Living life's circle

The product of more than fifteen years' contact and life with the Mescalero people in southern New Mexico, Living Life's Circle is one of the first works devoted to the emergent new interdiscipline of ethnoastronomy, a field that considers non-Western perceptions of celestial phenomena and the ways in which the sky and its movements form "templates" fro life. During this fifteen-year period, author Claire Farrer had as friend and mentor the remakable Bernard Second, signer and medicine man, who not only dreamed her arrival but accurately predicted his death eleven years beforehand. Urged by Second's ceaseless admonition, "Pay attention," Farrer slowly recognized the presence of a powerful primary metaphor, rooted in acute astronomical observation, and its direct relevance to all aspects of Mescalero life. This book beautifully elucidates the Mescalero view of a living interconnection to the larger "circle." Farrer explains the Apache concept of a nexus between the known and the chaotic, or Real and Shadow Worlds, and its personification in Mescalero clown tradition, In the course of her exposition, she seamlessly interjects significant personal experiences in such matters as death, food, gender, and the shape of present-day Apache life. A brief appendix also encapsulates a history of the Mescalero, many of whom are direct descendants of the Apache prophet and warrior Geronimo -- Book jacket.

Year

1994

Language

English

Publisher

University of New Mexico Press

Editions

1

Pages

288

ISBN

9780826315601

Data source: Wikidata