Anthropologist
James Mooney mentions it when he described the Uktena as a “great snake, as
large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing
crest like a diamond on its forehead, and scales glowing like sparks of fire.
It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the
head, because under this spot are its heart and its life...” (Page 297 Myths
of the Cherokee)
Is this exactly
Seven Stones behind the head in the photo below? It’s a little hard to tell:
How about on the
opposite side of the gateway? Hmmm, it looks a little harder to tell:
There’s another (suspected Serpent) gateway a little less than a mile away (I’m
guessing), a little compromised as well, near an older home, probably built just
a little after 1740 or so. There’s that rhomboidal or diamond shaped stone
again, more or less seven scales (if stones are scales or perhaps markings) from
the larger head stone:
(In Lakota
mythology, Unhcegila is a similar Great Snake or Serpent and here too you find
that seventh scale mentioned: “Her weakness is a seventh spot on her head,
behind of which a flashing red crystal lies within, which functioned as her
heart. To kill her, one has to shoot a medicine arrow at it. This crystal was
much sought after by many warriors, as it grants its bearer great power,” or so
Wikipedia believes and fails to provide a source.)
And sometimes but
not all the time, I find that rhomboidal much closer than seven suspected
scales from the head of a suspected stone serpent:
Above:
Below a drawing from a previous post about being suddenly surprised to see the previously unnoticed rhomboidal:
And yet another drawing in which I included a rhombus:
There's probably more about the rhomboidal shape than just this Seventh Scale thing, one more thing that there's so much more that I don't know than do know - but that's what learning is all about.
Very often, while driving, that diamond like shape catches my eye and I have to pull over and investigate (although once that happened to me in my own driveway). See it?
From the Flickr Album:
It was a little "Reading Lesson:"
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