Chapter Title: Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America

Chapter Author(s): Aby M. Warburg

Book Title: Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America
Book Author(s): ABY M. WARBURG
Published by: Cornell University Press

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Images from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America

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 Images from �he Kegion
of the Pueblo Indians
of North America

Es ist ein altes Buch zu bliittern,

Athen-Oraibi, alles Vettern.

It is a lesson from an old book:

the kinship of Athens and Oraibi.

If I am to show you images, most of which I photo­

graphed myself, from a j ourney undertaken sorne twenty­
seven years in the past, and to accompany them with
words, then it behooves me to preface my attempt with
an explanation. The few weeks I have had at my disposal
have not given me the chance to revive and to work
through my old memories in such a way that I might offer
you a solid introduction into the psychic life of the Indi­
ans. Moreover, even at the time, I was unable to give
depth to my impressions, as I had not mastered the In­
dian language. And here in fact is the reason why it is so
difficult to work on these pueblos: Nearby as they live to
each other, the Pueblo Indians speak so many and such
varied languages that even American scholars have the

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2 greatest difficulty penetrating even one of them. In addi­
tion, a j ourney limited to several weeks could not impart
truly profound impressions . If these impressions are now
more blurred than they were, I can only assure you that,
in sharing my distant memories, aided by the immediacy
of the photographs, what I have to say will offer an im­
pression both of a world whose culture is dying out and
of a problem of decisive importance in the general writ­
ing of cultural history: In what ways can we perceive es­
sential character traits of primitive pagan humanity ?
The Pueblo Indians derive their name from their sed­
entary lives in villages ( Spanish: pueblos ) as opposed to
the nomadic lives of the tri bes who until several decades
ago warred and hunted in the same areas of New Mexico
and Arizona where the Pueblos now live .
What interested me as a cultural historian was that in
the midst of a country that had made technological cul­
ture into an admirable precision weapon in the hands of
intellectual man, an enclave of primitive pagan humanity
w a s a b l e to m a i n t a i n i t s e l f a n d- a n e n t i r e l y s o b e r
struggle for existence notwithstanding-to engage i n
hunting and agriculture with a n unshakable adherence to
magical practices that we are accustomed to condemning
as a mere symptom of a completely backward humanity.
Here, however, what we would call superstition g o e s
h a n d in h a n d with livelihoo d . It consists of a religious
devotion to natural phenomena, to animal s and plants, to
which the Indians attribute active souls, which they be­
lieve they can influence primarily through their masked
dances . To us, this synchrony of fantastic magic and so­
ber purposiveness appears as a symptom of a cleavage;
for the Indian this is not schizoid but, rather, a liberating
experience of the boundless communicability between
man and environment.
At the same time, one aspect of the Pueblo Indians'
religious psychology requires that our analysis proceed
with the greatest caution. The material is contaminated :

A BY M. WARBURG

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 3

Fig. 1. Serpent as lightning.

Reproduction of an altar floor, kiva ornamentation.

it has been layered over twice. From the end of the six­
teenth century, the Native American foundation was
overlaid by a stratum of Spanish Catholic Church educa­
tion, which suffered a violent setback at the end of the
seventeenth century, to return thereafter but never offi­
cially to reinstate itself in the Moki villages. And then
carne the third stratum: North American education.
Yet closer study of Pueblo pagan religious formation
and practice reveals an obj ective geographic constant,
and that is the scarcity of water. For so long as the rail­
ways remained unable to reach the settlements, drought
and desire for water led to the same magical practices to­
ward the binding of hostile natural forces as they did in
primitive, pretechnological cultures all over the worl d.
Drought teaches magic and prayer.

IMAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO IND IANS

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4 The specific issue of religious symbolism is revealed
in the ornamentation of pottery. A drawing 1 obtained
personally from a n Indian will show how apparently
purely decorative ornaments must in fact be interpreted
symbolically and cosmologically and how alongside one
basic element in cosmologic imagery-the universe con­
ceived in the form of a house-an irrational animal figure
appears a s a mysterious and fearsome demon: the ser­
pent. But the most drastic form of the animistic (i . e . , na­
ture-inspiring ) Indian cult is the masked dance, which 1
shall show first in the form of a pure animal dance, sec­
ond in the form of a tree-worshipping dance, and finally
a s a dance with live serpent s . A glance at similar phenom­
ena in pagan Europe will bring us, finally, to the follow­
ing question: To what extent does this pagan world view,
a s it persists among the Indians, give us a yardstick for
the development from primitive paganism, through the
paganism of classical antiquity, to modern man ?

AH in aH it is a piece of earth only barely equipped by na­

ture, which the prehistoric and historie inhabitants of the
region have chosen to call their home.Apart from the nar­
row, furrowing vaHey in the northeast, through which the
Rio Grande del Norte flows to the Gulf of Mexico, the
landscape here consists essentially of plateaus: extensive,
horizontally situated masses of limestone and tertiary
rock, which soon form higher plateaus with steep edges
and smooth surfaces. (The term mesa compares them with
tables.) These are often pierced by flowing waters, ... by
ravines and canyons sometimes a thousand feet deep and
more, with waHs that from their highest points plummet
almost verticaHy, as if they had been sliced with a saw....
For the greater part of the year the plateau landscape re­
mains entirely without precipitation and the vast majority
of the canyons are completely dried up; only at the time
that snow melts and during the brief rainy periods do pow­
erful water masses roar through the bald ravines.1

