Mythology and Symbolism of Eurasia and Indigenous Americas: Manifestations in Artifacts and Rituals

By Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

A system of myths, symbols, and rituals, dating back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic, survives in present-day imagery. In exploring this system, special attention is drawn to the linkage between ancient and contemporary civilizations of Eurasia and Mesoamerica, as seen in their cosmology, and expressed in common mythological and iconographic themes. The author examines contemporary Middle American and eastern European textiles, especially women’s garments, that contain an elaborated sacred code of symbols, and include remnants of the four horizontal directions, and the three vertical worlds that portray the structure of the universe. The cosmology contained in patterns around the world denotes striking parallels that attest to internal connections between different cultures, beyond time and place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781800738171

Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba is Professor of Hispanic Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her publications include Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kali, Pombagira, and Santa Muerte (2015), The Black Madonna in Latin America and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (2007), and Teatro popular peruano: del precolombino al siglo XX (1995).

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Mythology and Symbolism of Eurasia and Indigenous Americas

Mythology and Symbolism of Eurasia and Indigenous Americas

Manifestations in Artifacts and Rituals

Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

First published in 2023 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2023 Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Małgorzata, 1954- author.

Title: Mythology and symbolism of Eurasia and indigenous Americas : manifestations in artifacts and rituals / by Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

Description: 1st. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2023 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022028506 (print) | LCCN 2022028507 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800738164 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800738171 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Symbolism | Signs and symbols | Mythology

Classification: LCC CB475 .O44 2023 (print) | LCC CB475 (ebook) | DDC 302.2/223--dc23/eng/20221011

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028506

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022028507

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-816-4 hardback

ISBN 978-1-80073-817-1 ebook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800738164

For the new generations

For Agnieszka and Marta

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Alan West-Durán

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Worldview

Chapter 1. Cervids and Their Associations

Chapter 2. Goddess Civilizations and Their Symbols

Chapter 3. Image of the Universe

Chapter 4. Weaving and Embroidery: A Semblance of the Cosmos

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

1.1. Two horses in a cloud, Easter egg. Poland, early twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.2. Tree flanked by three pairs of birds, paper cut-out. Poland, twenty-first century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.3. Tree with deer and birds, detail at center of a woven kilim. Anatolia (Turkey), twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.4. Embroidered blouse, Goddess as plant, flanked by animals. Oaxaca, Mexico, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.5. Goddess as Tree of Life, paper cut-out. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.6. Embroidered rushnyk, Goddess as plant with birds and bees. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.7. Goddess as plant, with spread arms and legs, metal incrustation in wood. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.8. Goddess as flower. Walls of a rural house. Central Poland, late nineteenth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.9. Goddess with birds, transformed into a cross with angels, paper cut-out. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.10. Lalka (doll)—Goddess holding birds, paper cut-out. Poland, beginning of the twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.11. God K as deer, falling from the planets (b, middle), and knocked down on the ground (c, bottom). Dresden Codex, p. 45bc. Mayan, Post-Classical. Public domain.

1.12. Trapped deer. Madrid Codex, p. 45. Mayan, Post-Classical. Public domain.

1.13. Siip (Zip) as black hunter. Madrid Codex, p. 50b. Public domain.

1.14. The sun between horns, and neck rings, silver. Ceremonial dress of the Miao minority women of China. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.15. Gwiazda (star). Paper cut-outs. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.16. Kołacz/korovai: Sun symbolism, two pairs of breasts, and the four directions, dough. Lviv, Ukraine, 1970s–1980s. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.17. Deer with corncobs, gold. Costa Rica, Pre-Columbian. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

1.18. Naked hunter in front of a deer. Funerary stele, marble. Eleutherna, Crete, Greece, 600 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.1. Mistress of Animals. Mother Goddess giving birth flanked by two leopards, terracotta. Çatal Höyük, Turkey, ca. 5,750 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.2. Vase with birds of prey used for funeral ceremonies. Crete, Greece, 1,300–1,250 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.3. Venus of Willendorf. Austria, ca. 24,000 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.4. Model of the double Ġgantija temple in the shape of Fat Goddesses. Gozo, Malta, first half of the fourth millennium BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.5. Figurine with diagrams. Trypillian-Cucuteni civilization, Ukraine, Neolithic Era. Drawing: Olga H. Estrada. Published with permission.

2.6. Figurine with plant growing from the pubic triangle. Trypillian-Cucuteni civilization, Ukraine, Neolithic Era. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.7. Mayan cross with plants, sun, and quincunx symbols. Chiapas region, Mexico, twenty-first century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.8. Figurine of a pregnant woman with corncobs as breasts. Michoacán, Mexico, AD 200–600. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.9. Figurine of a pregnant woman with the Mayan sapo (Turkish baklava) motif on her belly, head, chest, and thighs. Mexico, Pre-Columbian. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.10. Female figurine with body paint, ear spools, and a triangular thong with rhomb design. Costa Rica, AD 500–800. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.11. Seated female figurine with a hat and symbolic diagrams. Costa Rica, AD 500–800. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.12. Goddesses with shrines, trees, and life-giving and death-bringing birds, embroidery. Crete, Greece, late nineteenth to early twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.13. Goddess with birds, flanked by attendants on horses, embroidery. Ukraine, late nineteenth to early twentieth century, © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.14. Tripartite jar with protrusions for nipples and meanders around breasts. Trypillian-Cucuteni Civilization, Ukraine, Neolithic Era. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.15. Jar with vulvas. Trypillian-Cucuteni Civilization, Ukraine, Neolithic Era, ca. 6,000 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.16a. and 2.16b. Tripartite jar with depictions of atmospheric phenomena, such as rain. Trypillian-Cucuteni Civilization, Ukraine, Neolithic Era. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

