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The Gobbler: Destructive Creations in the Americas
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16286 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1989 |
3,641 Words |
| Author
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Gary B. Palmer
Gary B. Palmer is professor of anthropology at the University
of Nevada. |
The aphorism "You can't get something for nothing" is axiomatic in Western culture, supported by the laws of conservation of matter and energy. The most notable exception to the rule is provided by the God of the Old Testament, who created the world by simply uttering his thoughts. In Genesis it is written, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light…. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," and so God also created the solar system, plants, animals, and mankind, apparently from nothing but the exigency of his thoughts and speech. Some theologian might protest that the Old Testament narrative implies some preexisting essence that was expressed as a matter, but the common sense of the passage implies, at the very least, creation without source materials; God was fleshing out ideas, not extruding or reshaping matter.
But contrast the biblical account of creation with a myth found in various forms in many American Indian cultures. In this ancient tale, the world, items useful to mankind, and even humans themselves are created by the dismemberment of a water-dwelling spirit, often depicted concretely in a reptilian or amphibian form. As a point of reference, let us take the story told by priests of the complex Aztec theocracy.
In Aztec myth, the creature is the Tlaltecuhtli (Earth Lord) a toadlike female monster who lived in the divine water and was torn in two by the creator twins Tezcatlipoca (Smoking Mirror) and Quetzalcoatl (Plumed Serpent). Transforming themselves into serpents, the twins latched on to the extremities of the monster and, with one twin grasping the left forelimb and the other grasping the right hindlimb, they pulled her in two. The monster's upper half settled as the earth and the lower half became the heavens. If the order seems reversed and counterintuitive, because four-legged beings normally hold their heads higher than their hind parts, the mythical reversal of position doubtless held significance for Aztec theologians, perhaps of the same unfathomable order as the behavioral reversals of the Plains Indian contraries, who rode backward into battle.
It is from the parts of the earth monster's body that fruits and good things for mankind issue forth, but she withholds them unless she is soaked with blood and fed with human hearts. According to this view, the Aztec peoples themselves were formed from the congealing blood of the gods who committed auto-sacrifice. It was by way of repayment for these original acts of creation that the Aztec rationalized their notorious and bloody human sacrifices. The reciprocal
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