ABY M. WARBURG

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 In this regio n of the Colorado plateau of the Rocky 5
Mountains, where the states o f Colorado, Utah , New
Mexico, and Arizona meet, the ruined sites of prehistoric
communities s urvive alongside the currently inhabited
Indian villages . In the northwestern part of the plateau,
in the state of Colorado, are the now abandoned cliff­
dwelling s : houses built into clefts of rock. The e astern
group consists o f approximately eighteen villages, all
relatively accessible from Santa Fe and Albuquerque . The
especially important villages of the Zuñi lie more to the
southwest and can be reached in a day's journey from
Fort Wingate . The hardest to reach-and therefore the
most undisturbed in the preservation of ancient ways-
are the villages of the Moki ( Hopi ) , six in all, rising out of
three parallel ridges of rock.
In the midst, in the plains, lies the Mexican settlement
o f Santa Fe, now the capital o f New Mexico, having
come under the dominion of the United Sta tes after a
hard struggle, which lasted into the last century. From
here, and from the neighboring town of Albuquerque,
one can reach the majority of the eastern Pueblo villages
without great difficulty.
Near Albuquerque is the village of Laguna, which,
though it does not lie quite s o high as the others, pro­
vides a very good example o f a Pueblo settlement. The
actual village lies on the far side o f the Atchison-To­
pe ka-Santa F e railway lineo The European settlement,
below in the plain, a buts o n the station. The indigenous
village consists of two-storied houses . The entrance i s
fro m t h e top : one climbs up a ladder, a s there i s n o door
at the bottom . The original reason for this type o f house
was its superior defensibility against enemy attack. In
this way the Pueblo Indians developed a cross between a
house and a fortification which i s characteristic o f their
c i v i l i z a t i o n and p r o b a bly r e m i n i s c e n t o f pre h i s t o r i c
American time s . It i s a t e rr a c e d structure o f h o u s e s
whose ground floors s i t o n second houses which can sit

I MAGES FROM THE REGION O F THE PUEBLO INDIANS

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6

Fig. 2. Interior of a house in Oraibi with dolls and broom.

Warburg's photograph.

on yet third ones and thus form a conglomeration of

rectangular living quarters.
In the interior of such a house, small dolls are sus­
pended from the ceiling-not mere toy dolls but rather
like the figures of saints that hang in Catholic farmhouses
( Figure 2). They are the so-called kachina dolls: faithful
representations of the masked dancers, the demoniac me­
diators between man and nature at the periodic festivals
that accompany the annual harvest cycle and who consti­
tute sorne of the most remarkable and unique expressions

ABY M. WARBURG

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 7

Fig. 3. Laguna. You n g w o m a n carrying a p o t i n s cribed w i t h bird

"hieroglyph." Warburg's photograph.

of this farmers' and hunters' religion . On the wall, in

contradistinction to these dolls, hangs the symbol of in­
truding American culture: the broom.
But the most essential product of the applied arts,
with both practical and religious purposes, is the earthen­
ware pot, in which water is carried in all its urgency and
scarcity. The characteristic styl e for the drawings on
these pots is a skeletal heraldic image. A bírd, for ex­
ample, may be dissected into its essential component
parts to form a heral dic abstraction . It becomes a

l MAGES FROM THE REG l ON OF T H E PUEBLO lND lANS

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8 hieroglyph, not simply to be looked at but, rather, to be
read (Figure 3) . We have here an intermediary stage be­
tween a naturalistic image and a sign, between a realistic
mirror image and writing. From the ornamental treat­
ment of such animal s , one can immediately see how this
manner of seeing and thinking can lead to symbolic pic­
tographic writing.
The bird plays an important part in Indian mythical
perception, a s anyone familiar with the Leatherstocking
Tales know s . Apart from the devotion it receives , like ev­
ery other animal, a s a totem, a s an imaginary ancestor,
the bird commands a special devotion in the context of
the burial culto It seems even that a thieving bird-spirit
b e l o ng e d t o the fun d a m e n t a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s of t h e
mythical fantasies of t h e prehistoric Sikyatk i . T h e bird
has a place in idolatrous cults for its feathers. The Indians
have made a s p e c i a l prayer instrument out o f s m a l l
sticks-bahos; tied with feathers, they a r e placed on fe­
tish altars and planted on grave s . According to the au­
thoritative explanations of the Indians, the feathers act a s
winged entities b earing t h e Indians' wishes a n d prayers
to their demoniac e ssences in nature .
There is no doubt that contemporary Pueblo pottery
shows the influence of medieval Spanish technique, a s it
was brought to the Indians by the Jesuits in the eigh­
teenth century. The excavations of Fewkes have estab­
lished incontrovertably, however, that an older potting
technique existe d , autonomous fro m the S p a n i s h . 2 It
bears the same heraldic bird motives together with the
serpent, which for the Mokis-as in all pagan religious
practice-commands cultic devotion a s the most vital
symbo l . This serpent still appears on the base of con te m­
porary vessels exactly a s Fewkes found it on prehistoric
ones: coiled, with a feathered head. On the rims, four ter­
race-shaped attachments carry small representations of
animals. We know from work on Indian mysteries that
these animals-for example, the frog and the spider-

ABY M. WARBURG

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 The serpent (Ttzitz Chu'i) and the 9
cosmological drawing with the weather-
fetish were sketched for me on 10
January 1896 in my room, no. 59, in
the Palace Hotel in Santa Fe, by Cleo
Jurino, the guardian of the Estufa at
Cochita. C. J. is also the painter of the
wall-paintings in the Estufa. The priest
of Chipeo Nanutsch.

1. Aitschin, house of Yaya, the fetish.

2. Kashtiarts, the rainbow.

3. Yerrick, the fetish (or Yaya).

4. Nematje, the white c1oud.

5. Neaesh, the rainc1oud.

6. Kaasch, rain.

7. Purtunschtschj, lightning.

10. Ttzitz-chui, the water-serpent.

11. The 4 rings signify that whoever

approaches the serpent and does
not tell the truth, drops dead
before one can count to 4.