2.17. Sun symbol (cross) with lace diamonds and deer, Easter egg. Poland, early twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.1. Tamoanchan, Mesoamerican concept of the cosmos, reflected in the central tree—the cosmic axis—with two strands in helicoidal motion within its trunk and four directional trees. Drawing: Olga H. Estrada. Published with permission.

3.2. Mayan diagram Pejel (Anything Square) in the form of a quincunx, representing space and time. Drawing: Olga H. Estrada, inspired by Morris, Diseño 19. Published with permission.

3.3. Embroidered Hutsul rushnyk (I) with quincunx motif. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.4. Embroidered pillow with quincunx motif. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.5. Woman’s shirt with embroidered rhomb designs on the sleeves. Hutsulshchyna, Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.6. Diamond motif with incurving lines on four sides—the Birth Symbol. Easter egg. Poland, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.7a. The saw-tooth edged diamond motif, weaving. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.7b. The saw-tooth edged diamond motif, weaving. Navajo, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.8. Plate with a quincunx design. Hacilar, Turkey, 5,750–5,000 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.9a. Quincunx design. Embroidery. Bulgaria, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.9b. Quincunx design. Decorative napkin, crochet work by author’s maternal grandmother, Halina Milęcka Rutte. Warsaw, Poland, 1950s. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.10. Quincunx. Madrid Codex, pp. 75–76. Public domain.

3.11. Ikiz idol—two females holding hands, gold. Alaca Höyük, Turkey, second half of the third millennium BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.12. Old European script. North-west Bulgaria, 5,300–4,300 BC. Drawing: Marta Oleszkiewicz. Published with permission.

3.13. Cretan Linear A script. Phaistos, Crete, Greece, second millennium BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.14. Rows of triangles (zig-zags) intercalated with rows of dots, on a wooden rural house. Rawsko-Opoczyński region, Poland, nineteenth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.15. Statuette with rows of triangles (zig-zags) intercalated with rows of dots. Mexico, Pre-Columbian. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.16. Vessel with a snake in the form of zig-zags intercalated with dots. Central Caribbean coast, Costa Rica, El Bosque culture, AD 300–3,300 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

3.17. Deer and the water serpent. Madrid Codex, p. 14b. Public domain.

4.1. Weaving with embroidered deer and birds. Oaxaca, Mexico, early nineteenth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.2. Doll with fertility symbols. Crete, Greece, 1,050–700 BC. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.3. Sargadela, traditional necklace in the shape of a comb, porcelain. Galicia region, Spain, 1970s. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.4. Figurine with a lattice motif. Guanacaste-Nicoya region, Costa Rica, AD 800–1,350. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.5. Embroidered Hutsul rushnyk (II) with lattice and rhomb motifs. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.6. Net motif, looms, and weaving. Madrid Codex, p. 102. Public domain.

4.7. Fringes and other fertility symbols on a young girl’s garment. Anatolia (Turkey), early twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.8. The Eye Goddess, anthropomorphic pot. Turkey, the Bronze Age. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.9. Ochipka—head cap of a married Hutsul woman, with wool fringes. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.10. Tripartite sleeve of a Hutsul blouse. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.11. Tripartite sleeve of a white-red-black Hutsul blouse. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.12. Spiral and zig-zag motifs on a gourd. Kenya, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.13. Red and white Hutsul blouse with rozhanitsas and plants from the Kupala’s Fires ceremony. Ukraine, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.14. Mayan huipil in the form of a rectangle with nine sky and nine underworld levels that reflects the structure of the universe. Chiapas, Mexico, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.15. Huipil with a tripartite vertical division and horizontal divisions indicating nine underworld levels, four lower sky levels, and nine upper sky levels, reflecting the structure of the universe. Mexico, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.16a. and 4.16b. Triki huipil (front and back) with four vertical sewn-in ribbons indicating four Cosmic Trees, and swirling colorful ribbons representing the helicoidal motion within the trunk of the cosmic Tamoanchan tree. Oaxaca, Mexico, twenty-first century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

4.17. Quechquémitl, a rhomboidal Mesoamerican woman’s garment. Oaxaca, Mexico, twentieth century. © Małgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.

