From Phallic Poles to Totems

From Phallic Poles to Totems

As we find men living everywhere we find their insignia in nature.

We have our milestones alongside roads. Menhirs from ancient times.

Stonehenge and Obelisks what can I say, “Men was There!'

                                                       Penis hat-mask Benin; Dan Heller

To define our space we live in we do leave marks, we cut trees to feel safe in a fruitfull center.

We show possible intruders “Someone is Living here, right here where you now shall enter,

Be Aware!! Eibel Eiblsfeld noticed that some African tribes seem to copy the stiff penisses

of Baboonguards on rocks, As if to say “I am the guard of my area, my family”.

 

        Menhirs in Argentina.

At Tiwi in Australia, aboriginals create their totems in carved poles called Tiwi's!

 

Description

This is an image of nine wooden Pukumani poles (also called funerary poles, grave posts or 'tutini' in the local Torres Strait language) on display at the Australian Museum in Sydney. They are from the Tiwi Islands (Bathurst and Melville Islands) in northern Australia. They are sculpted and painted with a mixture of natural ochres and brightly coloured synthetic pigments. The poles range in height from 100 cm to 250 cm.

Educational value

Pukumani poles have great spiritual significance within Tiwi culture, ensuring that the spirit of the deceased, the 'mobiditi', is released from the body into the spirit world. The Pukumani ceremony performed at a person's burial site is carried out two to six months after the deceased is buried and is the most important ceremony in the lives of Tiwi Islanders. The word 'pukumani' means 'taboo' or 'dangerous' in the Tiwi language.

Instructions on how to make the Pukumani poles, use them in ceremonies to honour the dead and the dances to perform were passed down to the Tiwi Islanders by Purukaparli, the great ancestor of the Tiwi people. He instructed that a taboo must be placed on the use of the name of the deceased.

During the Pukumani ceremony, participants are painted in white ochre and wear 'pamajini' (armbands) made from pandanus and decorated with white feathers to express their grief through song and dance. Belongings of the deceased are placed on the mounded grave and the poles are placed around it. At the end of the ceremony 'tunga', painted bark baskets, are placed on top of the poles as gifts for the spirits of the dead and the poles are left to decay.

The designs of the Pukumani poles are representative of the deceased person's life, and the number and size of the poles signify their status. The family selects men not closely related to the deceased to carve the poles and provides food for the carvers during their period of work. Most men would at some time in their life be selected due to the small size of the Tiwi society. The mourners pay the men according to their satisfaction when the poles are complete.

The trunks and branches of ironwood, a hardwood tree, are carved into poles with windows and reduced or waisted sections and two-pronged terminals. These examples are painted in the Tiwi art style of geometric and abstract patterns using modern acrylic paint and traditional ochre mixed with fixatives such as wax, honey and egg yolks. Modern brushes have been used, but traditionally brushes were made from soft bark, sticks and human hair.

These Pukumani poles were purchased by the Australian Museum in 1985. They are carved and painted using modern tools and materials, but traditionally simple tree trunks were used.

Poles erected to honour great men and women, great spirits even. Isn't the house of God with it's piking belltowers a reach into the sky to be closer with the All father or Wakan Tanka.

At Madagascar we find the grave poles archaicly carved sticks which don't look as art objects.

                   


 

Quote:The town is also an excellent basecamp to explore the nearby Mahafaly tombs. The Mahafaly bury their dead inside square enclosures of wood or stone. Giant stone structures either sculpted or painted can reach the unbelievable height of 12 meters! The number of zébu horns deposited as offering on foot of the funerary steels is a sign of the prestige of the deceased. The tombs are decorated with sculptures (aloaly) featuring all kinds of objects, from houses, to airplanes and zebus. Originally available only to the nobility, aloalo could later be purchased by wealthy Mahafaly. Aloalo traditionally displayed a combination of nude human figures and birds or zebu, representing prosperity. The memorials now function more as commemorative sculptures, depicting scenes from the deceased's life, or desirable material possessions. The method and location of manufacture and the ritual slaughter of animals ensures the sculpture is imbued with the sacred spirit. The mpisoro (spiritual leader of a clan or dynasty) gathers the village men to select the wood for the sculpture and also acts as mediator between the carver and the person commissioning the piece. The workshop is located outside the village, maintaining separation between the worlds of the living and the dead.To honour the memory of the ancestor, the visitor has to spilt some drops of rum in front of the grave. It is advisable to be accompanied by a local guide from Toliara who will instruct you about the local fady. Some operators in Toliara offer a day excursion to visit three tombs. Due to the large distances, this daytrip is however a little hasty, so better take more time to enjoy the charms of the region. Mahafaly tomb with Alolay© Andre Magnin 

Isn't the Obelisk a signature of an attempt that men was at the Zenith of it's possibilities.