.___./i
. ... .
.. 1IfT.)�
Fig. 4. Drawing by Cleo Jurino of serpent and "worldhouse," with Warburg's
annotations .

represent the points of the compass and that these vessels

are placed in front of the fetishes in the subterranean
prayer room known as the kiva. In the kiva, at the core of
devotional practice, the serpent appears as the symbol of
lightning ( Figure 1).
In my hotel in Santa Fe, I received from an Indian,
Cleo Jurino, and his son, Anacleto Jurino, original draw­
ings that, after sorne resistance, they made before my eyes

IMAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO IND IANS

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10 a n d in which they outlined their cosmologic world view
with colored pencils (Figure 4) . The father, Cleo, was one
of the priests and p a inter of the kiva in Cochiti . The
drawing showed the serpent as a weather deity, a s it hap­
pens, unfeathered but otherwise portrayed exactly as it
appears in the image on the vase, with an arrow-pointed
tongue . The roof of the worldhouse bears a stair-shaped
gable . Above the waHs spans a rainbow, and from massed
clouds below flows the rain, represented by short strokes .
In the middle, as the true master of the stormy world­
house, appears the fetish ( not a serpent figure ) : Yaya or
Yerrick.
In the presence of such paintings the pious Indian in­
vokes the storm with aH its blessings through magical
practices, of which to u s the most a stonishing is the han­
dling of live, poisonous serpent s . As we saw in Jurino's
drawing, the serpent in its lightning shape is magicaHy
linked to lightning.
The stair-shaped roof of the worldhouse and the ser­
pent-arrowhead, along with the serpent itself, are consti­
tutive elements in the Indians' symbolic language of im­
age s . 1 would sugge st without any doubt that the stairs
contain at least a Pan-American and perhaps a worldwide
symbol of the cosmo s .
A photograph of the underground kiva of S i a , after
Mrs . Stevenson, shows the organization of a carved light­
ning altar a s the focal point of sacrificial ceremony, with
the lightning serpent in the company of other sky-ori­
ented symbols . Ir is an altar for lightning from aH points
of the comp a s s . The Indians crouching before it have
placed their sacrificial offerings on the altar and hold in
their hand the symbol of mediating prayer: the feather
(Figure 5 ) .
My wish t o observe the Indians directly under the in­
fluence of official Catholicism was favored by circum­
stance. I was able to accompany the Catholic priest Pete
Juillard, whom I had met on New Year's D ay 1 8 9 5 [sic]

ABY M. WARBURG

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 II

Fig. 5. The kiva at Sia. Interior with lightning altar (in the style of Matilda
Coxe Stevenson ).

while watching a Mexican Matachina dance, on an in­

spection tour that took him to the romantically situated
village of Acoma.
We traveled through this gorse-grown wilderness for
about six hours, until we could see the vil lage emerging
from the sea of rock, like a Heligoland in a sea of sand.
Before we had reached the foot of the rock, bells began to
ring in honor of the priest. A squad of brightly dad
redskins [Ro thau te] carne running with lightning speed

I MAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO IND IANS

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I2

Fig. 6. In front of the Acoma church door. Warburg's photograph .

down the path t o carry u p our luggage. The carriages re­

mained below, a necessity that proved ill fated : the Indi­
ans stole a cask of wine the priest had received as a gift
from the nuns of Bernalil lo. O nce on top, we were imme­
diately received with all the trappings of honor by the
Governador-Spanish names for the ruling vil lage chiefs
are still in use . He put the priest's hand to his lips with a
slurping noise, inhaling, as it were, the greeted person's
aura in a gesture of reverential welcome . We were housed
in his large main room together with the coachmen, and

ABY M. WARBURG

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Fig. 7. Interior of the church at Acoma. Warburg's photograph.

on the priest's request, 1 promised him that 1 woul d at­

tend mass the following morning.
Indians are standing before the ehureh door ( Figure
6). They are not easily led inside. This requires a loud eal l
b y the ehief from the three parallel village streets. A t last
they assembled in the ehureh. They are wrapped in eolor­
fuI woolen cloths, woven in the open by noma die Navaj o
women but produeed also by the Pueblos themselves.
They are ornamented in white, red, or blue and make a
most pieturesque impression.

I MAGES FRO M THE REGION OF T H E PUEBLO IND IANS

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I4

Fig. 8. Acoma. Stair-shaped roof ornamentating the church wall.

Warburg's photograph.

The interior of the church has a genuine little baroque

altar with figures of saints ( Figure 7). The priest, who
understood not a word of the Indian language, had to
employ an interpreter who translated the mass sentence
by sentence and may well have said whatever he pleased.
It occurred to me during the service that the wal l was
covered with pagan cosmologic symbols, exactly in the
style drawn for me by Cleo Jurino. The church of Laguna
is also covered with such painting, symbolizing the cos-

ABY M. WARBURG

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Fig. 9. Sta ir ornament carved from a tree. Warburg's photograph .

mos with a stair-shaped roof ( Figure 8). The j agged orna­

ment symbolizes a stair, and indeed not a perpendicular,
square stair but rather a much more primitive form of a
stair, carved from a tree, which still exists among the
Pueblos ( Figure 9).
In the representation of the evolution, ascents, and
descents of nature, steps and ladders embody the primal
experiences of humanity. They are the symbol for upward
and downward struggle in space, j ust as the circle-the

I MAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO IND IANS

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16 coiled serpent-is the symbol for the rhythm o f time .
Man, who no longer moves on four limbs but walks up­
right and is therefore in need of a prop in order to over­
come gravity as he looks upward, invented the stair as a
means to dignify what in relation to animals are his infe­
rior gifts. Man, who learns to stand upright in his second
year, perceives the felicity of the step beca use, as a crea­
ture that has to learn how to walk, he thereby receives the
grace of holding his head aloft . Standing upright is the
human act par excellence, the striving of the earthbound
toward heaven, the uniquely symbolic act that gives to
walking man the nobility of the erect and upward-turned
head.
Contemplation of the sky i s the grace and curse of
humanity.
Thus the Indian creates the rational element in his
cosmology through his equation of the worldhouse with
his own staired house, which is entered by way of a lad­
der. But we must be careful not to regard this worldhouse
as a simple expression of a spiritually tranquil cosmol­
ogy; for the mistre s s o f the worldhouse remains the
uncanniest of creatures: the serpent.
The Pueblo Indian is a hunter as well as a tiller of the
soil-if not to the same extent as the savage tri bes that
once lived in the region. He depends for his subsistence
on meat as well as on corno The masked dances , which at
first seem to us like festive accessories to everyday life ,
a r e in fact magical practices for t h e social provision of
fo o d . The masked dance, upon which we might ordi­
narily look as a form of play, is in its essence an earnest,
indeed warlike, measure in the fight for existence. AI­
though the exclusion o f bloody and s adistic practices
makes these dances fundamentally different from the war
dances of the nomadic Indians, the Pueblos' worst en­
emies, we must not forget that these remain, in their ori­
gin and inner tendency, dances of plunder and sacrifice.
When the hunter or tiller of the soil masks himself, trans-

