Hopi eagle dance

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

Annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 12th 1890-1891

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...

Eagle dance

Leroy Golf was an American who worked in the oil industry in the Middle East in the 1930s and 1940s where he acquired a number of very interesting seals...

Leroy returned home around 1950 and died shortly thereafter. He had no family and only one close friend, a Mr. Henderson in Kansas who inherited his collection...

Mr. Henderson died in 1974, when the collection was wrapped up and placed in a carpenter’s wooden chest in the attic. Mrs. Henderson died in 2001 and the Leroy's collection, along with the contents of the house, was then sold to a local second hand dealer...

The items were sold by her on eBay or to other dealers in 2002 and 2003...

I wonder if the local second hand dealer knew what she was selling...

Today I would like to talk about one of these very interesting seals. This one found in North Mesopotamia-Syria, and dated to about 1800–1500 BC.

Why is this seal interesting? Cause all the symbols depicted on it point at the same time of the year: winter. Suggesting that this is a complex calendar marker...

The seal depicts two birds with outstretched wings facing each other. The birds are depicted over what looks like a mountain. A crescent moon is depicted above one of the birds...Why?

I would suggest that the birds depicted on the seal are eagles, more specifically vultures. Just like this one depicted on this older sea, also found in Syria, and was dated to about 3000-2000 BC. and also from Leroy Golf collection.

The way they are depicted, facing each other, looks almost like they are fighting...Or dancing, jumping, with outstretched wings...

There is a dance from the Dinaric mountains of the Balkans called Oro. It is danced usually during wedding ceremonies, by a man and a woman facing each other, jumping with outstretched arms...

You can see the eagle dance performance by a folk ensemble here

The locals says that the name of the dance comes from the local word for an eagle "oro" and that the dancers are imitating the mating dance of eagles. More precisely vultures...

I talked about this dance in my post "Shield of Achilles"...

 

Why was I talking about this dance in a post about the Shield of Achilles? Cause this dance is identical to the description of the dance from Iliad...Check the above blog post...

Anyway, what the dancers of this Balkan mountain dance are trying to imitate is this: courtship aerial display performed by vultures at the beginning of their mating season...

I talked about this in my post "Double headed eagle". Cause the vultures performing this aerial dance look like this from the ground...

The beginning of the Vultures mating season coincides with the beginning of the cool wet season (Nov-Apr), Mesopotamian winter, and spans this season. This is the only time when rain and snow fall in this part of the world...

This is why the rain god was originally imagined as huge black eagle, then as an eagle man, then as a man with a pet eagle...

I talked about this in my posts "Pero", "Abu", "Eagle dude from Aleppo", "Pillar 43", "Giant eagle dude with mouflons", "Strider"...

Vultures nest in the mountains north east of Mesopotamia and Syria. And it is the the rain and snow that fall on these mountains, when vultures dance in the air above them, during the cool wet half of the year, that feed the two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates...

These mountains are Abzu, the source of sweet water from Sumerian mythology...I talked about this in my post "Shamash young and old". 

In it I analysed this seal showing young (spring) sun god Shamash/Utu, climbing the mountains of Abzu towards Enki (sweet water) who is imprisoned (the ice and snow on the mountain tops) to free him (melt the ice and snow)...Over 70% of all the water flowing down Tigris and Euphrates comes from annual snowmelt... 

These mountains are also E-Kur, the mountains of the gods, the original heaven on earth...From where gods brought grain, agriculture and culture in general to Mesopotamia. I talked about this in my post "How grain came to Sumer"...

So the interpretation that the mountain depicted under the two birds is "the sacred double mountain of Mashu, the sacred mountains that Gilgamish had to pass before he could reach the land of the gods" is not off the mark at all...

I explained why we should look for this sacred "Cedar Mountain" North East of Mesopotamia in my post "Humbaba"

So we have two eagles dancing above the mountains...Which means winter...Now do you see the crescent moon depicted above one of the two dancing eagles? It is pointing upwards. Which only happens during winter...

This is another common symbol for winter...I talked about winter moon in several of my posts. 

Like "Lions vs buffalos" about this Akkadian seal

Or like "Seven stars of scorpio" about this Mesopotamian seal 

Now do you see this "star" above the ploughing scene? Next to the moon? That's Sirius, which appears in the night sky with the moon at the beginning of winter. At the time when grain fields are ploughed and grain is sown in Mesopotamia...

After the first rains brought by the eagles dancing over the holy mountains...

That's as far as I can go today. Finally, we are left with 3 dots...I have no idea what they mean...I will have to leave that symbol, which I have seen on other seals too, for some other time. I think this is quite enough for today...

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...