Foreword

Alan West-Durán

Aluna’s Threads Sing

In her introduction, the author states that her book is devoted to finding connecting threads and continuity between the symbols, rituals and beliefs that unite humanity across different continents and cultures of the world. This objective, or perhaps more accurately, longing, reminds me of the Kogi in the film Aluna (2012) unraveling a golden thread from the sea all the way into the mountains of Santa Marta, some four hundred kilometers through the ever-changing landscape of northern Colombia. The thread is literally a connection to Aluna, or the Great Mother, that is the source of all life and our world. By unspooling the thread and having it reconnect to all the sacred spots, similar to the Andean notion of the huaca (or gaka for the Kogi), the aim is to repair the damage done to the earth by the Younger Brother (the white man), whose rapacious conduct and blatant degradation of the earth have caused environmental chaos and unbalanced the world created by Aluna. In laying out the thread, the Kogi wanted to show the interconnectedness of the world and warn us that damaging one part of the world wounds all of our planet.

In a similar fashion, Prof. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba takes the golden thread of her language and thought to show the interconnectedness of symbols, myths, beliefs and rituals of Eurasia and the Indigenous Americas. These concerns have been part of her scholarship for at least the last two decades, and this current work can be seen as the third part of a trilogy that began with The Black Madonna in Latin American and Europe: Tradition and Transformation (2007), followed by Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kālī, Pombagira and Santa Muerte (2015). In the first volume, she explores the relationships between the Black Madonna of Częstochowa of Poland, the Virgin of Guadalupe (Mexico), and Iemanjá of Brazil; in the second she explores the fierce feminine deities of Baba Yaga (Slavic), Kali (Hindu), Pombagira (Brazil) and Santa Muerte (Mexico) as liminal figures of great power. These mythic figures that deal with sexuality, transformation, and death elicit awe and respect, and Oleszkiewicz-Peralba brilliantly explains why.

In the spirit of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Oleszkiewicz-Peralba recognizes that myth is a type of language, one that offers societies an interpretive grid with which to make meaning and organize their lives. Wendy Doniger, in her delightful foreword to Levi-Strauss’s Myth and Meaning, claims that both myth and language are wedded to binaries and that these are linked to the binaries of our brain: right and left, male and female, good and evil, fire and water, the raw and the cooked, cold and hot, stillness and movement, sound and silence, animal and human, earth and sky. But as any good Daoist reminds us, the aspects of yin yang not only include contradiction and opposition but also interdependence, inclusion, complementarity, change, and transformation. Binaries may seem to organize our world and stabilize meaning, but we humans spend our lives eluding, subverting, and snubbing our noses at binaries and the rules that seem to limit or oppress us.

The life and work of John Cage equally reminds us that the boundaries between noise, sound, silence, and music are more porous than previously imagined. And it is Lévi-Strauss himself who is fond of analogies between music and myth, especially in The Raw and the Cooked and Myth and Meaning. In the former, the chapters are labeled Overture, Theme and Variations, The Good Manners Sonata, The Fugue of the Five Senses, Well-Tempered Astronomy, and Rustic Symphony in Three Movements. The analogy between myth and music is insightful and intriguing but needs some revising. The French anthropologist’s examples are all drawn from European classical musical forms (although theme and variation would have a wider resonance), which is a bit curious, since the topics of his research are the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon. His love of music was boundless, and he was extremely fond of opera, no doubt a genre that has a longstanding relationship with myth, beginning with Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) to the twenty-first century with Henze’s Phaedra (2007). Unquestionably, some myths have an over-the-top intensity that is nothing less than Wagnerian, and the genre’s combination of word, music, drama, and performance are ideal for embodying and exploring myth.

That said, I am not arguing that this book is operatic. If a musical analogy applies, it could be that of theme and variations, where the themes would be the star, the rhomb, the Goddess-flower, the Mistress of Animals, the bird, the deer, the dragon, among others. Their materialization in clothing, paper, pottery, ritual objects, and folk art across cultures would be the rich rendering of variations. The variations are not repetitions or echoes but an unfolding of archetypes that transform themselves. John Cage insisted on not being called a composer but a listener; he claimed that Music is not a communication from the artist to the audience, but rather . . . an activity of sounds in which the artist found a way to let the sounds be themselves. In similar fashion, Oleszkiewicz-Peralba lets the myths be themselves and activate our imaginations. As collective creations, they come from nowhere but seem at home everywhere, being both timeless and rooted.

In Lévi-Strauss’ music-myth analogy, he argues that music is both intelligible and untranslatable. Untranslatable because music has no words, hence there is presumably no need to translate, but there is a need to interpret, otherwise music can seem chaotic, unmelodic, rhythmically confusing. But myth is certainly translatable; as the likes of Joseph Campbell, Jung (or Lévi-Strauss) would argue, a kind of universal grammar of the mind, the heart, and the cosmos. An example would be the Tree of Life as depicted from the Polish folk tradition and that of Mexico. In the Polish tradition, done with cut paper in silhouette, you have the tree with a cross, birds, angels, roosters, and other animals; it is boldly two-dimensional, with a high contrast that simplifies. On the other hand, whilst in the Mexican tradition the tree also includes crosses, animals, and angels, they are bustling three-dimensional ceramic figures, in an orgy of color; a kind of profusion of figures, animals, and branches that unfold with a baroque sensuality. But both are visual hymns to creation, life, and