ABY M . WARBURG

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forms himself into an imitation of his booty-be that ani- I7
mal or corn-he believes that through mysterious, mimic
transformation he will be a b l e to procure in advance
what he coterminously strives to achieve through his so-
ber, vigilant work a s tiller and hunter. The dances are ex­
pressions of applied magic . The social provision of food
is schizoid: magic and technology work together.
The synchrony [Nebeneinander] o f logical civiliza­
tion and fantastic, magical causation shows the Pueblo
Indians ' peculiar condition of hybridity and transition .
They are clearly no longer primitives dependent on their
senses, for whom no action directed toward the future
can exist; but neither are they technologically secure Eu­
ropeans, for whom future events are expected to be or­
ganically or mechanically determined . They stand on
middle ground between magic and logos, and their in­
strument of orientation is the symbol. Between a culture
of touch and a culture of thought is the culture of sym­
bolic connection. And for this stage of symbolic thought
and conduct, the dances of the Pueblo Indians are exem­
plary.
When 1 first saw the antelope dance in San Ildefonso,
it struck me as quite harmless and almost comica l . But
for the folklorist interested in a biologic understanding of
the roots of human cultural expression, there is no mo­
ment more dangerous than when he is moved to laugh at
popular practices that strike him as comical. To laugh at
the comical element in ethnology is wrong, because it in­
stantly shuts off insight into the tragic element o
At San Ildefonso-a pueblo near Santa Fe which has
long been under American influence-the Indians as­
sembled for the dance . The musicians gathered first,
armed with a large drum . (You can see them standing, in
Figure 10, in front of the Mexi.:ans on horseback . ) Then
the dancers arranged themselves into two parallel rows
and a ssumed the character of the antelope in mask and
posture. The two rows moved in two different ways .

lM A G ES FR OM T H E R EG lON OF T H E P UEBLO lN DlA N S

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I8

Fig. 10. Antelope dance at San Ildefonso.

Either they imitated the animal's way of walking , or

t h e y supported thems e lve s o n their front l e g s-small
stilts wound with feathers-making m ovements with
them while standing in plac e . At the h ead of each row
stood a female figure and a hunter. With regard to the
fema l e figure , I was abl e t o l e arn o n l y that s h e was
called the "mother of all animals . " 3 To her the animal
mime addre s s e s his invo cations .
T h e insinuatio n into t h e animal mask al l o w s t h e
hunting dance to simulate t h e actual hunt through a n an­
ticipatory capture of the animal . This measure is not to
be re garde d as mere play. In t h e ir bonding with t h e
extrapers onal , the masked dance s signify for primitive
man the most thorough subordination to s orne alien be­
ing . W h en the Indian in his mimetic c o stume imitate s , for
instance , the expre s sions and movements of an animal ,

ABY M. WARBURG

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he insinuates himself into an animal form not out of fun I9
but, rather, to wrest s o mething magical from nature
through the transformation of his person, something he
cannot atta in by means of his unextended and unchanged
personality.
The simulated p antomimic animal dance is thus a
cultic act of the highest devotion and self- a bandon to an
alien being. The masked dance of so-called primitive
peoples is in its original essence a document of social pi­
ety. The Indian's inner attitude to the animal is entirely
different from that of the European. He regards the ani­
mal a s a higher being, as the integrity of its animal nature
m a k e s it a much more gifted creature than m a n , its
weaker counterpart.
My initiation into the p sychology of the will to ani­
mal metamorphosis carne, j ust before my departure , from
Frank Hamilton Cushing, the pioneering and veteran ex­
plorer of the Indian p syche. I found his insights person­
ally overwhelming. This pockmarked man with sparse
reddish ha ir and of inscrutable age, smoking a cigarette ,
said to me that an Indian had once told him, why should
man stand taller than animals ? " Take a good look at the
antelope, she is aH running, and runs so much better than
man-or the bear, who is all strength . Men can only do in
part what the animal is, totally." This fairy-tale way of
thinking, no matter how odd it may sound, is the prelimi­
nary to our scientific, genetic explanation of the world.
These Indian pagans, like pagans all over the world, form
an attachment out of reverential awe-what i s known as
totemism-to the animal world, by believing in animal s
of all kinds as the mythical ancestors of their tribes. Their
explanation of the world a s inorganicaHy coherent is not
so far removed from D arwinism; for whereas we impute
natural law to the autonomous process of evolution in
nature, the pagans attempt to explain it through arbi­
trary identification with the animal worl d . It is, one
might say, a D arwinism o f myth ical e l ective a ffinity

