Myth, Legend, and Symbolism

WhiteKiboko said:
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse...

Hey, WK, would that be from "Sympathy for the Devilfish"?
(Next line: ".... or I'll lay your sole to waste.")

:heee:

tonmo said:
Hey, just FYI, I discovered that this discussion thread is linked to from the following page:

http://www.bluecoast.org/kanaloa1.html

Go to the "Edit | Find" command from your browser and type in "tonmo" and you'll find the section that has content related to this discussion.

Tony, great stuff! Perhaps we should reciprocate by listing their site as one of our official links. I was very impressed with the entire page, being quite interested in (but not well-informed about) Pacific Island culture and religion.

BTW, I collect Tarot and other guidance / divination packs, and two of them -- HAWAIIAN AUMAKUA CARDS (M. Lucy Wade Stern) and MANA CARDS: THE POWER OF HAWAIIAN WISDOM (C.K. Becker & D. Nardin) -- each contain a Kanaloa / Ceph card. I'll try to get the Big Calamari to take pix of the two cards and post them here with the interpretations -- I assume the copyright issue is OK as long as I give detailed proper credit in the photos' captions. (Tony, please confirm this for me.)

On my "To Do" shelf are a few books -- and one brief teaching tape -- about the Hawaiian language. It appears to be the only Polynesian language for which one can find significant learning materials in the US, I suppose because Hawaii is our 50th State. However, I did manage to find a small book of beginners' Maori lessons at one of the online language book catalogs (I've got the info on one of my other screen names, so if anyone's interested I can look it up for you).

I assume the situation is reversed in NZ, where the Polynesian population is primarily Maori, and Hawaiians, Tongans, Samoans, and Tahitians (if any) are in the minority. Fijians are unique because, if I'm not mistaken, they are racially Melanesian while their language is more closely related to Polynesian. (This is not unheard of in other parts of the world. F'rinstance, a Welsh geneticist recently discovered that although the Welsh language is definitely Celtic, the Welsh people are genetically related to the Basques -- a European minority living around the French-Spanish border, who may be the most ancient ethnic group on the continent, and closest descendants of the original Cro-Magnons.)

In any event, the Pacific Island peoples have a profound and often mystical respect for Cephs of all kinds, in marked contrast to the widespread European / American view of them as "creepy-crawlies" -- which this site has (hopefully) been instrumental in changing.

Aloha,
Tani
 
TaningiaDanae said:
Hey, WK, would that be from "Sympathy for the Devilfish"?
(Next line: ".... or I'll lay your sole to waste.")

:heee:

it would be indeed.... that was my exact train of thought when i put it up.... :smile: ooops i mean :twisted:
 
Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what this water spirit is?

makara.jpg


:wink:

Clem
 
Headfoot said:
(Anybody want to hazard a guess as to what this water spirit is?)

Ummm... Great Cow-Skulled Aqua-Rooster?
:cyclops:

AKA "Old MacDonald's Worst Nightmare.":wink:

The puny little legs were probably added by the illustrator to make this water spirit credibly amphibious; it's a trick used by the illustrators of old when they were converting cephalopods into Many Headed Hydras.

hydra.GIF


Above is Conrad Gesner's rendering of a Hydra, circa 1551-58, from his Historia animalium. Note the afterthought feet. Often interpreted as a fanciful squid, Gesner's engraving might in fact be of a tentacular club from a squid: each "head" could be a sucker carried on a stalk, the "crowns" serrated sucker rings.

A hint about our mystery water spirit: it comes from the Indian sub-continent.

:?:

Clem
 
The figure in question is known as a makara. In Hindu mythology, it is a water-spirit associated with the deities Ganga (Goddess of Heavenly Waters), Varuna (God of Winds) and Kama (God of Love), depicted in illustrations as an aquatic steed for these deities. Makara sometimes appear as earrings on images of Vishnu; paired makara are said to symbolize the two, complementary forms of knowledge: logical and intuitive.

The word makara likely derives from the words makar or magar, sometimes used to describe crocodiles but also as a general term for strange sea-creatures. In the Hindu sacred text The Bhagavad Gita, it is said that "the makara among the fish is like the Ganges among the rivers; like Rama among the warriors."
 
makara_sumb.jpg


The makara has been likened most often to a "water-elephant," and most depictions show an animal with a broad tail, scaly or rugose skin and a head covered with horns; one feature common to all illustrations is the presence of a long trunk. If color is used in the illustration or applied to the sculpture, it is usually red overall.

If the makara image resembles an elephant or a manatee-like mammal, it also resembles a cephalopod. The broad tail and horn-festooned head are suggestive of fused tail fins and an arm corona, and the "trunk" could be interpreted as either a tentacle or the raised first arm pair of a squid or cuttlefish. The linkage of a cephalopod's arm to an elephant's trunk turns out to have an echo in Eastern Europe, where the Czech and Slovak term for octopus is chobot nece, "trunk animal." On Indian makara, the trunk sometimes has papillae or pads distributed down its length.

sea_ep12.jpg


The scales and bumps shown on some makara are not disqualifiers for the notion of cephalopod lineage; the tubercles, cartilaginous ridges and photophores found on some squid and cuttles could have been simplified as scales for the sake of visual comprehensibility. Thysanoteuthis, Taningia and Histioteuthis are among the teuthids found in the Bay of Bengal, along with numerous sepiids, octopus and nautiloids.
 
