What is a World View?
Clifford Geertz called saw a people's worldview as their picture of the way things, in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. It contains their most comprehensive ideas of order. Worldview is, thus, to be understood as a people's way of selecting, classifying, and structuring reality and is concerned with the logical properties of belief. However, the components of a religious system are meaningful not only because of their internal coherence but because of their practical integration with the secular life of the people who believe in them. Religion is felt to be not only logically true but also empirically true, that is, its validity can be found in the very relationship to everyday realities. A description of worldview should, at least in some minimal fashion, attempt to indicate connections with other symbol systems, like art, architecture, and social organization.
Hopi View of Death and the Relationship of Rain
One of the fundamental elements of Hopi worldview is:
The concept of a dual division of time and space between the upper world of the living and the lower world of the dead. This is expressed in the description of the sun's journey on its daily rounds. The Hopi believe that the sun has two entrances, variously referred to as houses, homes or kivas, situated at each extremity of its course. In the morning the sun is supposed to emerge from its eastern house, and in the evening it is said to descend into its western home. During the night the sun must travel underground from west to east in order to be ready to arise at its accustomed place the next day. Hence day and night are reversed in the upper and lower worlds ... (Titiev 1944).
Life and death, day and night, summer and winter are seen not simply as opposed but as involved in a system of alternation and continuity-indeed, a fundamental relationship of cycles. These opposites form what we can call a bipartite view. For black there is white and for something like the heavens there must be a corresponding underworld below us.
As part of this bipartite view, death is "birth" into a new world, and many Hopi burial
practices parallel those of birth except that four black lines of charcoal separate the dead from his home in the village while four white lines of cornmeal mark the walls of a newborn baby's home.
This world and the world of spirits are transformations of each other. At death a cotton mask - a "white cloud mask" - is placed on the face of a dead person. The spirits of the dead return to this world as kachinas. All kachinas are believed to take on cloud form of what Hopi call "to be cloud people" and their spiritual essence, or navala, is a liquid that is manifested as rainfall. When the kachinas (as ritual figures) depart, they are petitioned, "When you return to your homes bring this message to them that, without delay, they may have mercy for us with their liquid essence [rain] so that all things may grow and life may be bountiful." Everything, in Hopi belief, is dependent on rainfall, which, when combined with Mother Earth, is the essence of all things. Hence navala is also the essence of the individual self, conceived of as a liquid, and a Hopi will say, "I have the liquid essence of my fathers," to express the English notion of being of the same flesh and blood. Through the combination of the rain with the earth and its transformation into corn, the blessings of the kachinas (their navala) become the essence of our bodies (our navala). There is, thus, an essential consubstantiality in the bipartite structure of the Hopi universe that relates cotton masks and clouds, the living and the dead, rain and life.
The System of Correspondences
In ritual, songs, prayers, masks, and altars, concepts of space, time, color, and number (as both sequence and quantity) are interrelated in the way Hopi view their world. Expressed together, they form the basis of an elaborate system of correspondences that orders much
of what is significant in the Hopi world by relating a vast number of domains within a bipartite universe. This forms a system of symbolic classification, which is one aspect of the Hopi worldview.
Fundamental to this system is the spatial orientation of the traditional Hopi, which is related to the four most distant points reached by the sun in its movement during the year along the eastern and western horizons. These define the four cardinal directions, 'northwest' (at the horizon point of the summer solstice sunset), 'southwest' (winter-solstice sunset), 'southeast' (winter-solstice sunrise), and 'northeast' (summer-solstice sunrise), in addition to which 'above' and 'below' are also treated as primary directions. Certain colors are associated with each direction, and nearly every ritual act expresses this fundamental conception of order in being repeated four or six times in time, or space, or both. The northwest was yellow because the anthropomorphic deity who sits there is yellow, wearing a yellow cloud as a mask which covers his head and rests upon his shoulders; a multitude of yellow butterflies constantly flutters before the cloud, and yellow corn grows continually in that yellow land. The area below us is associated with all colors and is where there sits the deity regarded as the "maker of all life germs". Therefore our spirit at birth emerges from this direction as the "germ" or seed of life. He sits upon a flowery mound on which grows all vegetation; he is speckled with all the colors, as also is his cloud mask, and before it flutter all the butterflies, and all the sacred birds. What we see in this is how Hopi merge space, color, and even metaphoric explanations for basis of nature and life itself.
