Tótem Jaguar
(The Jaguar Totem)
Woven by Oscar Huarancca Gutiérrez
Designed by Evan Young-Walentine
Dimensions: 145" x 85"
Number of Colors: 35
Medium: Hand-spun alpaca wool
Completed: 2008
Price: SOLD
The first religious unity in the Andes was through a collective belief in the human-jaguar connection. The jaguar was worshipped by all pre-Hispanic peoples as the liaison of the Divine realm. A pyramidal temple was built at 10,000 feet by the Chavin people which was the Mecca of this belief system. Inside, a labyrinth of corridors and chambers lead to a monolithic dagger pointing up through a hole in the summit. On the sides of the blade, a human is shown transforming into a jaguar. Pilgrims would undergo a complex ceremony involving several hallucinogenic plants which would bridge the realities of man, beast and divinity, and thus learn the secret of the Jaguar. This ceremony is narrated here in the symbolic language of the textile, the only recorded language of the Andes. This is the temple of Chavin from on high, the Pandora's box of the psyche.
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