place on the upper Rio Grande and in the San Juan Basin and is dated to the Pueblo I phase of the Anasazi culture and thus to the period from 750 to 900. Early depictions are mostly stick figures or outlines, later other shapes are added and regionally different traditions are shaped.
Around the year 1000 Kokopelli with a flute, hump and phallus is also found on ceramics of the red-on-buff type of the Hohokam culture . Further images also go back to the splits and relatives of the Anasazi, the Fremont , Sinagua and Mogollon cultures . After 1300, Kokopelli's illustrations reached their greatest distribution, they are kept in the Rio Grande style. Before 1500, the cultural tradition in the southwest collapsed. The pueblo settlements are abandoned and the art of prehistoric rock art ends. The successors of the Ancestral Pueblo cultures are the Hopi , the Zuñi and today's Pueblo Indians . Elements of the Rio Grande style have been preserved in her art to this day , which is why it is difficult to date the most recent Kokopelli paintings. Some could be from historical times. Individual aspects of the prehistoric rock art are also taken up by the Apaches - and Navajo - who immigrated to the region from the north after 1500 , as well as the Ute Indians who came from the west . There is evidence that these peoples left rock carvings with humped figures on the Colorado Plateau in historical times.
Prehistoric myths and images of flute players exist in many cultures. In North America especially with the Anishinabe in the Great Lakes area in both the United States and Canada. They have some similarities with Kokopelli, but a connection cannot be assumed. Flute players are also widespread as rock art in other parts of the world: In Africa they are found both north and south of the Sahara, Australian Aborigines paint musicians with wind instruments, and there is a particularly strong tradition in large parts of South America. In European mythology, flute players appear as Orpheus and Pan . Indian iconography depicts Krishna with a flute. All of these flute players are related to rituals and natural magic, but no direct connection to the figure known as Kokopelli can be proven.
Meaning and function
The name Kokopelli is derived from the Kachina Kookopölö of the Hopi , who has a comparable function in their mythology. The name of the Hopi-Kachina was transferred to the prehistoric flute player since the 1930s and was considered established among ethnographers in the 1960s. Also in the 1960s, Hopi rejected the equation in recent surveys and simply referred to the prehistoric flute player as a lelenhoya for musicians. Other Hopi referred to the rock drawings as maahu for cicada .
The prehistoric rock art
The prehistoric cultures of the southwest have left no clues other than rock carvings and artifacts . Therefore, the meaning of the symbol can only be derived from the context of the traditions and myths of today's Indian peoples, who are considered to be descendants. The prehistoric rock carvings of the humpbacked flute player appear in many ways: individually or in groups, together with geometric shapes or symbols, with animals and with human figures and with various attributes . The common theme of the depictions is fertility .
Individual representations are completely clear with regard to the connection: Here Kokopelli is shown as a hunchbacked flute player during sexual intercourse or next to pregnant or giving birth women. In other representations the flute becomes a phallic symbol up to a drawn connection between flute and phallus in a kind of autofellatio . The flute player is shown several times, with his phallus aligned with holes or indentations in the stone, some of which are worked into the shape of a female vulva .
Representations of Kokopelli together with bighorn sheep and other animals refer to the request for the permanent existence of huntable game . Another connection is the use of the flute in weather rituals, especially making rain. Hence a common representation of the Kokopelli comes along with water-loving animals such as lizards and snakes. Abstract representations show it with a spiral as a water symbol or the cloud terraces, which are used everywhere in the southwest as rain symbols.
But Kokopelli can also take other forms. There are pictures of animals playing the flute such as bighorn sheep or human figures with bird heads. Flute players with distorted or alienated bodies or attributes also fit into this context. Ethnologists interpret them as a shamanic representation of trance experiences, caused by rituals, dreams or the use of hallucinogens . The combination of fertility symbol and animistic shape change leads to the interpretation of Kokopelli as a “universal trickster archetype” who shows “unbridled sexuality” and “in his role as a hunting magician and rain priest can transform himself from an unregulated amoral force to a creator who can and Brings security to the chaos of the world. "
Representations in which Kokopelli appears twice, be it back to back or facing each other, are also widespread. Special forms are two flute players who play one instrument together or stand head to head one above the other or are mirrored. In a few cases a large number of flute players are depicted together or scenes in which a flute player leads a group of people in a ritual.
