Pollen Path

Up the giant corn plant, between female spirit guardians, goes the "pollen path" of the Navajo (Diné), of the Southwestern United States.

Such paintings composed of colored sand, strewn upon a Hogan's dirt floor are used in healing and initiation ceremonies, wherein an assemblage of friends and neighbors chant and encourage an initiate, physically entering the painting to re-embark upon and relive a mythic adventure.

Starting at the bottom, "the footprints represent a spiritual ascent along the mystic way known to the Navajo as the pollen path. The two colors of the female and the male, lunar and solar powers ... become one on passing between the guardian Spirit Bringers at the entrance to the sanctuary; the path, which is now of the singular color of pollen, runs to the base of the World Tree, where three roots or ways of entrance are confronted.

The bounded area is equivalent to the interior of a temple, an Earthly Paradise, where all forms are to be experienced, not in terms of practical relationships, threatening or desirable, evil or good, but as the manifestations of powers supporting the visible and which, though not recognized in practical living, are everywhere immediately at hand and of one's own nature."

On one side of the plant, the masculine zig-zag of lightening; on the other, the feminine curve of the rainbow; above, the bird of happiness, signifying ultimate freedom, transcendence, flight.

"The ordeal is an act of sacrifice. The mind is to abandon forever the whole way of relating to life which is of the knowledge of the two powers of the path only as distinct from each other, red and blue. Beyond the exit gate, returning to the world, the path is to be no longer red and blue but of the one color of pollen. The neighbors and friends who have gathered to witness the occasion will experience an exaltation, but then return to the world along the path by which they came ... whereas the initiate, nearly naked and decorated as a god, will have become identified with the adventure."

- quoted text by Joseph Campbell, from The Inner Reaches of Outer Space.

Tree of Life, Navajo sand painting, New Mexico.