The Worlds of the Supernatural and Living

 

The world of living humans often forms part of a multilayered cosmos. While the cosmos could take on many layers, it generally involved the supernatural otherworlds of the heavens and an underworld sandwiching the human plane.

An envisioned axis then connected these worlds and served as a support for the heavens and linked the various cosmic layers as a whole. Symbolically this often took the form of a tree with its roots in the earth and canopy above reaching toward the heavens. For the Maya, this is the Cieba tree, which drops its flower peddles from high above. This was the Axis Mundi or World Axis connecting 27 layers of the cosmos for the Maya. To many cultures, the tree of knowledge became a analog to the cosmos and the world axis. One can see an example of this axis in how Buddhism creates a series of levels:

The material and spiritual worlds form a continuum with no boundaries between them. This enables the living to move between these layers of the cosmos. This ability rests with people we call shamans. Shamans have the ability to pass effortlessly in an altered state of consciousness between the material and spiritual realms. They are able to communicate what they extract from the supernatural to the living there by shaping world views.  Shamans serve to translate the world through their ability to travel between the planes of the cosmos.  They were the shapers of knowledge about how the world worked.    The serve their people by keeping the relationship with the supernatural world from being in chaos. (Another Source on Shamanism)

One of the major forces shaping religious views in many cultures through time has been the cycle of seasons. Time in a linear sense as we use it today has not always existed. Time is often viewed as cyclical and repeats itself on a regular basis as a cycle. Control of these cycles is important. Human life is governed by the cycles of seasons and by seasons of planting, growth, and harvest. These cycles can be identified by movements of heavenly bodies such as the Sun, Moon, planets, and constellations of stars. The Pleadies can tell the Andean people when frogs will sing in anticipation of the same of planting and then become the marker of harvest time. Fertility, life, death lay at the core of this cyclical human experience. As Hopi view the cycle of life as a direct parallel to the cycle of the growth of corn, humans create understanding from cycles. Myth and ritual play an important part in defining the world order as part of the relationship between the living world and that of the supernatural.

This is particularly important in defining death in many cultures. In ancient times, Egyptian culture took this to a point where the living viewed death and the passage to the other world as one that moved the individual to a better and eternal life. On the way to the other world, one had to weigh your sins against the weight of a feather. So the living had to be good in life in order to reach the other world which they so desired. For the Yanomamo of South America, one can cremate the dead and then prepare a drink that is religiously consumed thereby taking in the spirit or soul of the departed. They remain part of this world and close to the person who has ingested the remains.

Humans also link between the living and supernatural in the form of ancestor worship. This is particularly true of farming societies who often associate land with ancestry. They see the generations as a part of the cycles of nature. For the Andean cultures, life never ceased in a spiritual sense so they can keep at least a part of body of an ancestor with the living in their homes. To the Hopi, the dead become part of the cycle of death to the corn plant and clouds and leave seeds for new generations and bring rain as spirit essences to nourish the living. In this sense reincarnation is a means to bridge the living directly with the cycles of time and nature. Hopi form a reciprocal relationship with the supernatural world through their relationships with Katchinas. (See Hopi World View.) In China, the importance of family is underscored by the revering of ancestors who created the larger sense of family.