Hopi Water Wisdom

Having just written about wandering and wondering through the "magical desert of my life" in my monthly e-newsletter, What Shines, it was with no small smile of synchronicity that I opened the current issue of Four Corners Magazine to discover an astonishing article on geographical/astrological correlations by Gary A. David. He writes, in part:

"The early shamanistic tradition of associating mountain sheep with rainfall is carried on in the Pang, or bighorn sheep kachinas. This sort of masked dancer has the power to make rain. The Hopi term for the sacred bighorn sheep is pangwu, or pa'ngwu. If this word is broken up, pa denotes 'water', but it also has the sense of 'wonder, awe, surprise', etc. The suffix ngwu means, 'causing to occur'. Thus, pa'ngwu literally means, 'causing water (or in the desert, 'wonder') to occur'. This points to the mountain sheep's shamanistic potentiality.

Pretty wonder-full! No doubt his book, The Orion Zone: Ancient Star Cities of the American Southwest is equally magical.