I M A G E S FROM TH E R E G I ON O F T H E P UE B L O IN DIA N S

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20 which determines the lives of these so-called primitive
people.
The fo rmal survival o f the hunting dance i n S a n
Ildefonso is obviou s . B u t when w e consider that the ante­
lope has be en extinct there for more than three genera­
tions, then it may well be that we have in the antelope
d a n c e a t r a n s i t i o n t o the p u r e l y d e m o n i a c k a c h i n a
dances, the chief task of which is t o pray for a good crop
harvest. In Oraibi, for example, there exists still today an
antelope clan, whose chief task is weather magic .
Whereas the imitative animal dance must be under­
stood in terms of the mimic magic of hunting culture, the
kachina dances, corresponding to cyclic peasant festivals,
have a character entirely of their own which, however, is
revealed only at sites far removed from European culture .
This cultic, magical masked dance, with its entreaties fo­
cused on inanimate nature, can be observed in its more or
les s original form only where the railroads have yet to
penetrate and where-as in the Moki villages-even the
veneer of offical Catholicism no longer exists .
The children are taught to regard the kachinas with a
deep religious awe . Every child takes the ka chinas for su­
pernatural, terrifying creatures , and the moment of the
child's initiation into the nature of the kachinas, into the
society of masked dancers itself, represents the most im­
portant turning p o int in the e d ucation o f the Indian
child.
On the market s quare of the rock village of Oraibi,
the most remo te westerly point, I was lucky enough to
observe a so-called humiskachina dance . Here I saw the
living original s of the masked dancers I had already seen
in puppet form in a room of this same village of Oraibi.
To reach Oraibi, I had to travel for two days from the
railway station of Holbrook in a small carriage . This is a
so-called buggy with four light wheels, capable of ad­
vancing through desert sands where only gorse can grow.
The driver throughout my stay in the region was Frank

A BY M . WA R BU R G

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Allen, a Mormon. We experienced a very strong sand- 21
storm, which completely obliterated the wagon tracks-
the only navigational aid in this roadless steppe . We had
the good luck nevertheless to arrive after our two days '
j ourney in Keams Canyon, where we were greeted by Mr.
Keam, a most hospitable Irishman.
From this spot 1 was able to make the actual excur­
sions to the cliff village s , which extend from north to
south on three parallel rock formation s . 1 arrived first at
t h e r e m a rk a b l e v i l l a g e of Wa l p i . I t is r o m a n t i c a l l y
perched on the rock crest, i t s stair-shaped houses rising i n
stone masses like towers from the rock . A narrow path o n
the high rock leads p a s t the masses of house s . The illus­
tration shows the desolation and severity of this rock and
its houses, a s they project themselves into the world (Fig­
ures 1 1 and 12) .
Very similar in its overall impr e s s i o n to Wa lpi i s
Oraibi, where 1 w a s a b l e t o o bserve the humiskachina
dance . Up on top, on the marketplace of the cliff village,
where an old blind man sits with his goat, a dancing are a
w a s b e i n g p r e p a r e d (Figu re 13 ) . This h u m i s k a c h i n a
dance is the dance of the growing corno On t h e evening
before the actual dance, 1 was inside the kiva, where se­
cret ceremonies take place. It contained no fetish altar.
The Indians simply sat and smoked ceremonially. Every
now and then a pair of brown legs descended from aboye
on the ladder, followed by the whole man attached to
them.
The young men were busy painting their masks for
the following day. They use their big leather helmets
again and again, a s new ones would be too costly. The
painting process involves taking water into the mouth
and then spraying it onto the leather mask a s the colors
are rubbed in.
By the following morning, the entire audience, in­
cluding two groups of children, had assembled on the
wall (Figure 14) . The Indians ' relationship to their chil-

I M A G ES F R O M T H E R EG I ON OF T H E P UEBL O I N DI A N S

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22

F i g . 1 1 . Wa l p i . War burg's photogr a p h .

F i g . 1 2. W a l p i . W a r b u r g ' s photogr a p h .

ABY M . WARBURG

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 23

sS

Fig. 1 3. Bli nd m a n at dancing area, Ora i b i . War burg's photograph.

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Fig. 1 4. Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi.

dren is extraordinarily appealing . Children are brought

up gently but with discipline and are very obliging, once
one has earned their trust. Now the chi ldren had as­
sembled, with earnest anticipati on, on the marketp lac e .
These humi skachina figures with artific ial heads move
them to real terror, all the more so as they have learned
from the kachina dolls of the inflexible and fearsome
qualities of the masks . Who knows whether our dolls did
not al so originate as such demons?
The dance was performed by about twenty-to-thirty
male and about ten female dancers-the latter meaning
men repres enting female figure s . Five men form the van­
guard of the two-row dance configuration. Although the

ABY M. WARBURG

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dance is performed on the market square , the dancers
have an architectonic focus, and that is the stone struc­
t u r e in which a s ma l l dwarf p i n e has be en p l a c e d ,
adorned with feathers . This is a small temple where the
prayers and chants accompanying the masked dances are
offered. D evotion flows fr o m this little temple in the
most striking manner.
The dancers' masks are green and red, traversed di­
agonally by a white stripe punctuated by three dots (Fig­
ures 15 and 16). The s e , 1 was told, are raindrops, and the
symbo lic repre sentations o n the helmet al s o s h ow the
stair-s hap ed cosmos with the s o urce of rai n identified
again by semicircular clouds and short str oke s emanating

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Fig. 1 5. Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi. Fig. 1 6. Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi.

from them. These symbols appear as well on the woven

wraps the dancers wind around their bodi e s : red and
gre e n ornaments grac e fu l l y w o v e n on a white bac k­
ground ( Figure 1 7). In one hand, each mal e dancer h o lds
a rattle carved from a h o l l o w g o urd and fi l l ed with
stones . And at each knee he wears a torto i s e shell hung
with pebbl e s , s o that the rattle n o i s e s i s sue from the
knees as well ( Figure 1 8).
The chorus performs two different acts . Either the girls
sit in front of the men and make music with a rattle and a
piece of wood, while the men's dance configuration con­
sists of one after an other turning, in solitary rotation; or,
alternately, the women rise and accompany the rotating
movements of the meno Throughout the dance, two priests
sprinkle consecrated fl our on the dancers (Figure 1 9).
The women' s dance c o stume c o n s i sts of a cl oth c over-

ABY M. WARBURG

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 27

Fig. 17. Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi.

ing the entire body, s o as not to show that these are , in

fact, meno The mask is adorned, on either side at the top,
with the curious anemonelike hairdo that i s the specific
hair adornment of the Puebl o girls ( Figures 20 and 21 ).
Red-dyed horsehair hanging from t h e masks symbolize s
rain, and rain ornamentation app ears as w e l l on the
shawl s and other wrapping s .
During t h e danc e , t h e danc ers are sprinkled b y a
priest with holy fl our, and all the while the dance con­
figuration remains c onnected at the h ead of the l ine to the
littl e temp l e . The dance lasts from morning till evening .
In the intervals the Indians leave the village and go to a

Fig. 1 8. Overleaf:
Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi.

