AURA

Wish I could play the flute like this.

I think there’s something beautiful about how much we have in common with each other and with the rest of nature. It doesn’t seem to matter what you are, you are in synch with the seasons if you’re in this world. And it all has to do with our movement around our star. So when it’s cold it may be Christmas for some or Soyal for the Hopi, or as we’ve translated it, the return of Kachina. Everybody has their own story, but it’s the voyage of the spaceship we’re on that inspires it. The Hopi year starts with Soyal, or Kachina Return, in late December or early January; Powamu, or Bean Dance, in late February; Night Kiva Dances in March and April; Niman, or Going Home Dance, in late June or early July; Snake dances in the fall; Wuwuchim, or Initiation, in late November.

They’re all connected with cycles of germination, growth, and then harvest. Of birth, life, death and then repeat.

Wuwuchim, Soyal and Powamu have to do with the germination ; Niman, Snake and Flute with growth; and the women’s ceremonies with fruition and repeat.

“In this Mora photo, a woman douses a group of Wuwuchim men
with ‘foul water’ during a tribal initiation ceremony held in November.
More in the order of mystery plays, the theatrical song-dance
pageants of the Hopi are religious experiences...”
(J. J. Mora’s painting and photography sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution)