<< The Anasazi are revered not only as ancestors of the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians, but also for their astonishing advances in engineering, astronomy, art, and architecture. Many New Age adherents believe the Anasazi even had a superior civilization based on pacifism, consensus government, classless society, and refined spirituality. >>
On a related note, Frauds Myths & Mysteries in Archeology (Kenneth Feder, 1996) has this to say on the Anasazi:
'Some Native Americans are uncomfortable with the prospect of a
group of mostly white, middle-class people romanticising and
appropriating indigenous religious beliefs and native cultural images
for their own cosmic salvation... For example, Rick Romancito, a
Taos and Zuni Indian, is unhappy about the New Age fascination
with all things Indian. He decries their melding of different beliefs
taken from different tribes into an all-inclusive "Indian religion"
that
never existed among actual Indians... Romancito is especially
angry at the cloying New Age assumption that Indians are
"repositories of 'indigenous spiritual knowledge'", gurus one and
all just ripe for the intellectual picking. He tars such a stereotype
of Indians as spiritual mystics with the same brush he does for
more obviously negative popular images such as "the drunken
Indian" or the noble but defeated savage.'
However, in a rather pathetic attempt to bring this back at least
partially on-topic, I'd add the same isn't necessarily true in Glorantha.
While its clear that no third age cultures are utopias endowed with great
spiritual understanding (despite what some Lunars/Kralori/etc. might try to
tell you) there's no reason that that can't have been so back in the Golden
Age. Indeed then, a high proportion of cultures probably were utopias; that
reflects a common RW myth about our distant ancestors, along with Atlanteans
and the like, and myth is real in Glorantha. Of course the utopias were pretty
different one from another, and would not have recognised each other as such -
Hsunchen and Dara Happans just wouldn't have seen eye to eye for example.
Harmony, and even spiritual understanding are in the eye of the beholder...
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
Powered by hypermail