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 ABY M. WARBURG

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 29

I MAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO INDIANS

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3°

Fig. 1 9. Humiskachina dancers, Oraibi.

rocky l edge to rest for a moment ( Figure 22). W h o ever

s e e s a dancer without his mask, will die .
The l ittl e temple is the actual focal point of the dance
configurati o n . It i s a l ittl e tree , adorned with feathers .
The s e are the s o - called Nakwakwocis . 1 was struck by the
fact that the tre e was s o small . 1 went to the o ld chief,
who was s itting at the edge o f the s quare , and asked him
why the tre e was so smal l . He answered: we once had a
large tree , but now we have c h o s e n a small o n e , becaus e
the s oul of a child is smal l .
W e are h ere in the realm o f t h e perfect animistic and
tre e cult, which the work of Mannhardt has s h own to

ABY M. WARBURG

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Fig. 20. "Anemone" hairdos.

Fig. 2 1 . "Anemone" hairdos.

I MAGES FROM THE REGION OF THE PUEBLO IND IANS

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32

Fig. 22. Dancers at rest, Oraibi.

bel ong to the universal re ligious patrimony of primitive

peoples, and it has s urvived from European pagani s m
down t o the harve st customs of the pre sent day. It is here
a question of establishing a bond between natural forces
and man, of creating a symbol as the connecting agent,
indeed as the magical rite that achieves integration by
sending out a mediator, in this case a tree , more closely
bo und to the earth than man, beca use it grows from the

ABY M. WARBURG

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 33

earth . This tree is the nature-given mediator, opening the

way to the subterranean elemento
The next day the feathers are carried down to a cer­
tain spring in the valley and either planted there or else
hung as votive offerings . These are to put into effect the
prayer for fertil izati o n , resulting in a p l e nt i ful and
healthy crop of corno
Late in the aftern oon the dancers resume their inde-

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34 fatiga ble, earnest ceremonial and continue to perform
their unchanging dance movement s . A s the sun w a s
a b o u t to s i n k , we were presented with an a stonishing
spectacle, one which showed with overwhelming clarity
how solemn and silent composure draws its magical reli­
gious forms from the very depths of elemental humanity.
In this light, our tendency to view the spiritual element
alone in such ceremonies must be rej ected as a one-sided
and paltry mode of explanation.
Six figures appeare d . Three almost completely na­
ked men smeared with yellow clay, their hair wound into
horn shapes, were dressed only in loin cloth s . Then carne
three men in women's clothe s . And while the chorus and
its priests proceeded with their dance movements, undis­
t u r b e d a n d with u n b r o k e n d e v o t i o n , t h e s e fi g u r e s
l a unched into a thoroughly vulgar a n d d i s r e s p ectful
parody of the chorus movements . And no one laughed .
The vulgar parody w a s regarded n o t as comic mockery
but, rather, as a kind of peripheral contribution by the
revellers, in the effort to ensure a fruitful corn year. Any­
one familiar with ancient tragedy will see he re the duality
of tragic chorus and satyr play, " grafted onto a single
stem . " The ebb and flow of nature appears in anthropo­
morphic symbols: not in a drawing but in the drama tic
magical dance, actually returned to life .
The essence of magical insinuation into the divine,
into a share of its superhuman power, is revealed in the
terrifyingly drama tic aspect of Mexican re1igious devo­
tion. In one festival a woman is worshipped for forty
days as a corn goddes s and then sacrificed, and then the
priest slips into the skin of the poor creature . Compared
to this most elementary and frenzied attempt to approach
the divinity, what we observed among the Pueblos is in­
deed related but infinite1y more refined. Yet there is no
guarantee that the sap does not still rise in secret from
such blood-soaked cultic roots . After all, the same soil
that bears the Pueblos has also witnessed the war dances

A B Y M . WA RBURG

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 of the wild, nomadic Indians, with their atrocities culmi- 35
nating in the martyrdom of the enemy.
The most extreme approximation of this magical de­
sire for unity with nature via the animal world can be
observed among the Moki Indians, in their dance with
live serpents at Oraibi and Walpi. I did not myself ob­
serve this dance, but a few photographs will give an idea
of this most pagan of all the ceremonies of Walpi. This
dance is at once an animal dance and a religious, seasonal
dance . In it, the individual animal dance of San Ildefons o
a n d t h e i n di vi d u a l f e r t i l i t y r i t u a l o f t h e O r a i b i
humiskachina dance converge i n a n intense expressive ef­
fort. For in August, when the critical moment in the till­
ing of the soil arrives to render the entire crop harvest
contingent on rainstorms, these redemptive storms are
invoked through a dance with live serpents, celebrated
a l t e r n a t e l y i n O r a i b i a n d Wa l p i . W h e r e a s i n S a n
Ildefonso only a simulated version o f antelope i s visible­
at least to the uninitiated-and the corn dance achieves
the demoniac representation of corn demons only with
masks, we find here in Walpi a far more primeval aspect
of the magic dance .
Here the dancers and the live animal form a magical
unity, and the surprising thing is that the Indians have
found in these dance ceremonies a wa y of handling the
most dangerous of all animal s , the rattlesnake, s o that it
can be tamed without violence, s o that the creature will
participate willingly-or at least without making use of
its aggressive a bilities , unless provoked-in ceremonies
lasting for days . This would surely lead to catastrophe in
the hands of Europeans.
Two Moki clans provide the participants in the ser­
pent ceremony: the antelope and the serpent clans, both
of whom are folklorically and totemistically linked with
the two animal s . That totemism can be taken seriously
even today is proved here, as humans not only appear
masked as animals but enter into cultic exchange with the

