Hello! I have a question 🙋♀️ What do you mean by birth canal? Is it related to how caves are often metaphors for wombs in art or something else altogether?
haiii 🙋 so it is one part of the whole thing, caves have been noted as having a womb-like Thing to them not just in art but also um. in general
(those are not painted caves, just normal caves. Well "normal" you know how Nutty Putty is. fun fact second one used to a sanctuary to Artemis, now is used as adjacent to a sanctuary to Mary-Magdelene, and women who want kids bring eggs or little figurines. we on some uterine shit)
but I mostly meant in mythology. okay so in cave art interpretation[grabs your ankle] stay here. this is interesting. so in cave art interpretation we're actually kind of stumped and we've been stumped for decades. the interpretations are many, but none is really truly fully applicable to all, or even to many, and the various interpretations come with seven billion caveats ("hunting magic" interpretation? -> likely not, because painted fauna ≠ hunted fauna *possible exception? southern african rock art, because there still exist hunter-gatherers who are carrying myths and memories associated with the rock art, but pre/proto-historic hunter-gatherers ≠ contemporary ones, but they're a good interpretative source still; "shamanic transe" interpretation? -> likely not, as we do have rock art done in shamanic transes such as in north america and they're very formally different from European cave art, and you likely would not have been able to draw with such attention to proportions etc while zoinked out of your gourd, but "not drawn in a shamanic transe" ≠ "not drawn in a shamanic context, or by a shaman, or within a shamanic society"...)
However☝️ one of the newer interpretations, which takes into account the placement of the figures[I am still holding you firmly not letting you leave], is that european cave art, at least in Some very prominent instances, could have been made in the context of a cosmogonic myth of Cave Of The Origins (cf. Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, who I'm sure I've mentioned before). okay now this is truly a Everything Looks Like A Nail situation. once you're mildly aware of this theory Everything Looks Like A Cave Of The Origins. it is one of the few basic foundational myths of humanities (basically of all the How Did We Get Here myths of all cultures, you have plenty, but they actually all derive from a handful of bases), that all creatures on earth were born of Hole In Ground. Hole In Ground is the primordial Mother of everything. (hence... one could say... the proliferation of Mother-Earth goddesses). as such, cave art in some instances COULD be articulated around the function of describing/transmitting/expressing the myth of Cave Of Origins/Mother Hole-In-Ground. And for context, what made me write the post is this 👇 general disposition of the Lascaux cave
looks fucked doesn't it. it's tears-pulling irl. anyways you're noticing the Passageway + the rocky crop, and that's we're focusing on. if I were to give my own interpretation of it. and it just an interpretation. fed by and built upon what I've already learned and read about both Lascaux and cave art as a whole. If I were to interpret it in a crazy way. and my sibling in Cave I'm insane. this is what I'd do of it.
I won't lie to you when you're in the Bull Room and you have the Passageway in your sights I will not lie to you that shit looking like () with a visible Hole where the rocky outcrop/upside-down/dead horse is I'm not lying. hence I why believe Some Level of Birth Canal symbolism could be true AND real in there. And I am building my case with in mind the interpretations, that scientists made from studying the order in which were painted the animal, that the animals are painted in order and with the attributes of the season of their heat period, meaning lascaux Could be a transcript/expression of a myth/story of the cycles of seasons, and as such life and rebirth.
I'll say it ☝️ I find it less Birth Canaly than Niaux, where the experience is truly like this
Michel Lorblanchet also mentions how the progression of the realism of the figures the closer you get the entrance of Pergouset cave leans to him credibility to the conceptualization of the cave as, if not a mother-type, some kind of "pre-life" state, where the further from the light creatures are the more amorphous, chimeric, "unfinished", etc they are, and become more and more realistic as they come close to the light/outside world, and this shift towards realism is marked by
And where are you before you are born? There exactly.
Oh my fucking god dude didn't mean to make it this long. but it was such a nice trip we took together isn't it :)
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