Showing posts with label native american symbols. Show all posts
Showing posts with label native american symbols. Show all posts
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Coyote legend elevates wild creature to god
Many Native American tribes credit the coyote with helping God create the world and prepare it for the first people. Or, according to other's beliefs, the coyote performed the magic himself. In the legends of many tribes, the coyote made the first humans from feathers, mud or straw.
The Zuni believed that the coyote taught man to hunt, the Sioux that the coyote taught humans the use of medicinal plants; the Shasta and others believe the coyote gave man fire, the Kutenai that the coyote divided the day into equal parts of light and darkness.
To the Indians, "Old Man Coyote" was, in turn, creator, transformer, trickster.
As transformer, the coyote was said to have altered the course of rivers, moved mountains and dried up lakes, correcting mistakes made when Earth was created.
In the belief of the Navajo and the Hopi, the coyote changed the course of the sun and removed all but one moon from the evening sky, rearranged the stars and scattered the seeds of plants all over the countryside...
Read the rest --
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Zia Sun Symbol
New Mexico's distinctive insignia is the Zia Sun Symbol, which originated with the Indians of Zia Pueblo in ancient times. Its design reflects their tribal philosophy, with its wealth of pantheistic spiritualism teaching the basic harmony of all things in the universe. Four is the sacred number of Zia, and the figure is composed of a circle from which four points radiate. These points made up of four straight lines of varying length personify the number most often used by the Giver of all good gifts.
To the Zia Indian, the sacred number is embodied in the earth, with its four directions; in the year, with its four seasons; in the day, with the sunrise, noon, evening, and night; in life, with its four divisions--childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. Everything is bound together in a circle of life and love, without beginning, without end.
The Zia believe, too, that in this great brotherhood of all things, man has four sacred
obligations: he must develop a strong body, a clear mind, a pure spirit, and a devotion to the welfare of his people.
Guided by this historic background, the flag of New Mexico was wisely chosen, with the ancient Zia Sun Symbol in red on a field of Spanish yellow. The symbol's proportions are fixed by legislative act, with the four groups of rays set at right angles , the two inner rays one-fifth longer than the outer rays. The diameter of the circle in the center is one-third the width of the symbol.
http://www.nmsu.edu/~bho/zia.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)