This basic space-time-color-number paradigm provides the logical basis for an elaborate system of correspondences that find expression throughout Hopi ritual. Clouds, butterflies, corn, lightning, rains, winds, birds, animals, trees, shrubs, flowers, beans, and so on are ordered in terms of this schema in song and prayer and in Hopi religious thought. Various ritual paraphernalia are constructed in accordance with this world view.
Space
The Hopi cultural construction of space is a four-way one to which are added "up" and "down" to identify six orientations. This spatial orientation is centrifugal, as illustrated in the Hopi "six directions altar". After sand is spread upon the floor of the kiva to form the "earth," a bowl (usually with cloud symbols on its four sides) of water is placed in the center. From this middle place paths of cornmeal radiate outward to the six directions and various objects (including ears of corn, feathers, animal fetishes) are added according to their positions in the system of correspondences. This spatial paradigm is articulated throughout Hopi ceremonialism. Rarely is a ritual act performed once but is, rather, given fourfold or sixfold times according to set relationships such as: yellow clouds come from the north, blue clouds from the west.
The Hopi do not articulate the notion of the "middle" in their view; however, there are many middles. As prayers radiate centrifugally, the rain-bearing clouds are beckoned centripetally. The Hopi entered this world at its middle, through what is known as the Sipapu. (The Hopi sipapu which is said to be at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the west of the Hopi villages. It is there that the dead travel to find their way to the world, the "house," below.) The sipapu is represented, symbolically, by a covered hole in the floor of the kiva - a ceremonial room. The architectural form of the kiva, the dance positions assumed by the kachinas, various shrines in and around the village reduplicate this middle. To it prayer offerings are made and from it come blessings.
Time
The dual organization of time provides a structural principle fundamental to Hopi religious belief and ritual action. The organization of the Hopi ritual calendar is based on this notion. Time as quantity or as sequence is given fourfold expression throughout ritual. The major ceremonies of the priestly period begin 16 days after an "event" in the solar or lunar calendar and are followed by four days of prayer and fasting. Observances during the kachina period also involve fourfold expressions, and processions follow a counter-clockwise sequence.
Color
The ritual construction of the continuum of color is sixfold: red, yellow, blue/green, black, white, and gray. In the system of correspondences the "color" for "down" is "all colors" but this is sometimes given ritual representation by gray. A distinct series of colors is thus established, which makes color an important symbolic classifier: First, the six colors are easily represented by living things found in nature; and second, each is easily applied (conceptually or by application of paints or dyes) to a variety of significant elements, for example, clouds, flowers, or corn as they are depicted in altars or on masks. Color may be viewed as an abstract and arbitrary classifier especially in its paradigmatic application. The sixfold division of color has important natural motivation. According to one early observer, "at least ninety percent of the vegetable food eaten by the Hopi Indians is made of corn"
(Owens 1892:163). Hopi corn is yellow, blue, red, white, black, and sweet ("kachina corn"). To the Hopi, corn is their "mother" for "they live on and draw life from the corn as the child draws life from its mother" (Voth 1901). A second basic source of food is beans. According to Stephen (1936) the "old time beans" of the Hopi seem to be "Yellow, blue, red, white, black, speckled." It is here that the system of correspondences is most closely related to Hopi life. Hopi dependence on corn has decreased since the nineteenth century, but corn remains a meaningful symbol of life its substance and that which sustains it.
Number
As either quantity or sequence, number is an abstract classifier that derives its significance from the other dimensions of the basic paradigm. Again, the numbers four and six provide a structural principle for dividing and classifying reality, and nearly every ritual act is ordered by this notion.
