Article
Collection Publications: The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership
The term "Olmec" refers to the Native American archaeological culture that flourished on the Gulf Coast from 1400 to 400 B.C. and to the art style found throughout Mesoamerica in this period. The Olmec created ceremonial centers and the first major public architecture in Mesoamerica as well as massive altar/thrones and colossal heads. Olmec art, both their monuments and small-scale objects, embodies concepts of shamanic rulership that the emerging elites of ancient Mesoamerica used to justify their right to rule. The great discovery of the Olmec was the power of images and symbols to embody, codify, and communicate a shamanic ideology, ritual system, and political charter.
Olmec art was the symbolic means by which the peoples of the Formative period visualized their ritual and spiritual relationship with the supernatural. The mediator in this relationship was the shaman or ruler who claimed shamanic power. The central mystery of Olmec ideology and ritual is transformation. Through trance, induced by ritual positions, hallucinogens, and bloodletting, the ruler was transformed and transported through the portal to the supernatural world in the form of his nagual, his animal spirit companion. Olmec ritual centered on the maize and the rain essential to the harvest. The shaman ruler journeyed to the supernatural world to propitiate and manipulate the cosmic forced that determined the sustenance and survival of his people.
__Regeneration and Shamanism__
Images and effigies of infants are among the most enigmatic objects in Olmec art. While their precise meaning in Olmec ideology and their ritual function are uncertain, there is archaeological and visual evidence that infants, potent symbols of regeneration and the cycle of life, were sacrificed as offerings for agricultural renewal in the image of the supernatural that controlled maize and rain.
Small stone and ceramic figures of rulers and members of the elite form a significant category in Olmec art. The power and authority of these figures are conveyed not by trappings or attributes, but by their bearing. Specific patterns of posture emerge, interpreted as ritual positions where a state of meditation is induced, particularly a standing position in which the ruler embodies the axis mundi, the world tree or symbolic maize plant and conduit for cosmic forces between the earthly and supernatural realms. ‚—¶The ruler stands transfixed, in possession of this empowered and empowering image, his shamanic powers made manifest, his rulership validated.
__The shamanic Landscape and Journey__
The Olmec cosmos is comprised of three levels; the natural world of visible reality and the celestial realm and watery underworld of the supernatural. Features of the landscape, mountain tops, caves, springs, rivers, and other bodies of water, were sacred points of interface between the two worlds, the sites of ritual and portals to the supernatural realms. The great ceremonial centers mirrored this topography, as in Chalcatzingo Monument 9 where the cosmic portal is represented as a cave mouth in the form of the gaping maw of a supernatural.
__Contortion and transformation__
Figures in contorted positions on monuments and in small-scale sculptures may represent positions taken by shamans to induce trance and transformation, or function as metaphors for the mental and physical rigors of transformation. The circular voids formed by some of these figures may symbolize the portal to the otherworld.
The jaguar, the most powerful predator of the earthly terrain, was the animal spirit companion of rulers and image of transformation par excellence. Because it dwelled in caves, swam, and climbed trees, it was able to navigate all levels of the cosmos. In Olmec art, human figures are shown in degrees of jaguarian transformation, from wholly human in kneeling positions associated with animal transformation, to almost complete animal forms with vestiges of human identity.
Olmec art was the symbolic means by which the peoples of the Formative period visualized their ritual and spiritual relationship with the supernatural. The mediator in this relationship was the shaman or ruler who claimed shamanic power. The central mystery of Olmec ideology and ritual is transformation. Through trance, induced by ritual positions, hallucinogens, and bloodletting, the ruler was transformed and transported through the portal to the supernatural world in the form of his nagual, his animal spirit companion. Olmec ritual centered on the maize and the rain essential to the harvest. The shaman ruler journeyed to the supernatural world to propitiate and manipulate the cosmic forced that determined the sustenance and survival of his people.
__Regeneration and Shamanism__
Images and effigies of infants are among the most enigmatic objects in Olmec art. While their precise meaning in Olmec ideology and their ritual function are uncertain, there is archaeological and visual evidence that infants, potent symbols of regeneration and the cycle of life, were sacrificed as offerings for agricultural renewal in the image of the supernatural that controlled maize and rain.
Small stone and ceramic figures of rulers and members of the elite form a significant category in Olmec art. The power and authority of these figures are conveyed not by trappings or attributes, but by their bearing. Specific patterns of posture emerge, interpreted as ritual positions where a state of meditation is induced, particularly a standing position in which the ruler embodies the axis mundi, the world tree or symbolic maize plant and conduit for cosmic forces between the earthly and supernatural realms. ‚—¶The ruler stands transfixed, in possession of this empowered and empowering image, his shamanic powers made manifest, his rulership validated.
__The shamanic Landscape and Journey__
The Olmec cosmos is comprised of three levels; the natural world of visible reality and the celestial realm and watery underworld of the supernatural. Features of the landscape, mountain tops, caves, springs, rivers, and other bodies of water, were sacred points of interface between the two worlds, the sites of ritual and portals to the supernatural realms. The great ceremonial centers mirrored this topography, as in Chalcatzingo Monument 9 where the cosmic portal is represented as a cave mouth in the form of the gaping maw of a supernatural.
__Contortion and transformation__
Figures in contorted positions on monuments and in small-scale sculptures may represent positions taken by shamans to induce trance and transformation, or function as metaphors for the mental and physical rigors of transformation. The circular voids formed by some of these figures may symbolize the portal to the otherworld.
The jaguar, the most powerful predator of the earthly terrain, was the animal spirit companion of rulers and image of transformation par excellence. Because it dwelled in caves, swam, and climbed trees, it was able to navigate all levels of the cosmos. In Olmec art, human figures are shown in degrees of jaguarian transformation, from wholly human in kneeling positions associated with animal transformation, to almost complete animal forms with vestiges of human identity.