Totempoles pearce through dence woods and state “Here Live we” the tribe of the Orca

married within the Eagle den.

An obelisk (from Greek ὀβελίσκος - obeliskos,[1] diminutive of ὀβελός - obelos, "spit, nail, pointed pillar"[2]) is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top. Like Egyptian pyramids, which shape is thought to be representative of the descending rays of the sun, an obelisk is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon.

Ancient obelisks were often monolithic, whereas most modern obelisks are made of several stones and can have interior spaces.The term stele (plural: stelae) is generally used for other monumental standing inscribed sculpted stones.Wikipedia

 

                        Pukamani Poles as quoted above by Helen Wheeler at the australianmuseum.com

Totem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees, mostly Western Red Cedar, by cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. The word totem is derived from the Ojibwe word odoodem, "his kinship group". I have a small Kwaikiutl totempole in argilite, a hard sort of soapstone.

Picture below Wikipedia:

             Totem poles in front of houses in Alert Bay, British Columbia in the 1900s

Ruth Bennedict wrote on the Potlatches, blanket give-away parties, the boasting of Wellfare

and the biting in human flesh by bearmasked Tribesfolk. Revitalisation of the new year, the winter was nearing it's end and tribes were proud to live and build forth their nations.

The Maritime Fur Trade gave rise to a tremendous accumulation of wealth among the coastal peoples, and much of this wealth was spent and distributed in lavish potlatches frequently associated with the construction and erection of totem poles. Poles were commissioned by many wealthy leaders to represent their social status and the importance of their families and clans. A revitalisation of the totem art and the Potlatches culture was tried in the fifties, owing to the documentation we have a little idea of what's been gone since it died away by lack of notion from governments and by Christianisation and Westernisation.

 

Franz Boas was a great initiator of revival and education on tribal culural heritage and not only for the North_West-Coast tribes. (reading tip: Primitive Art by Dover Press)

The meanings of the designs on totem poles are as varied as the cultures that make them. Totem poles may recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. Some poles celebrate cultural beliefs, but others are mostly artistic presentations. Certain types of totem poles are part of mortuary structures, and incorporate grave boxes with carved supporting poles, or recessed backs for grave boxes. Poles illustrate stories that commemorate historic persons, represent shamanic powers, or provide objects of public ridicule.

 

"Some of the figures on the poles constitute symbolic reminders of quarrels, murders, debts, and other unpleasant occurrences about which the Native Americans prefer to remain silent... The most widely known tales, like those of the exploits of Raven and of Kats who married the bear woman, are familiar to almost every native of the area. Carvings which symbolize these tales are sufficiently conventionalized to be readily recognizable even by persons whose lineage did not recount them as their own legendary history." (Reed 2003).

All those legends carved in it's essence, tribal history, pictoral writings.

Omphalos are a mixture of Phallus and Totempole. Like the Yoni oillamps for Shiva temples, are A whomb and a Penis.

The navel of the earth popping out to connect. An omphalos (ὀμφαλός) is an religious stone artifact, or baetylus. In Greek, the word omphalos means "navel" (compare the name of Queen Omphale). According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. Omphalos stones used to denote this point were erected in several areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea; the most famous of those was at the oracle at Delphi. It is also the name of the stone given to Cronus in Zeus' place in Greek mythology.

Ubangi a book on Congobasin Ubangi speaking tribes, shows us some phallic cut poles

and statuettes looking like sticks or penisses. In my collection I have a statuette from the Lobi of Burkina Faso. It,s head is a gland from the penis. The form is a thick stick with triangulated breasts and vagina. A rare form which one doesn't easily encounter.

Ngbaka or Zande figure, Ubangi region (Democratic Republic of the Congo/Central African Republic)wood, pigment 11 3/4" tall x 2.5" wide mid 20th century, signs of age and use

Gallery Ezekwantu Q:

I particularly love the cubist form of this figure. Objects from this area are comparatively rare in Western collections as Ubangi sculpture is the last significant regional art style in sub-Saharan Africa to be identified and studied. Attribution of objects to a specific culture from this region can be complicated due to the fact that figures produced by various groups in this region share a complicated network of similarities.

Sculpture from the area classified as the Ubangi region was the subject of an exhibition "Ubangi: Art and Cultures from the African Heartland" held at the Africa Museum Berg-en-Dal in 2007. Ubangi is a term used to describe the array of cultures from central Africa that were dispersed on both sides of the Ubangi river which separated the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo.

