This is a historical black and white footage of Hopi Indians doing the Eagle Dance...Two dancers, dancing together performing identical synchronised movements...
I don't know when exactly (during which ceremony) this particular eagle dance was traditionally performed, but I know that "Eagle-Men" danced during Soyal, the Hopi Winter Solstice ceremony...
Hopi Indians believed that summer is the result of Sun God being close to earth and that winter was the result of Sun God being far from Earth...
Hopis also believed that at the time of the Winter Solstice, the Sun God was so far from Earth, that there was a risk that he would not turn back, and the Earth would be plunged into permanent dark and cold winter...So it was up to them to persuade the Sun God to come back...
And so every Winter Solstice Hopis performed a ritual which (symbolically) brought the Sun God Back. In 1899 "The Alosaka Cult of the Hopi Indians", J. Walter Fewkes, describes the "Bird-Man" (called Kwataka, which means Eagle-Man) who dances during the Soyal ceremony...
"...One of the most striking features of the rites of the Winter Solstice ceremony...is the Bird-Man who is thought to represent a solar god. The Bird-Man...had his face painted white, and in his mouth was a whistle with which he continually imitated the call of an eagle...He carried feathers in his hands, and, moving his arms up and down, imitated the motion of wings, as if flapping them like a bird...The Bird-man...is an old war-god, and possibly a sun god, the return of whom the Winter Solstice ceremony commemorates..."
Why is it the "Eagle-Man with a white face" who dances during the Winter Solstice ceremony? Because this is the time of the year when white had eagles dance in the skies over the Hopi pueblos...
These are Bald Eagles. They are sacred to the Hopi Indians. And in the Hopi territory, their mating season spans Dec/Jan, basically period around Winter Solstice. And during their mating season, Bald Eagles literally dance in the sky...
So here we have another example of actual animal mating behaviour being turned into an animal calendar marker and then deified and ritualised. Anyway, the Winter Solstice Eagle-Man dance works every time and the sun returns to Earth...
The Sun-God's return is celebrated at the Powamu festival (Jan/Feb, beginning of spring), when the Sun-God is addressed as Ahula, the returning one...During this festival, a dancer which represents the Sun-God "wears a mask which has a circular or disk form, with periphery bounded by a plaited corn-husk into which are inserted bald eagle feathers (representing sun rays)"dancer wears a mask which has a circular or disk form, with periphery bounded by a plaited corn-husk into which are inserted bald eagle feathers (representing sun rays)"...
Seriously cool...
He performs "coming back down to Earth" ritual...Literally...
BTW, this is not the only place where we find eagles dancing during their mating season as animal calendar marker which then became deified and ritualised. Check these articles out:
Costa Rica
I talked about this in my post "Golden eagles from Costa Rica"...
Mesopotamia
I talked about this in my post "Eagle dance"...
Central Asia
I talked about this in my post "Double headed eagle"...
Some sources about the Hopi winter rituals
The Winter Solstice Ceremony at Walpi
Sky-God Personations in Hopi Worship
The Alosaka cult of the Hopi Indians
I also talked about deified animal calendar markers from Hopi mythology in my post "Alosaka" about the deified Big Horn Mountain Sheep...
To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...
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