Tradition of the Birth "Mouth"

[Miguel Sague Jr]

Tau My Relatives
The ancient Taino sacred creation narrative clearly speaks of the birth or emergence of the elements of creation from the mouth or opening of a cave. The early Spanish chronicler Pane recorded information that indicated the emergence of humanity from a cave called Cacibajagua and the sun from a cave called Iguanaboina (Pane "Relacion De las Antiguedades De Los Indios"). It is interesting to note that both of these caves were said to exist on sides of sacred mountains. Cacibajagua was to be found at the legendary mountain called "Canta".

It is obvious that cave mouths such as Cacibajagua were openings into the very womb of the Cosmic Earth Mother, Ata Bey. The ancient Tainos associated the underworld realm of the ancestors, called "Coabay", with the womb of Ata Bey. They also associated the ball game field with that underworld realm. It has been fairly well established by most scholars that the batey (the anciet Taino ball-game field) was associated with the underworld of the dead (ancestors), and that classic Taino batey fields probably replaced ancient burial grounds from earlier phases of Taino ancestral evolution (Saladoid culture). Many present-day scholars maintain that ancient Saladoid-era graveyards were eventually turned into batey ball-game fields, giving these ceremonial grounds a sanctity of the ancestral realm through their association with the departed ones. Coabay was not only the destination for the souls of the departed ones but also the source place of new souls waiting to be born out of the sacred cave mouth. Since the ancient Tainos envisioned creation as an emergence from a "mouth" it is totally reasonable to image this process as a form of regorgutation, a kind of sending forth the results of the process of creation out from the mouth of the sacred mountain. It is also important to note that certain creatures were associated with the earth Mother as totem animals. The totemic creatures that were most closely associated with the earth mother were usually reptiles and amphibians such as snakes, iguanas, crocodiles, frogs and toads. These totem creatures were imaged as being capable of opening their mouths and sending out the product of creation from their inner self. In that respect the mouth of the totem animal became identified with the mouth of the sacred cave, in the sacred mountain.

The concept of primordial emergence or birth via a cave-mouth from the interior of a sacred mountain, and the association of the mouths of reptiles and amphibians is not exclusively an element of Taino mythology. These concepts were well established in the spiritual tradition of the Mesoamerican people of Mexico and Central America. Linda Schele and David Freidle in their book Maya Cosmos established the existance in ancient Maya culture of a tradition that included the concept of a sacred mountain of Creation called "Witz" . Witz was imaged as a personified mountain creature with an open mouth and a cleft top. This mountain being was considered to be not only the birth-place of humanity but also the origin place of maize corn.

Like the creation mountain of the Tainos, the Maya Witz mountain was perceived as having a "mouth". Maya pyramids, being monumental representations of the Witz mountain, featured mouth-like sculpturing around the entrance of the uppermost temple from whence the Maya priest and the Maya king could emerge as if being regorgutated out of the mouth of the Witz being (sometimes reffered to as a "monster" by archeologists). This tradition of equating birth as an emergence from a sacred "mouth" was well-recognized all over the Central American cultural region. Note this quote concerning the iconic sculpturing of a Maya temple from the website of the Canadian Museum of Civilization:

"Pyramid-temples took many structural forms: some were tall and steep, some very broad, others squat. The temple itself was not large, generally comprising between one and three dark rooms, of which one would be the inner sanctum where the king performed his rituals. Some temples have facades representing masks of one or other cosmic monster and the Maya name for the temple door actually means "mouth of the house". The pyramid-temple erected on CMC's plaza is not based on any particular historical structure. The Witz ("mountain") monster depicted on its roof comb is a vulture." http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/maya/mmp02eng.shtml



The independent researcher John Major Jenkins cites a number of important scholars who establish a very close relationship between the concept of primordial birth and the emergence from the mouth of a reptilian celestial creature. In this statement Jenkins points out that the ancient Mayas associated the Milky Way Galaxy with a heavenly crocodile or serpent whose mouth (represented by the galaxy's "Dark Rift" feature) could give birth to the primordial sun. This meant that the mouth of the celestial serpent was the opening of the Cosmic Mother's womb.

"One of the dark-rift's mythological identifications is xibalba be (Tedlock, 1985:358) which means "road to the underworld." It is also the birth canal of the Great Mother (the Milky Way), the cleft in the branches of the calabash tree where One Hunahpu's head is hung prior to his rebirth (Tedlock and Tedlock, 1993:44) and, according to Tedlock (1992:256), it is also the place where the Hero Twins were conceived. The early forms of this mythic complex, at such sites as Izapa, show the Milky Way as an iverted caiman-tree (Schele 1993); other portrayals show similar iconographic arrangements involving frogs, snakes, jaguars and other chthonic deities referential to the Great Mother. In these depictions, the Milky Way / Cosmic Mother deity has her mouth open, and a solar Ahau figure is often right in the mouth. A view of the pre-dawn sky from Izapa on the winter solstice of, say, 50 B.C., strongly illustrates how this astronomical feature may have played a central role in early Mayan cosmology"

As Jenkins indicates, The ancient Mayas also associated the concept of birth with emergence from the mouth of frogs and toads. This resulted in the establishment of a convention in ancient Maya iconography which equated frogs imaged in a skyward facing position with the concept of "birth". Because these odd-looking frog glyphs were imaged facing up, they were dubbed "upended frogs" by many scholars.

