Striking Serpents (Woodbury CT)

(split boulder on bedrock  outcrop and two stone rows)

Two Striking Serpents with snake-like bodies and stones stacked to suggest markings, including a seventh scale "healing diamond." 

Striking Serpent with snake-like body and stones stacked to resemble markings, including a seventh scale "healing diamond." 

   Anthropologist  James Mooney 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)

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=7th+seventh+scale

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=diamond

"Pareidolia Is"

With thanks to Eric Triffin

𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐚: (n.) the instinct to seek familiar forms in disordered images like clouds or constellations; the perception of random stimulus as significant.

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data...

   “Once in possession of the pattern, the data, then one must bring the tools of science to bear on the data: testing, experimentation, and mathematical analysis!" Sherlock Stones exclaimed. "As Ceremonial Stone Landscape investigators, this is what we must do; we must apply the scientific method to our observations. If, as an expert witness goes into court with only the observation of a pattern, their testimony “I see a pattern” can be refuted by an adverse expert who simply says, "I do not see a pattern”. Our clients deserve and require more than just seeing supposed “shapes in the clouds” – or in this case, "the shapes of the selected and positioned stones.”

“May I suggest, an additional distinguishing feature, sometimes present behind the triangular flat topped boulders, another data point, so to speak?” Dr. Possum replied. “Note the rhomboidal shaped stone that perhaps suggests the vulnerable 7^th Scale of the Great Serpent, sometimes present.”

“There’s hope for you yet,” said Sherlock to his compatriot, lighting his pipe…

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=7th+seventh+scale

Apologies to: https://www.edtengineers.com/blog-post/keep-your-head-out-clouds

“Fluid intelligence is the ability to see patterns and solve reasoning problems,”  writes someone from the famous Yale Community College in a fairly recent article here:

https://earthsky.org/human-world/brain-activity-pattern-as-unique-as-fingerprint/

Mr Wikipedia writes, insisting that:  "The concepts of fluid intelligence (g_f) and crystallized intelligence (g_c) were introduced in 1963 by the psychologist Raymond Cattell.^[1][2] According to Cattell's psychometrically-based theory, general intelligence (g) is subdivided into g_f and g_c. Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve novel reasoning problems and is correlated with a number of important skills such as comprehension, problem-solving, and learning.^[3] Crystallized intelligence, on the other hand, involves the ability to deduce secondary relational abstractions by applying previously learned primary relational abstractions.^[4]"

      I just don't know what to think about Mr. Wikipedia sometimes...

 

The Great Snake's Heart (7th Scale)

   Anthropologist  James Mooney 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)

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 Mr. Wikipedia believes and fails to provide a source.

From Rhombus to Rhomboidal

And Back to Testudinate

 

   The proper term is "Rhomboidal," as Dr. Luci Lavin suggested to me (via an email), noting that the shape often occurs in other forms of Indigenous Artwork, such as ceramic pottery.

   The Mohegan Tribal Museum has a rhomboidal stone incorporated into the (stone) chimney on the (stone) building and is referred to as the "Mohegan Healing Diamond."

   Turns out that there are multiple meanings associated with the shape, this feature of Indigenous Iconography found in other media such as the ceramics Dr. Luci mentions but also as well as in basketry and fabrics, wampum and quillwork, not just “decorative” but also to imbue spiritual power into a basket or a garment, a wooden corn mortar or soapstone bowl, a Stone Prayer of stacked cobbles or a boulder headed Snake Effigy with a body made of stacked stones with a rhomboidal 7th Scale, stones stacked as a form of prayer.

   And I look at an old photo of stone feature I’ve been looking at for a long time and recall Jannie and Curtiss mentioning the turtle, the tortoise and see this familiar very differently today for the first time, just after an old post where I used the word “testudinate” incorrectly, changed it to turtle effigy because testudinate refers to the shell part of the turtle…

 

Rhombus/Rhomboidal

Diamond/Healing Diamond 

7th Stone/ Seventh Scale/ Serpent's Heart