Kokopelli is associated with the creation of the world in two prehistoric Anasazi kivas in southwestern Colorado ( Yellow Jacket Canyon and Sand Canyon ). Kivas are round, underground cult rooms, which are characterized by a ladder entry through an opening in the flat beamed ceiling and a fireplace with a special fresh air supply. In addition, Kivas have a small, often deep hole in the ground , which is referred to as sipapu and is considered the connection between the cult area and the earth, as an opening from which people have ascended and all of creation has emerged. In these two kivas, next to the sipapu, figures of flute players with pronounced phallus were scratched or deepened into the excavated ground during the construction of the kivas, before the drawings were covered with the actual floor of the kiva and were thus only symbolically present.
A connection with demonstrable events could exist in the occasional representations of Kokopelli with a (traveling) stick. Ethnologists discuss whether this is a reference to Pochteca ; Merchants from the Mesoamerican region who are recorded between 1200 and 1400 and brought cultural goods and skills to the Sonora and Chihuahua areas . In Mesoamerica they are depicted with a staff and sack on their backs. The origin of the figure cannot exist here, however, since the earliest illustrations by Kokopelli are older than the Pochteca.
The Hopi-Kachina Kookopölö
Kookopölö is a Kachina deity of the Hopi. Like all kachinas, it is represented in dances by people in costumes and with oversized masks and used in the form of carved dolls with elaborate robes in Hopi households for private rituals. Kookopölö is characterized by a hunched shape, which is created in the dancers by many layers of wrapped fabric, a black head mask with a characteristic white line that divides the face in half, as well as white rims of the eyes and a large, round, white drawing at ear level. He wears an oversized phallus strapped on, which consists of a suitably shaped bottle gourd .
In Hopi mythology, the cicada and closely related insects play a role, which gives an insight into the background of the figure through striking similarities to the prehistoric images. In the Kachina Kokopelli, however, the flute is fused into a long snout with mouthparts taken from the insect world. The origin of the word is not clearly clarified. The first part of the word with the long spoken o Kooko is not used in isolation by the Hopi, the assumption that "Pelli", the Hopi and Zuñi word for the desert predator fly , is probably incorrect. Instead, this word component is used for various round objects, including a hunched back.
With the Hopi, cicadas and predatory flies are considered fertility symbols and they have noticeable humps. The cicada is also the symbol of the Hopi flute community, a phratry (clan association), and plays a role in their creation story. The cicada and probably also the predator fly symbolize summer and the time of soil fertility because of their seasonal occurrence. The Hopi use the same word to describe the song of the cicada as the music of the flute. Related insects such as the leaf locust are also used by other Indian peoples as symbols of fertility; the Jicarilla apaches, who live in the same area today, use the leaf insect in a love spell . The frequent decorative elements on the Kokopelli's head, which are reminiscent of insect antennae and mouthparts, could be derived from this context.
In Hopi myths, a direct transformation from Kookopölö into a cicada and back is told.
Transmission from prehistoric culture to the Hopi
Fertility, humps, a multitude of common attributes and the phallus are a clear indication of the connections as they were recorded by early ethnologists. The absence of the flute in Kookopölö does not prevent this. Motifs from prehistoric rock carvings, which are carried over to the present day in Hopi myths, are particularly expressive. At Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico there is an Anasazi petroglyph, on which a flute player on one flank of a boulder penetrates a female figure on the adjacent flank by means of an overlong phallus, whereby both figures cannot see each other. Ethnologists see parallels with myths told by the Acoma-Pueblo and the Hopi. In one case, a young Acoma warrior is hiding completely underground at the point where a chief's daughter who is coveted but rejects all advances usually urinates in the evening. When she comes, he penetrates her from underground and impregnates her without her recognizing the sexual intercourse as such. With the Hopi it is Kookopölö himself who impregnates a chief's daughter in a similar way. He has an overly long penis and digs a trench from his house to the place where the young woman urinates. Using a tube made of reed in the hidden trench, he can impregnate the chief's daughter over the long distance.