I MAGES FROM THE REGION O F T H E PU

. EBLO INDIANS

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36 most dangerous beast, the live serpent. The serpent cer­
emony at Walpi thus stands between simulated, mimic
empathy and bloody sacrifice . It involves not the imita­
tion of the animal but the bluntest engagement with it a s
a ritual participant-and that n o t as sacrifical victim but,
like the baho, as fellow rainmaker.
For the snakes themselves , the serpent dance at Walpi
is an enforced entreaty. They are caught live in the desert
in August, when the storms are imminent, and in a six­
teen-day ceremony in Walpi they are attended to in the
underground kiva by the chiefs of the serpent and ante­
lope clans in a series of unique ceremonies, of which the
most significant and the most astonishing for white ob­
servers is the washing of the snake s . The snake is treated
like a novice of the mysteries , and notwithstanding its
resistance , its head is dipped in consecrated, medicated
water. Then it is thrown onto a sand painting done o n the
kiva floor and representing four lightning snakes with a
quadruped in the middle . In another kiva a sand painting
depicts a mass of clouds from which emerge four differ­
ently colored lightning strea k s , corresp onding to the
points of the compass, in the form of serpent s . O nto the
first sand painting, each snake is hurled with great force,
so that the drawing is o bliterated and the serpent is ab­
sorbed into the s a n d . I a m convinced that this magic
throw is intended to force the serpent to invoke lightning
or produce rain . That is clearly the significance of the
entire ceremony, and the ceremonies that follow prove
that these consecrated serpents j oin the Indians in the
starkest manner a s provokers and petitioners of rain .
They are living rain serpent-saints in animal formo
The serpents-numbering about a hundred and in­
cluding a distinct number of genuine rattlesnakes with, as
has been ascertained, their poisonous fangs left intact­
are guarded in the kiva, and on the festival's final day
they are imprisoned in a bush with a band wound around
it. The ceremony culmina tes as follows : approach to the

ABY M . WARBURG

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bush, seizing and carrying of the live serpents, dispatch- 37
ing of the snakes to the plains a s messengers . American
researchers describe the clutching of the snake as an un­
believably exciting act. It is carried out in the following
way.
A group of three approaches the serpent bush. The
high priest of the serpent clan pulls a snake from the bush
as another Indian with painted face and tattoos, wearing
a fox skin on his back, clutches the snake and places it in
his mouth. A companion, holding him by the shoulders,
distracts the attention of the serpent by waving a feath­
ered stick. The third figure is the guard and the snake
catcher, in case the serpent should slip out of the second
man's mouth . The dance is played out in j ust over half an
hour on the small square at Walpi. When all the snakes
have thus b e e n c a rri e d for a while t o the s o u n d o f
ratdes-produced b y the Indians who wear ratdes and
stone-filled tortoise shells on their knees-they are borne
by the dancers with lightning speed into the plain, where
they disappear.
From what we know of Walpi mythology, this form of
devotion certainly goes back to ancestral, cosmologic leg­
end. One saga tells the story of the hero Ti-yo, who un­
dertakes a subterranean j o urney to discover the s o urce of
the longed-for water. He passes the various kivas of the
princes of the underworld, always accompanied by a fe­
male spider who sits invisibly on his right ear-an ludian
Virgil, D ante 's guide to the underworld-and eventually
guides him past the two s un houses o f the West and East
into the great serpent kiva, where he receives the magic
baho that will invoke the weather. According to the saga,
Ti-yo returns from the underworld with the baho and
two s e rpent-maid e n s , who bear him serpentine chil­
dren-very dangerous creatures who ultimately force the
tri bes to change their dwelling place. The serpents are
woven into this myth both a s weather deities and a s to­
tems that bring about the migration of the clan s .

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38 In this snake dance the serpent is therefore not sacri-
ficed but rather, through consecration and suggestive
dance mimicry, transformed into a messenger and dis­
patched, so that, returned to the souls of the dead, it may
in the form of lightning produce storms from the he av­
ens . We have here an insight into the pervasiveness of
myth and magical practice among primitive humanity.

The elementary form of emotional release through Indian

magical practice may strike the layman as a characteristic
unique to p rimitive wildness, of which Europe knows
nothing . And yet two thousand years ago in the very
cradle of our own European culture , in Greece, cultic
ha bits were in vogue which in crudeness and perversity
far surpass what we have seen among the Indians .
In the orgiastic cult of Dionysus, for example, the
Maenads danced with snakes in one hand and wore live
serpents as diadems in their hair, holding in the other
hand the animal that was to be ripped to pieces in the
ascetic sacrificial dance in honor of the godo In contrast
to the dance of the Moki Indians of today, blood sacrifice
in a state of frenzy is the culmination and fundamental
significance of this religious dance (Figure 23 ) .
The deliverance from blood sacrifice a s the innermost
ideal of purification pervades the history of religious evo­
lution from east to west. The serpent shares in this Pro­
cess of religious sublimation. Its role can be considered a
yardstick for the changing nature of faith from fetishism
to the pure religion of redemption. In the Old Testament,
as in the case of the primal serpent Tiamat in Babylon,
the serpent is the spirit of evil and of temptation . I n
Greece, as well, i t i s t h e merciless, devouring creature of
the underworld: the Erinyes are encircled by snakes, and
when the gods mete out punishment they send a serpent
a s their executioner.
This idea of the serpent a s a destroying force from the
underworld has found its most powerful and tragic sym-

ABY M. WARB URG

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 39

Fig. 2 3 . Dancing Maenad. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

bol in the myth and in the s culpted group of Lao c o o n .