Reciprocity with the Spirits
For the Hopi, all forms of prayer offering are understood to be presentations requiring reciprocity between the two realms. Prayer offerings in any form are operations of exchange. They are relational but, more important, they make obligatory and compensative requirements of the spirits of the other world. In making prayer offerings to the kachinas, for example, the Hopi "feeds" them. The kachinas are to reciprocate by feeding the Hopis with rains so their crops will grow. The ritual cycle consists, then, in a series of elaborate prayer-presentations between the two worlds. In Hopi belief the peoples of the other world mirror the ritual activities of this world, and there are minor opposite-period observances of all rituals in which reciprocal prayer-presentations are made. As Voth (1912) noted: "It is the supposition that the spirits of the departed come and get the food and the prayer feathers, or rather the breath, essence, soul of those objects. [There is] the custom of not only informing the ancestors and friends in the other world that a ceremony is in progress here, but also of providing the means to have them share its benefits." Because the dead -eat only the odor or the soul of the food ... they are not heavy. And that is the reason why the clouds into which the dead are transformed are not heavy and can float in the air". While one end of ritual in this world is to contribute to the well-being of the spirit world, the spirit world is obligated to contribute to the wellbeing of this world by providing rain, which is essential to the crops and, hence, to the health of the Hopis (and all living things of this world). Rain is the most common request in Hopi prayer; however, the "gift," "blessing," or "benefit" may take other forms as well. The living and the dead, patterns of subsistence, various rhythms of nature-are all systematically interrelated through an elaborate system of reciprocities. It is this notion that is the most pervasive element in the Hopi worldview.
Corn as a Metaphor of Life
For the Hopi, corn can be viewed as a metaphor of life itself. We begin as seeds that are planted in our mother's womb. We emerge from the womb and blessed by light and nourished by family around us. A Hopi child is led from the house where he/she has been kept on the 20th day and receives corn as the sun emerges from the eastern horizon. We grow and mature. Hopi live with corn as their mainstay of their diet. As adults we will create the seeds of the next generation and will eventually die and be replaced by our offspring. For Hopi, death becomes part of the cycle and they will become katsina spirit essences and the clouds that bring rain to the Hopi people.
Corn goes through the same cycle. It begins as a seed and forms the main support and nourishment for Hopi people. As the plant dies, it provides the seeds for the next generation. The women in Hopi society hold corn seeds just as women bear the seeds of life. Women own the land that is where the corn will grow. Men prayerfully plant the seeds and tend for its growth. The rains that falls in the summer when Katsina dances predominate the Hopi religious cycle nourish the corn. It is both rain and the ancestors of the Hopi who nourish the growth. The corn is harvested after the Katsinas go back home to the San Francisco Peaks. It is at this time that the corn feeds the Hopi people for the next year and provides the seeds for planting for the future. Women again play an important role in the care and storage of the corn as well as cooking it to provide the sustenance for all Hopi. Yet it is only through hard work and cooperation that the corn grows and provides this critical base of life for the Hopi.
At creation, the Hopi were given a choice of different corn they could receive. They chose the smallest ear of corn and believe it is through hard work that this will sustain them. They are humble in their selection because they know that hard work is what will allow them to survive. It is with respect of nature and spirit essences of the world of the Katsinas that will bring the reciprocal rains needed to support life. For Hopi is both a reciprocity of life and rain that makes the corn grow. It is also a cycle of the corn seed becoming both the food for Hopi and the seeds of the future and of Hopi life itself. We emerge and live only to die and yet continue as ancestral Hopi to support our offspring as the spirit essences that bring rain.
Influencing Excesses
Within Hopi society are people who serve to control excesses. They act as "sacred clowns" to guard against conduct that the Hopi view as contrary to values for society. This is especially true for leaders who might wrongly use their special knowledge, sacred responsibilities, or tell secrets. The best clown is said to be the most serious of individuals (another example of the bipartite view that Hopi hold.) Clowns sometimes mock people through a variety of means to publically demonstrate against conduct that is seen as contrary. The clowns serve to neutralize excesses and help return social conduct to a balanced state. Clowns perform in a way that they may fool around in an obscene, playful, orserious way but always serving the people and to set moral standards before the public.