rom the Great Mother
with the ontological corollary of a world of matter replicated in layered spirit worlds. Chapin observes that the world of spirit, underlying that of matter, "extends out in all directions through a series of eight levels labeled 'level one,' 'level two,' and so
on." (77) Yet these levels are strangely unrepresentable. His (cosmologically informed) specialist informants could not represent them. At least they couldn't draw them. And Chapin expresses irritation with Nordenskiold's text for not only presenting just such a drawing, but for having sixteen instead of eight levels. There is something a little comical about
EMRTCthis, a cosmic-level problem, a problem of the precise nature, ana
- To contact the user when additional contact is necessary to fulfill the needs of the user.
- tomy, and geography and more specifically, the depiction-of the visual representation-of that geography. Ch
- apin writes that "queries as to whether the spiritual levels extend up or down, or whether the
- topside levels are the same as those below, often elicit seemingly contradictory responses." (78)
So if there is a problem for mimesis and alterity at the level of levels, there is also a problem, but quite a different one, in the ne
xt stage of presentation of the cosmos. W
e are also told (78) that "as conceived by the Kuna" there are three general areas where the spirits live-mountain strongholds, whirlpools, and clouds. This seems to me quite a different sense of spiritual geography than the levels, yet in its way it is even stranger because the sites exist bewilderingly as both fantastic and actual. They are physical
sites, close at hand, with none of the splendid symmetry of axial sculpture of the multiple-layered cosmos like so many flapjacks piled one on the other. While
