Spirituality

Ancient | Legacy | Contemporánea | Publications

Pre-Columbian cultures perceived the world and everything in it as alive with supernatural power, including features of the landscape - mountains, caves, rivers, trees, and the sea - as well as the souls of animals and people. The earth was a thin interface between the watery depths and the expanse of the heavens - a flat disk floating in the vast cosmos of water and stars. In the center of its surface, an imaginary circular hole, known as the fifth direction, connected the earth to the sacred spaces above and below it. The fifth direction was part of a vertical opening - a supernatural shaft - that went from the bottom of the sea through the earth and into the center of the heavens. Many pre-Columbian societies associated the fifth direction with the ceiba - the World Tree - whose roots grew from the depths of the sea and whose branches supported the heavens. The ceiba is still regarded as sacred in Mesoamerica, South America, and the Caribbean.

The spirits that presided over the cosmos included a creator and many others associated with rain, wind, the sea, human fertility, and the successful growth of crops. At the beginning of time, these spirits blanketed the cosmos with invisible layers of geometric designs - symmetrical motifs that covered the faces and bodies of people, animals, communities, the earth, the heavens, and the sea. These designs - the cosmic tissues of connectedness that united the universe - could be "seen" only by caciques and shamans during cohoba ceremonies. Illness, bad crops, and natural disasters such as hurricanes were caused by destructive spirits that ripped holes in the geometric fabric of the world.

The Taíno believed they were descended from the primordial union of a male "culture hero" named Deminán and a female turtle. Similar creation stories persist among contemporary societies in Venezuela and the Guianas. Images of turtles and figures with turtle attributes are omnipresent in Taíno art because, in their mythology, the wife of Deminán - Turtle Woman - was the ancestral mother, and the Taíno traced their kinship relations through. Dualism and the unity of opposites are important themes in pre-Columbian art, ideas that were expressively depicted by the Taíno. Deminán himself wears a female turtle carapace on his back and thus represents the union of male/female and father/mother in the same figure. The theme of the duality is further illustrated by beautiful ceramic vessels that combine symbols of life and death and images of male and female fertility.

Like other pre-Columbian cultures, the Taíno venerated their ancestors. The dead were usually buried under their houses, but caciques and other high-ranking nobles were given special funerary rites. After exposure to the elements, their skulls and long bones were cleaned and preserved in carved wooden urns or large calabash gourds hung from the rafters of houses. Although the souls of the dead resided in the otherworld, they returned to earth at night and were dangerous to the living. Night-flying creatures such as owls and bats were regarded as their messengers. Many objects made by the Taíno bear images of skulls, bats, and owls, reflecting their connection to the realm of the spirits and the ancestors.

In addition to these evocative objects, the exhibition includes a selection of three-pointers (trigonolitos), enigmatic stone objects that are particularly characteristic of Taíno art. Small three-pointers have been excavated by archaeologists at sites with early dates (400 - 200 B.C.) in South America and in the Caribbean, but these examples pre-date their widespread appearance among the Taíno. Spanish accounts from the time of contact make tantalizing references to trigonolitos, but fail to pinpoint their true significance. Modern scholars have debated whether these triangular stones represent mountains, volcanoes, breasts, phalluses, manioc shoots, or all of these at once. Some three-pointers may depict the yuca spirit; others combine multiple images and suggest the visions that caciques and shamans experienced under the influence of cohoba.