Hi there Clem --

Wow! This is absolutely amazing stuff, and makes me hope that you will continue to pursue research along these lines for this thread, relating to as many cultures as possible. I have some general familiarity with Hinduism, but had never heard of this creature. It makes sense that Cephs combine both sacred and sensual connotations in Hindu symbolism (as they do in both Japanese/Shinto and Polynesian symbolism) -- since the two qualities are aspects of the same principle in these cultures.

Some of my fellow Noo Yawkers might be surprised to know that the noun "mugger" is derived from the (Hindi? Sanskrit?) word magar, but since crocodiles are ambush hunters, the connection isn't that hard to trace. Even more interesting, I recall that in one of Arthur C. Clarke's works (either the book THE DEEP RANGE or his short story about the attempted capture of an Archi -- I forget the name) he refers to the featured GS as "the old mugger".

Unlike our use of the term "mugger", the connotations of the term in Hindu symbolism are obviously positive, considering the association with the sacred river Ganges, the Gods Varuna and Kama, the hero Rama (like Krishna, an avatar of the Preserver Deity Vishnu), and -- by the nature of the term "water-elephant" -- Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed God of Happiness. Jai Makara!

I was also delighted to hear that some of my fellow Taningiae currently patrol the Bay of Bengal. Anywhere in the deep some illumination is needed.... we'll be there!
:idea: :squid: :idea:

Keep those myths, legends, symbols, photos, and discussions coming....

Taninigia
 
Ah good I was hoping there was a thread on this kind of thing (great stuff too).

In the latest Fortean Times there is a report on various ancestral spirits - here is the extract I thought worth throwing in (from FT181:44)

Even today, he tells me at one vahi-mana (place of supernatural power), there is a female spirit that regularly materialises.... with a pet octopus perched upon her shoulder. Sounding like a cross between a Disney character and Casper the Friendly Ghost, she's friendly, helpful and "appears to people in the state between awake and asleep" to aid in healing.

Thats all there is but I thought it worth passing on.

Now a quick question. It has come up before (and I believe is being discussed in the members area?) but I have been looking into the origins of tentacle hentai and the modern incarnation seems to have been acceptable because of the various appearances during the Edo Period. Now this seems to be influenced by resurrgence in Shinto which like other animistic belief systems blurs the boundary between humans and nature. However, trying to find out any preceeding precidents in Japanese mythology have proved difficult and I struggled to find anything on the ocotopus or squid in Japanese mythology (in any context) - I assume there must be some but I couldn't find anything. Anyone know of any (not necessarily in connection to my intial query)?

I also only have the Ancient Mythology volume of Campbell's masks of God and I wonder if the Oriental Mythology volume has anything on this:

http://www.phil-books.com/The_Masks_of_God_Oriental_Mythology_0140194428.html

I'll see if I can't dig it out.

Emps
 
Emperor said:
However, trying to find out any preceeding precidents in Japanese mythology have proved difficult and I struggled to find anything on the ocotopus or squid in Japanese mythology (in any context) - I assume there must be some but I couldn't find anything. Anyone know of any (not necessarily in connection to my intial query)?

Hello Emps,

If I utilize my local library network, I can get a book with some relevant material. It'll take a week or so to get my hands on it. It's an older sea-monster themed title that I flipped through last summer.

:sink:

Clem
 
Clem said:
If I utilize my local library network, I can get a book with some relevant material. It'll take a week or so to get my hands on it. It's an older sea-monster themed title that I flipped through last summer.

:sink:

Thats great - I'm in no hurry it was something I was menaing to ask but the octopus pet thing made me remember to ask.

What book is it?

Emps
 
Emperor said:
What book is it?
Emps,

I don't recall the title, it was a battered old thing ("old," meaning of sixties provenance) that must have gone into the library from someone's summer cottage. The chapter about cephs in mythology was quite good, with due attention given to non-Western cultures.

Stay tuned.

Clem
 
Umi-Bozu

I just got the book Phenomena (1977) from eBay and soemthing that caught my eye was on page 119 - it was a small reproduction of a Japanese illustration of the Umi-Bozu which was descirbed there as a giant humanoid squid but Googling it it came up as more of a ghost type figure of a weird amalgam of elements.

e.g.:

The Japanese UMI BOZU is a huge sea ghost who haunts Japanese sailors. It is bald and has enormous, terrifying eyes.

http://library.thinkquest.org/16665/ghosts.htm

The bakemono depicted include hitotsu-me kozo (one-eyed priest with long, lolling tongue); an oni waving a fan while seated in a hibachi that has come to life; umi bozu, the octopus-headed priest carrying a huge Buddhist fan; and an unruly frog atop minogame (long-tailed tortoise).

Orientations Gallery - Cloisonné Vase of Snake

It is depicted as more of a serpent here:

Demons

but that is not a Japanese ilustartion so may not actually be of it.

It also appaers to have been on of the "Monsters in my pocket" series of toys:

Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

STA: Monster In My Pocket SUPER SCARY (Series 3) (117-120)

ahhhhhhhhh that is wht turns up in the Google image search (in the midle at the bottom):

Monster In My Pocket

Some discussion:

http://pub141.ezboard.com/fxprojectforumfrm11.showMessage?topicID=42.topic

http://pub141.ezboard.com/fxprojectforumfrm17.showMessage?topicID=1.topic

So does anyone know any more or have access to the illustration? The reference is:

Painting by Kuniyoshi from H. Joly Legend in Japanese Art, 1908.

I might try and interlibrary loan that one I'm in the library tomorrow.

Emps
 

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