iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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🕯 @amuleto.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

White Shaman is believed to have been intricately planned due to the materials needed and the time frame in which this was all painted. It would have required scaffolding and has intricate motifs that all tie together cohesively; leading some at the site to call it the earliest book in the Americas

A photo of the totality of the White Shaman Mural. It's much taller than you may suspect, with the mural going as high as 13 feet. The totality of it is believed to depict the birth of time. The tall and elaborate people-like figures here have also been interpreted as the primordial ancestors during the sacred journey at the beginning of time, and the Divinities they became.

This portion is believed to represent Dawn Mountain in both Huichol and Nahua cosmologies, where the sun first rose. The figure with antlers standing on the mountain is believed to be the sacred deer that lead the primordial ancestors to Dawn Mountain, and who in Huichol traditions was sacrificed for the sun to rise.

This portion is believed to represent the Mother Goddess, who is interpreted by people working at the site as having serpent and catfish like characteristics. This is apparently a depiction shared by Huichol traditions. It is also interpreted that the Mother Goddess may be meeting the sun at midday. The white line that runs throughout this mural may also be the path of the sun, or to further interpret on that, the path that ancestors, the sun, and Divinites travel. The Mother Goddess as painted here is also six feet tall, not to say that's her exact height but rather she is depicted as either being very large or perhaps, more metaphorically prominent, but this last sentence is just me ruminating.

This portion is believed to depict the underworld, and it is located on a part of the rock wall where there is water seeping out. It's likely the underworld was intentionally painted here as to depict the watery underworld; which the Nahua and Coahuiltecans both have a tradition of. (The Huichol also may, I am not so versed in that though). Another connection is possibly the caterpillar like being, and the nine bulges on that rectangular motif, both of which are associated with the underworld in Nahua traditions. (Specifically the number nine, rather, not the whole rectangle motif)

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🕯 @amuleto.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

It's also believed to depict a cosmological myth that would later be inherited by the Nahua and Huichol peoples, but also the Coahuiltecans of what is now Texas and Northeastern Mexico. Of particular interest to me is the Moon Goddess portion which reminds me of the Coahuiltecan 'Napakō' (cont.)

This portion of the mural is believed to depict a Moon Goddess, who is depicted here as decapitated. The white figure stands next to a black figure; I believe the black figure is one of the primordial ancestors, and the white figure is the Moon Goddess she became.

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🕯 @amuleto.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

The Napakō ("Our Journey" as I understand it) myth as I've heard it recited involves a being who tosses her head into the sky and becomes the Moon, 'Ānua'. But this also reminds me of a Nahua myth of Huítzilópóchtli beheading Coyolxáuhqui, and tossing her head into the sky to become the Moon.

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