Chapter 867 Bixizhu
From now on, until Gao Fei and others leave, this stilt house will be their destination.
This house made of thatch and mangrove has an indoor area of about 50 square meters. The floor is paved with bark. Moss grows in the corners where the sun does not shine. In this humid and rainy season, the walls and floors exude a sense of warmth. Musty smell.
There is a clay stove and blackened iron pots hanging from the eaves.
The only decoration in the house is a row of bones that serve as wind chimes hanging under the eaves: pig bones, crocodile spines, crane and camel leg bones... and human skulls.
"Asmat people have had the habit of preserving the skulls of their relatives since ancient times, just like we preserve portraits and photos of our ancestors."
Tangning introduced it to her curious companions.
Goofy stood in the veranda and carefully observed the human skulls used as decorations, and found that there were two types of skulls.
After asking Pep and Tangning about it, I learned that the skull with a relatively complete shape was the skull left after a normal death; the other type had a hole in the temple or lacked the mandible, which was a trophy obtained by the owner in the headhunting war.
At this time, a man came over and took Pep to whisper.
Looking at his beaming expression, Gao Fei suspected that this guy was a profiteer, and tried to persuade Pep to help him sell local specialties. He treated the tourists as their grievances and killed them with a knife.
Pep listened to the man silently and gave him a pack of tobacco and a bag of betel nuts. The man accepted the gift, smiled with satisfaction, and waved to the tourists to follow him.
"What are you going to do?" Goofy asked Pep.
"I'll take you to visit the recently completed Bixi Pillar." Pep pointed to the big house opposite. "If you're not interested, you don't have to go."
"The Bexi Pillar is the essence of Asmat culture and is rarely seen. This is a good opportunity!"
Tang Ning is very interested in folk culture and warmly invites everyone to visit together.
Anyway, he’s here, and Gao Fei doesn’t mind broadening his horizons.
In addition to headhunting and cannibalism, the greatest contribution the Asmat nation has made to the history of world civilization is its unique wood carving art.
Most of the foreign tourists who come to the village come to see and buy wood carvings.
One of the most famous wood carvings is the "Bishi Pillar" - a totem pole that embodies the essence of Asmat's traditional culture!
The carvings of the Asmat people, such as drums, shields, spears, bowls, oars, etc., are all very exquisite, but their artistic value cannot be compared with that of the Bixi Pillar.
This is a complex wooden pillar carved from mangrove branches, with a height of no less than 6 meters.
Each pillar is carved with a row of ancestor heads stacked one above another. Those who are eligible to be carved are very important figures in the history of the tribe.
The base of the pillar is carved with images of canoes, snakes and crocodiles, and the raised part on top is carved with headhunting symbols.
The three-dimensional details and dynamic lines on this pillar were carved by hand without drafts or line drawings.
The limbs and faces of the human figure are intertwined with the mantis, hornbill, and crocodile, showing an ingenious fusion of power and beauty.
Gao Fei also saw symbols on the Bisi Pillar symbolizing male and female genitalia, a sign of fertility.
Not only the Asmat people, but also "reproductive worship" is reflected in primitive tribal art around the world, such as totems, sculptures and murals.
“The word ‘bisi’ comes from ‘mbiu’, which refers to the spirit or soul of the deceased.”
The knowledgeable Tang Ning introduced the significance of Bixi Zhu in folklore and sociology to Gao Fei and others.
"In Asmat culture, the Bixi Pillar is regarded as a bridge between the worlds of life and death."
"The Asmat people believe that after death, people will enter the second world of the earth, a place similar to limbo - which is also known as 'Limbo' in Christian discourse."
"In order to cross this world and reach Savan, the dead need the help of the living."
"The Asmat people uphold the dualistic philosophy of 'balance between life and death'. A person's death must be caused by an enemy, whether it is direct death or through a magical curse."
"So if someone in the tribe is killed, relatives and friends must seek revenge to maintain spiritual balance."
"When the dead accumulate to a certain number, the tribal leader will call on the tribesmen to build Bixi Pillars and launch a headhunting operation aimed at restoring balance to the world."
"After the Bixi Pillar is completed, people will go around, hunt for human heads, and rub the blood of the victims on the Bixi Pillar. After the souls on the Bixi Pillar are sacrificed, they can provide help to the living."
"For the Asmat people, the Bixi Pillar is not only a symbol of the existence of their ancestors, but also a reminder to the living of their responsibility to avenge the dead."
Finally, Tangning added:
“In the traditional concept of the Asmat people, if the Bisi celebration ceremony is not held, people’s memories cannot be aroused, new heads cannot be obtained, and life and happiness cannot flow back from the ancestral world of Savan. In the human world, once the balanced chain of the cycle of life and death is broken, the world will also usher in destruction.”
Gao Fei listened silently to her story, and naturally connected the Asmat people's world view with the great environmental changes in reality.
The Asmat region is the most severely affected and largest "magic-rich area" affected by the silver flash outbreak in the world today.
Along the way, the SWAT team was attacked by mutated monsters several times. If they were not strong enough, they would have died on the journey.
It is conceivable that the Asmat natives living here can feel the sharp deterioration of the living environment more personally than foreign travelers. They have seen with their own eyes that there are more and more mutant monsters in the wild, and they are increasingly rampantly attacking villages.
Especially in the deep rainforests and swamps where the government cannot reach, facing the growing security threats and hearing and seeing monsters hurting people, the spiritual world of the Asmat people must be greatly impacted. How to explain this increasingly severe disaster?
Gao Fei imagined that he was a conservative Asmat who didn't understand the "silver flash" explosion and didn't understand that the cyclical rise of the magic power of the blue star was a natural law. He would definitely attribute the bad situation to the anger of ghosts and gods, and to the breaking of the balance of the unity of the binary opposition of life and death, so there were so many strange monsters running out of the underworld Savan and killing humans crazily.
If he were an Asmat, facing such a dilemma, facing the tide of demonic disasters that individuals could not resist and the government left alone, what could he do?
They can only seek comfort from traditional religion and place their hopes on the Bisi Pillar, hoping to appease the angry ghosts and gods by holding a grand Bisi celebration ceremony.