The common origin of the prehistoric flute player and the Hopi-Kachinas Kookopölö from insects is another indication of the cultural identity. The prehistoric Kokopelli is often depicted with insects or humpbacked insects playing the flute. Mainly in the more recent rock art of the Anasazi and Sinagua and up to the historical Ute Indians, Kokopelli appears with conspicuous protrusions from the head, which can be derived from the mouthparts of the insects.
The Kookopölö of the Hopi can therefore be recognized as a development from two lines of tradition: both the prehistoric flute player and the mythological figure of the cicada or predator fly were part of it. From their combination, the kachina developed.
Finally, there are tales of the Pueblo Indians who are supposed to explain the prehistoric rock art of the flute player. The images are interpreted as bringing seeds, food and babies. They carry these gifts in a sack on their back, which is associated with the hump of Kokopelli.
Usage today
Over the past few years, Kokopelli has become a landmark of the Southwestern United States, with merchandising like baseball caps and key chains. In doing so, however, it is mostly depicted without the oversized phallus. The spread of the symbol also extends to areas that are absurd given its prehistoric origins. For example, companies in Arizona advertise with Kokopelli drawings golfing, cycling, or skiing.
The allegedly largest Kokopelli figure is in Camp Verde , Arizona, a small town in the Verde Valley below the Mogollon Rim , where it is accessed from Interstate Highway 17 . Several times a year in Camp Verde there are festivals related to the harvest of various crops, to which the fertility symbol Kokopelli fits.
literature
- Dennis Slifer: Kokopelli - The Magic, Mirth, and Mischief of an Ancient Symbol . Gibbs Smith, 2007, ISBN 978-1-4236-0174-6 .
- Ekkehart Malotki: Kokopelli. The Making of an Icon. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE 2000, ISBN 0-8032-3213-6 .
- Bruni Kobbe: Kokopelli the flute player . In: Image of Science. Issue 2/1997, pages 24-27.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pp. 2, 33-37
- ↑ a b c d e f Slifer 2007, p. 21.
- ↑ Malotki 2000, page 6
- ↑ Malotki 2000, p. 136
- ↑ Malotki 2000, page 1
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 67 ff.
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pp. 67-68, 74-77
- ↑ Slifer 2007, p. 37
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 134-142
- ↑ Malotki 2000, Introduction , pages 1-13
- ↑ Slifer 2007, chapter The Many Faces of the Flute Player , pages 81-133
- ↑ Several illustrations from New Mexico in Slifer 2007, page 82
- ↑ Slifer 2007, page 42
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 81-100
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 100-107
- ↑ Klaus Wellmann: Some Observations on Human Sexuality in American Indian Rock Art. In: Southwestern Lore , Volume 40, No 1 (1974), pages 1-12, quoted from Slifer 2007, page 107
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 127-133
- ↑ Bruce A. Bradley: Architectural Petroglyphs at Sand Canyon Pueblo (5MT765) Southwestern Colorado . In: Kiva Journal of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, Volume 54, No. 2 (1989), pages 153-161 (online at Jstor: Architectural Petroglyphs )
- ↑ Slifer 2007, page 31
- ↑ Malotki 2000, pages 17 ff.
- ↑ Slifer 2007, p. 23.
- ↑ Malotki 2000, p. 72, and reproduction of the myth on pages 106–110.
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 43 f., The second myth is also told in Malotki 2000.
- ↑ Slifer 2007, page 22 with a large number of illustrations
- ↑ Slifer 2007, pages 81-100
- ^ Arno Heller: American Southwest . Innsbruck University Press, 2006, ISBN 3-901249-91-5 , pages 23-28, 28
- ↑ Slifer 2007, page 49
- ^ Camp Verde Chamber of Commerce: Welcome to Camp Verde