It is fun when a foriegn country show off it’s folk culture and then you look it up many years later and the whole thing has been reimagined by outsiders. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp shows males doing a crescent moon dance in the Mexican region of Puebla. It is supposed to represent two tribes coming together to attack a foe, usually a jaguar or a viper. The man sliceing at the foe from every direction is impossible to defend against.
Todays stamp is issue C195, a one Peso airmail stamp issued by Mexico in 1950. It was a 13 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Moon dancing has changed a little bit in Mexico since this stamp. Since the 1990s a blond, white mystic named Chandani has been bringing back the moondance now for females only and dedicated to ancient God of the earth Pachamama. Chandani had tired of the masculinity of the feminist movement and learned of old ways of dancing in crcles in the moonlight while a drum plays from older Mexican grandmothers steeped in the ways of the ancients. To best open the channel to Pachamama, it is best to do it four nights in a row. Men are kept outside the circle but are standing by to keep the campfire going, serve hot chocolate, and prepare sweat lodges.
Cynics might note that Pachamama was Inca not Aztec and was attached to the harvest and rainfall that don’t seem to interest the moderns. Old rituals included sacrificing guinea pigs and llama fetuses to win Pachamama’s favor. Thankfully the moderns have not yet brought that back. The conversion of Latin America to Catholicism saw the idea of Pachamama somewhat susumed in the icon of the Virgin Mary.
Well my drink is empty. I guess a circle for praying does cross over into Christianity. Remember Johnny Cash singing the hymn Will the circle be unbroken. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting