Waking Up on Turtle Island: February 2025

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Pattern vs Pareidolia on Social Media

I take a look on that social media page and see:

Yet another fine example of

An obvious Indigenous stone effigy

Yet another snake, I say

“Serpent Stacked” or “Serpent Laid”

In courses like entwined snakes

“Yet another turtle right there, in or on that alleged farmer wall,” I say

AND THEN:

Yet another someone says “Euro-American Stone Wall!”

Yet another someone says “Pareidolia!” and sends yet another definition

Which both Mr. Merriman and Webster claim is ‘the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”

Random, ambiguous, you know, “not really a pattern.”

Here’s a basic pattern for you:

1. A Stone Snake-like head

2. A Stone Snake-like body

Sometimes a “diamond” on the head (or at the 7^th scale heart),

Maybe below the head or behind it

Maybe a Stone horn or feather, pointing backward or maybe forward

Maybe undulating up and down or side to side

Maybe hugging the road or a water feature

Maybe on both sides of that road or water feature

Emerging from a rock face or a split stone

Connecting to “something” somewhere or maybe everywhere

Separating “something” from something or maybe everything

And maybe probably both separating and connecting

At the same time and in every time and always and forever….

So yeah, of course, I overlay the image with the imagery of informed imagination

So that even the most skeptical of skeptics can plainly see

And for every someone who says, “That really makes it “come alive,” so to speak,”

Another one or two says, “I really really hate it so much much much when you do that!”

Me, I’m just wondering how many more examples I forgot to add…

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Waking Up on Turtle Island 2025

On the dollar side of 70 years old,

I wake up to another sunrise over “Sachem Nonnewaug’s Hill.”

Reds and purple give way to grey and white and blue,

And the sun will soon glisten on the ice covered snow,

But the sun seems caught in the trees and the clouds on that hill.

I’ve got my feet up,

Only one of them swollen and bruised

The morning news in an ear bud

Only one so that the news

Only sounds half as bad

Only sounds half as sad

And I attempt to feel only half as blue

And Leonard went home yesterday,

“Stretched his eyes” like Les Two-Horns used to say,

For the first time in 50 years,

And that’s the only good news I think I’ve heard

In a month that feels like 50 years

I think about 50 years of changes in the land,

Not just on that hillside

But also along the roadsides and the rivers

As yet another stone remnant of Turtle Island

Disappears forever without much notice by anyone but me it seems

And then I think about 500 and even 5000 years of changes in the land

And then I think I should be writing more right here and now

And then I hear more bad news, more changes in the land,

And the sun breaks through, shining right into my eyes…

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Sunday, February 02, 2025

Big Snake by the Big Lake (Morris CT)

One of many "stone wall-like" artistically stacked stone cultural features that recall the Great Serpent...

"Abbomocho (Hobbomock, Chepi) – In English: The Healing Spirit..."

"The Spirit of Death, night, northeast wind, the dark and the underworld."

Chapter 10: Spirit Names and Religious Vocabulary

by Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien, Aquidneck Indian Council

http://www.bigorrin.org/waabu10.htm

“First of all, Hobbamocke is spelled many ways (Hobamock, Hobbomok, Hobbomock, etc.), and is also known by different names, like Abbomocho, Chepian, Chepi, and Cheepi. His multiple names reflect his slippery nature - he's elusive and hard to pin down.

As a deity (or manitou), he's associated with death, the color black, the northeast (the direction from which the worst weather reaches New England), swamps, and dense woodlands. I can see why the Puritans claimed Hobbomok was the Christian Devil in disguise, but the Algonquians took a more balanced view of this deity. For example, although he was sometimes harmful, Hobbomok could also heal disease and convey invulnerability to weapons.

Hobbomok was also the manitou who helped the most powerful shamans, and the Algonquians of southern New England often sought visions of him. To see Hobbomok, young men would spend the night in a desolate place, drinking a mixture of potent herbs including the hallucinogen white hellebore. The herbal concoction caused vomiting, but the initiates would drink their own vomit (often mixed with regurgitated blood) until the mixture remained in their stomachs. (Note: Don't ever try this!) Receiving a vision of Hobbomok during the ordeal conveyed shamanic power. He would also appear in dreams of his own accord, an occurrence which would make the dreamer a shaman from that time forward.

There were two important types of shamans, both having strong relationships with Hobbomok: the pniese, who was immune to weapons, and the powwow, who could heal heal his clients or harm his enemies using his spirit allies. (The word powwow now means an American Indian gathering, but originally meant shaman). In times of trouble, such as war, shamans would often lead their people into the swamps, where they could communicate more easily with Hobbomok or other watery, underworld spirit allies.

Hobbomok appears in dreams in many forms, including a deer, a man, or an eagle, but his favorite forms are the eel and the snake.

Terrifyingly, Hobbomok also sometimes appears as a European, as John Josselyn recorded in 1674:

"Another time, two Indians and an Indess, came running into our house crying out they should all dye, Cheepie (Hobbomok) was gone over the field gliding in the air with a long rope hanging from one of his legs: we askt them what he was like, they said all wone Englishman, clothed with hat and coat, shooes and stockings."

I found this Hobbomok information in two places: William Simmons' Spirit of the New England Tribes, and Kathleen Bragdon's Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650.”

http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2010/05/hobbomok-and-shamanic-power.html