This original use of this particular figure is unknown. Generally, sculpture from this region had a wide range of uses; they were used by cults and sects that settled disputes within the village community, oversaw the moral development of youngsters, played a role in the healing of psychosomatic disorders, and offered their members protection and well-being. Q

Stricktly speaking the Zande or Azande are not Ubangi, but through intermarriage and boarderfusion in certain cases it is hard to say they are not , This book on Ubangi art shows some pictures of sticks which i referred to above.

                               UBANGI: Art and cultures from the African Heartland                        

                                                      Ubangi Phallic statuette no2

See Plate one after page 186 from the Ubangi book.From the perpetuation of the dead to the invocation of the ancestors, Sticks and Poles depicted!!

Has it been all a creation of an urge of women to press down aggression of men by ritualizing,

from Penis-envy containing familiy rules, clan beliefs 'an invention of women' to escape

from thier aggressors and to tame them to bring protein of life by hunting and building for them, families? Did culture thus start. The Porowoods for boys to become men and the Sande initianion societies -with Mende society initiations and their masks- for girls, to become a woman and thus learning the rules and laws or restraints of life within their ecosystem! 

Bruno Bettelheim tries to conclude some of these assumptions in his book

Die Rituelle Wunde ueber Beschneidungs Ursachen und die Entwcklung der Initiationsrituelle. In PaupuaNG men eject their semen on boys -who want to become men-

in their initiationrituals. As if to say an I condone you in becoming a man and don't regard you as competition but as an addition of the tribes pro-creative possbilities.

 

                                       Sande Society helmet mask (1940-1965) in

                         the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

Sande, also known as zadεgi, bundu, bundo and bondo, is a women's association found in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea that initiates girls into adulthood, confers fertility, instills notions of morality and proper sexual comportment, and maintains an interest in the well-being of its members throughout their lives.

In addition, Sande champions women's social and political interests and promotes their solidarity vis-a-vis the Poro, a complementary institution for men. The Sande society masquerade is a rare and perhaps unique African example of a wooden face mask controlled exclusively by women – a feature that highlights the extraordinary social position of women in this geographical region.

 

                                                       Bisj Pole; the tsjémen

The erection of Bisjpoles with the Tsemen – a kind op penis extension pointining on top outwards- with the figuration of clan ancestors. Worshipping the cut down tree for the gift of it's wood, the growth strength High erect up into the sky, Fumeritpits the cultural hero from Asmat created the songs for them by talking to them from the sound of hollowed wood.

Wikiquote:A Bisj or Bis pole is a ritual artifact created and used by the Asmat people of south-western New Guinea up to the present day[when?]. Bisj poles can be erected as an act of revenge, to pay homage to the ancestors, to calm the spirits of the deceased and to bring harmony and spiritual strength to the community.

Objects similar to Bisj poles are found among many peoples of the South Pacific islands, such as peoples from New Zealand and Vanuatu.

Carved out of a single piece of a wild nutmeg tree, Bisj poles can reach heights of up to 25 feet (7.62 m). Their carvings depict human figures standing on top of each other, as well as animal figures, phallic symbols, and carvings in the shape of a canoe prow.

Bisj poles were[when?] carved by Asmat religious carvers (wow-ipits) after a member of their tribe or community had been killed and headhunted by an enemy tribe. The Asmat participated in headhunting raids and cannibalism as rituals. The Asmat believed that if a member of the community had been headhunted, his spirit would linger in the village and cause disharmony. Bisj poles were erected in order to satisfy these spirits and send them to the afterlife (Safan) across the sea.

Click here for more on Bisjpoles !!

Many rituals involved the Bisj poles, including dancing, masquerading, singing and headhunting--all performed by men. Bisj poles often had a receptacle at the base that was meant to hold the heads of enemies taken on headhunting missions. The phallic symbols represented the strength and virility of the community's ancestors as well as of the warriors going on the headhunting mission. Canoe prow symbols represented a metaphorical boat that would take the deceased spirits away to the afterlife. The human figures would represent deceased ancestors.Q

Here I conclude my issue From Phallic Poles to Totems!

I leave it up to you to prolong it with your contents, Thanks!!                      Madrason

 

 

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Het Verhaal van de Totempaal
6 oktober 2012 t/m 1 april 2013
De grote interactieve familietentoonstelling Het Verhaal van de
http://totempaal.volkenkunde.nl/verhaal-van-de-totempaalTotempaal zoomt in op de Indianen van de Noordwestkust van de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Aan de hand van internationale topstukken en het mooiste uit de eigen collectie, aangevuld met moderne kunst, actuele interviews en reportages, ontstaat een indrukwekkend beeld van de boeiende culturen van de Noordwestkust Indianen.