I am fascinated by jaguars. As a child impressed by the cat’s ability to run fast, climb and swim (while most cats hate being in water), later learning of other qualities that incited early Mesoamerican civilizations to worship the jaguar and identify it with mythical deity.
I vividly recall seeing a long and fierce battle in the Amazon river between a jaguar and a large electric eel. Once the jag spotted the eel he was determined to catch it. The eel discharged vicious currents often, forcing the jag to jump out of the water to recuperate. He sat on a the trunk of a fallen tree that hung over the river, shuddering from the electrical blasts after jumping out of the murky waters, but the big cat was relentless and soon after continued his attacks until the eel was so weakened that it was no longer able to defend itself. It depicts the nature of the predator quite well.
It is obvious that a creature having such qualities would draw the attention of the people who shared its habitat or lived nearby it. The pre-Columbian Chavin worshipped the Jaguar-God, an anthropomorphic mythological being with harp eagle claws, serpent belt, and feline fangs, holding the four-ribbed, most sacred San Pedro cactus. This is the earliest representation of the San Pedro plant known to our days. A similar fanged anthropomorphic (humanlike) deity - found on a stone engraving from a cornice fragment at Chavín - carries in his hand a Spondylus (family as the scallops, thorny or spiny oysters) shell, in a hieratic, ritual fashion. Twenty finely engraved and heavily use-polished Strombus (a sea-dwelling mollusk) shell trumpets were also found recently in the Caracolas Gallery, ritual and sacred items that must have been used by the priests of the Chavín Temple.
In the mysterious subterranean chambers of Chavín, the priest-oracle of the Jaguar-God - Lord of the night, of vision and of the dead - gave his responses, possibly inebriated by the juice of the sacred San Pedro cactus emerging from the depths of the earth. At the meeting point of four chambers in the network of tunnels that run below the surface of the pyramidal complex, is the Holy of Holies of Chavín, the El Lanzón monolith bearing the terrible image of the Jaguar-God, with feline head and anthropomorphic body. The Lanzón - which literally means Lance, is a five-meters monolith of white granite, resembling a huge sacrificial knife sunken into the viscera of the earth, with its handle emerging from the temple floor. Like an Axis-Mundi, a cosmic axis that unites - in the words of anthropologist Mario Polia - the dark world of the dead to the region of the living.
The Moche were amid the most enigmatic among the ancient pre-Inca people that occupied the Northern Coast of Peru, and - along with the Chimú - they were most influenced by the shamanic culture of their predecessors, the Chavín people, who established around 1300 B.C. a shrine-Temple and oracle at the site of Chavin de Huántar, centred on the cult of a Jaguar-God.
My fascination of the jaguar continues.
I vividly recall seeing a long and fierce battle in the Amazon river between a jaguar and a large electric eel. Once the jag spotted the eel he was determined to catch it. The eel discharged vicious currents often, forcing the jag to jump out of the water to recuperate. He sat on a the trunk of a fallen tree that hung over the river, shuddering from the electrical blasts after jumping out of the murky waters, but the big cat was relentless and soon after continued his attacks until the eel was so weakened that it was no longer able to defend itself. It depicts the nature of the predator quite well.
It is obvious that a creature having such qualities would draw the attention of the people who shared its habitat or lived nearby it. The pre-Columbian Chavin worshipped the Jaguar-God, an anthropomorphic mythological being with harp eagle claws, serpent belt, and feline fangs, holding the four-ribbed, most sacred San Pedro cactus. This is the earliest representation of the San Pedro plant known to our days. A similar fanged anthropomorphic (humanlike) deity - found on a stone engraving from a cornice fragment at Chavín - carries in his hand a Spondylus (family as the scallops, thorny or spiny oysters) shell, in a hieratic, ritual fashion. Twenty finely engraved and heavily use-polished Strombus (a sea-dwelling mollusk) shell trumpets were also found recently in the Caracolas Gallery, ritual and sacred items that must have been used by the priests of the Chavín Temple.In the mysterious subterranean chambers of Chavín, the priest-oracle of the Jaguar-God - Lord of the night, of vision and of the dead - gave his responses, possibly inebriated by the juice of the sacred San Pedro cactus emerging from the depths of the earth. At the meeting point of four chambers in the network of tunnels that run below the surface of the pyramidal complex, is the Holy of Holies of Chavín, the El Lanzón monolith bearing the terrible image of the Jaguar-God, with feline head and anthropomorphic body. The Lanzón - which literally means Lance, is a five-meters monolith of white granite, resembling a huge sacrificial knife sunken into the viscera of the earth, with its handle emerging from the temple floor. Like an Axis-Mundi, a cosmic axis that unites - in the words of anthropologist Mario Polia - the dark world of the dead to the region of the living.
The Moche were amid the most enigmatic among the ancient pre-Inca people that occupied the Northern Coast of Peru, and - along with the Chimú - they were most influenced by the shamanic culture of their predecessors, the Chavín people, who established around 1300 B.C. a shrine-Temple and oracle at the site of Chavin de Huántar, centred on the cult of a Jaguar-God.
My fascination of the jaguar continues.
The rustle of shrubs that caress my fur
Blends with strewn rumor filling the air
The warning of my arrival I thus defer
Surprising anyone, anytime, anywhere
Scattered rays of sunlight that pierce
Through many levels of countless leafs
Dance on the patterns that appears
In gold and black pentagon weaves
Images of a marauder born to kill
It is me, meant to make life still
I pilfer through foliage and mud
While my sensors search and lock
Ignoring razor like thorns that cut
Through the frail flanks of a buck
That is desperately trying to run
As all his hopes slowly fade away
I know the hunt will soon be done
And this unforgiving, deadly foray
Will give me fresh flesh and blood
For escape me, he surely can not
A 1000 pair of eyes opened wide
Caught by what is about to occur
Watching the deer, unable to hide
Afraid like never before they were
Faster and faster we dash through
The dense structures of the wood
That will be colored in cherry hue
After the buck has been subdued
I know for sure I'm almost there
While I taste the deer's despair
The scent of fear fills my nostrils
I know I'm very close to him now
I can touch the cold in his chills
Lick the fret oozing off his brow
I hear splashing a few feet ahead
And the cries of one who knows
That he will before long be dead
Paralyzed by the fear that grows
Beyond his frail flesh and bones
Holding on to life he barely owns
I squat before leaping for the kill
A deadly silence surges the forest
Life seems to hold its breath until
It will admit that life does not last
And while I soar through mid air
Yoking my sharp fangs and claws
I can not see the buck anywhere
I break my brain what did cause
This delicious little young deer
To suddenly furtively disappear
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ambling away, indifference I mime
I tell myself: Better luck next time
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