Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Eggs and Ends

Norman Muller got me started by posting this photo: “Odds and Ends” Pomfret, VT
    And you may note in the comments that Curt Hoffman said, “Norman - This wall end is strikingly similar to some which Tim MacSweeney has shown me in CT!” – which was exactly what I was thinking. I had already sent Norman an email that included an attached image that isn’t the best photo I ever took, but it shows a very similar sort of thing, possibly the one Curt was thinking of:
….This just may “possess symbolic content and contexts that can be studied from a semiotic perspective as media of communication, as stimulants and reinforcements of cultural values and behaviour, and as signs of ethnicity… a pattern of animal ceremonialism to an ongoing program of cosmic renewal and maintenance that included the animals and their "spirit masters" in the above-world as key elements,” as Michael C. Wilson writes in “The "Placing" of Identity in Nomadic Societies: Aboriginal Landscapes of the Northwestern Plains of North America” - especially since I am tempted to interpret the above as possibly an egg in the (a) Great Serpent's jaws.
    The other side of this break or gateway in this row of stones is what may be more familiar to readers here, that big triangular boulder that resembles a snake-head at the end of a stone row (although this one is obscured by another large and possibly moved boulder):
Stepping back:
     Twice is just a coincidence, they say. Have I been noticing others (or searching my old photos for more that I sort of remember)? Well, sure; here’s one more, for now:

“The "Placing" of Identity in Nomadic Societies (2005):”

6 comments :

pwax said...

You are calling attention to the oval rock at the end?. I am drawn to a different rock: the small one next to the wall in Norman's picture. It does not look like it fell off the wall.

pwax said...

Look at the wall end in the last picture of "Pomfret Odds and Ends" below.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Yes I do see the Manitou stone in the photo (and have seen it as a repeated pattern in other places) and I would agree it was purposefully placed where it still stands. I'm suggesting that behind that first Indigenous indicator Manitou is also another indicator, a stone stacking method, some Serpent Ceremonialism, a variation on the big solid stone head serpents...
The last photo of the other side: looks disturbed.

Tim MacSweeney said...

Another variation is a serpent head composed of boulders and cobbles on a piece of outcrop (that you only notice a week later when you take another look at the photo at home): http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/12/perspective.html

pwax said...

It suggests the egg shaped rock was there and the wall was built up to it.

Tim MacSweeney said...

We seem to have arrived at the Age Old Question: Which came first? The Serpent or the Egg??