ATDDTA (10) Hoodoo Hoe-Down (209: 1-14)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Iceland:

"Its eyes, for the most part, if eyes be what they were, remained open, its gaze as yet undirected -- though we were bound in a common terror of that moment at which it might become aware of our interest and smoothly pivot its awful head to stare us full in the face.
    Oddly, questions of its being "alive" or "conscious" never figured in our decision to recover it." [ATD, p. 141]

Utah:

"... the desert floor was populated by pillars of rock, worn over centuries by the unrelenting winds to a kind of post-godhead, as if once long ago having possessed limbs that they could move, heads they could tilt and swivel to watch you ride past, faces so sensitive they reacted to each change of weather, each act of predation around them, however small, these once-watchful beings, now past face, past gesture, standing refined at last to simple vertical attendance.
  "Don't mean they're not alive, o' course," opined somebody in a saloon on the way there." [ATD, p. 209]

These are both primitive gods, capable of being punitive when crossed.  It's implied that the desert gods are no longer alive, which may be why Jeshimon can exist in proximity.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Keith <keithsz at mac.com>

>"You think they're alive?"
>"Been out there at night?" (209.12-13)
>
>"American aboriginal peoples of the northwest picked up the word  
>hoodoo from English-speaking fur trappers and, like them, used hoodoo  
>to refer to any malignant creature or evil supernatural force. That's  
>how it came to be applied to the curious columns of earth or rock.  
>For they were thought to be evil in the mythologies of many first  
>peoples. But, borrowing works in the other direction as well. For  
>example, in Siksika (Blackfoot) mythology, the strange hoodooesque  
>shapes were giants whom the Great Spirit had turned to stone because  
>of their evil deeds. Deep in the night, the petrified giants could  
>awaken and throw boulders down upon any humans passing nearby."  
>http://tinyurl.com/2saqgq
>

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