Jenkin comments:
"David Kelley in his monumental study of Mayan hieroglyphs (Deciphering the Maya Script, 1976) identifies the “upturned frog mouth” symbol as meaning “to be born.” This symbol occurs on Izapa Stela 11, which adorns the cover of my book. If you combine this with the fact that Stela 11 faces the December solstice and the deity emerging from the frog’s mouth is First Father (because he is performing the arms-outstretched measuring act that occurs at Creation) then you have an interpretation derived solely from available academic data: solar lord in the cosmic birth-place on the solstice horizon at the dawn of the age."

Back in January our sister Joanna Soto Aviles shared a message with us explaining the sacred teachings associated with the prophecy of the White Cemi. As part of her presentation she shared with us a wonderful image that illustrates many elements of this powerful prophecy. The image features the mountain form of the three-point cemi with a face. The face has its mouth open and out of its mouth is emerging the form of a humanoid entity. The image represents primordial birth, using well-established, perfectly recognizable iconography that anyone who knows anything about ancient circum-Caribbean imagery would recognize.

Since we in modern times are looking at these images with modern eyes it is understandable that some may misunderstand this iconography and assume that the picture shows an entity "eating" the humanoid being as opposed to birthing it. And since people who have been raised outside of that ancestral Indigenous culture don't know about the well-established tradition of "birthing" through an allegorical "spirit mouth" they could certainly be expected to question how a birth could take place though the mouth when "natural" births happen out of a very different body opening. This reasoning only exhibits an ignorance of ancient circum-Caribbean metaphorical and allegorical imagery.

Taino Ti
Miguel Sobaoko Koromo Sague

[Miguel Sague Jr]

[Caracoli]

America before the arrival of the europeans is a mysterious, metaphysical, enchanted place indeed

[Caracoli]

Ther are so many things our Ancient ones did

The way they looked at the world one can see in the intricate art they produced

Complex iconographic designs carved, weaved, sculpted and engraved

Designs that were inscipted in the fabric of their lives and made sense on how they viewed the world

I feel this when I embroider these designs

Its not fair to criticize what another person creates to honor our ancient ones

We should have more understanding

[Miguel Sague Jr]

Jan Jan Katu Brothe Caracoli! mysterious, metaphysical and enchanted, Jan Jan!
I want to add here another comment that appears in the text by John Major Jenkins which applies perfectly to the point that I am trying to make here concerning the too-literal translation of the word "mouth" that can be made by modern linear-thinking individuals who do not understand the original Indigenous interprettion of that metaphorical term. Please read Mr. Jenkin's quote with the understanding that when he says "word pun" he is talking about a linguistic exchange of words in which the meaning of the word should not be taken literally but instead should be taken metaphorically. An example of this in English is the terminology i myself used in the above post concerning the word "mouth" to indicate the opening of a cave. Obviousl we are not talking about a real "mouth" when we say "cave-mouth" . We are talking about the entrance to the cavern. The same rule goes for "eye of the storm", in which we are not really talking about a real "eye" that can see but instead we are talking about the center of the storm. A "head of lettuce", similarly is not a real head. Nobody would be expected to ridicule a person who calls this object a "head of lettuce" and claim that they are talking nonsense because it is not a "real" head and that a vegetable does not have a "head". That criticism may sound foolish to you and you would think that the person makin such a criticism is being petty and ridiculous, and yet, there are those who would criticize the painting above complaining in part that "children are not born out of a mouth". This criticizm is also petty and ridiculous. The ancients used graphic images as well as the spoken language to create these word relationships, therefore if the term "mouth" as used to speak of the creation mountain's birth cave it was just as reasonable to actually draw a person being "born" out of that cave "mouth",

Here is Jenkin's quote:
The dark-rift was mythologized as either the mouth or birth canal of the Milky Way deity - the Cosmic Mother or Great Creatrix. Although puns relating the "mouth" to the "birth canal" are obvious, the Maya were prone to apply many different mythic interpretations to the same observed object or process.[1] This apparently conflictive tendency is only a problem to our linear (modern western) predispositions, in which words have strictly agreed upon definitions.

Taino Ti
Miguel

[adem medina cardona]

these expressions are used still today in many cultures, such as children who are adopted in the USA are called 'children born of the heart' not of the womb. certainly children are not born straight out of a woman's heart, but are welcomed in to a family just as if they had been born to the adoptive parent. it is not difficult to make that connection when we look at it in a so called modern day sense.
~c