T h e vengeance o f t h e g o d s , wrought o n their priest and
o n his two s o n s by mean s of a strangler s erpent, becomes
in this renowned s culpture o f anti quity the mani fe st in­
carnatio n o f e xtreme human sufferin g . The s o othsaying
priest who wanted to come to the aid o f his people by
warning them o f the wiles o f the Gre eks fal l s victim to the
reve nge o f the partial gods . Thus the death o f the father
and his s o n s becomes a s ymbo l o f ancÍent sufferin g : death
at the hands o f vengeful dem o n s , with o ut j ustice and
with out hope o f redempti o n . That i s the h o pe l e s s , tragic
pessimism o f antiquity ( Figure 2 4 ) .
T h e serpent as t h e demon in t h e pe s s imistic world

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Fig. 24. Laocoon group. Vatican Museum, Rome. Alinari/Art Resource, N. Y.

Fig. 25. Facing: Asclepius. Musei Capitolini, Rome.

ABY M. WARBURG

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 4I

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42 view of antiquity has a counterpart in a serpent-deity in
which we can at last recognize the humane, transfigured
beauty of the classical age . Asclepius, the ancient god of
healing, carries a serpent coiling around his healing staff
as a symbol (Figure 25 ) . His features are the features car­
ried by the world savior in the plastic art of antiquity.
And this most exalted and serene god of departed souls
has his roots in the subterranean realm, where the serpent
makes its home . It is in the form of a serpent that he is
accorded his earliest devotion . It is he himself who winds
around his staff: namely, the departed soul o f the de­
ceased, which survives and reappears in the form of the
serpent. For the snake is not only, a s Cushing's Indians
would say, the fatal bite in readiness or fulfillment, de­
stroying without merey; the snake also reveals by its own
a bility to cast off its slough, slipping, as it were, out of its
own mortal remains, how a body can leave its skin and
yet continue to live. It can slither into the earth and re­
emerge . The return from within the earth, from where the
dead rest, along with the capacity for b o dily renewal,
makes the snake the most natural symbol of immortality
and of rebirth from sickness and mortal anguish .4
In the temple of Asclepius at Kos in Asia Minor the
god stood transfigured in human form, a statue holding
in his hand the staff with the serpent coiled around it. But
his truest and most p owerful essence was not revealed in
this lifeless mask of stone but lived instead in the form of
a serpent in the temple's innermost sanctum: fed, cared
for, and attended in cultic devotion as only the Mokis are
able to care for their serpent s .
On a Spanish calendar l e a f from t h e thirteenth cen­
tury, which 1 found in a Vatican manuscript, representing
Asclepius as the ruler of the month in the sign of Scorpio,
significant aspects of the Asclepian serpent cult are re­
vealed in their coarseness a s well as their refinement (Fig­
ure 26 ) . We can s e e h ere, hieroglyphically indicated,
ritual acts from the cult of Kos in thirty sections, all iden-

A B Y M. WARBURG

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 43

Fig. 26. Asclepius with serpent on the sign of the Scorpion. MS Vossianus
Leyden. Voss. Lat. Q 79.

tical to the crude, magical desire o f the Indians t o enter

the realm of the serp e n t . We s e e the rite o f incubatio n and
the s erp ent as it is carried by human hands and wor­
s hipped as a deity of the s pring s .
This medieval manus crip t i s astro l o gical . I n other
words , it s h ows these ritual forms n o t as pre scriptions for
devo tional practic e s , as had previously be e n t h e case;
rather, these figure s have become hieroglyphs for t h o s e

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44 born under the heavenly sign o f Asclepiu s . For Asclepius
has beco me precisely a star-deity, undergoing a transfor­
mation through an act of cosmologic imagination which
has completely deprived him of the real, the direct sus­
ceptibility to influence, the subterranean, the lowly. As a
fixed star he stands over Scorpio in the zodiaco He is sur­
rounded by serpents and is now regarded only a s a he av­
enly body under whose influence prophets and physicians
are born. Through this elevation to the stars, the serpent­
god becomes a transfigured totem. He is the cosmic fa­
ther of those born in the month when his visibility is
highe s t . In ancient astrology, mathematics and magic
converge . The serpent figure in the heavens, found also in
the constellation of the Great Serpent, is used as a math­
ematical outline; the points of luminosity are linked to­
gether by way of an earthly image, in order to render
comprehensible an infinity we cannot comprehend at all
without sorne such outline of orientation. So Asclepius is
at once a mathematical border sign and a fetish bearer.
The evo lution o f culture toward the age of r e a s o n is
marked in the same measure a s the tangible, coarse tex­
ture of life , fading into mathematical a bstraction.
About twenty years ago in the north of Germany, on
the Elbe, I found a strange example of the elementary
indestructability of the memory of the serpent cult, de­
spite all efforts of religious enlightenment; an example
that shows the path on which the pagan serpent wanders,
linking us to the pasto On an excursion to the Vierlande
[near Hamburg] , in a Protestant church in Lüdingworth,
I discovered, adorning the so-called rood screen, Bible il­
lustrations that clearly originated in an Italian illustrated
Bible and that had found their way here through the
hands of a strolling painter.
And here I suddenly spotted Laocoon with his two
sons in the terrible grasp of the serpent. How did he come
to be in this church ? But this Laocoon found his salva­
tio n . How ? Looming in front of him was the staff of

A BY M . WA R BU R G

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Asclepius and on it a holy serpent, corresponding to what 45
we read in the fourth book of the Pentateuch : that Moses
had commanded the Israelites in the wilderness to heal
snakebites by setting up a brazen serpent for devotion.
We have here a remnant of idolatry in the Old Testa­
mento We know, however, that this can only be a subse­
quent insertion, intended to account retroactively for the
existence of such an idol in Jerusalem . For the principal
fact remains that a brazen serpent idol was destroyed by
King Hezekiah under the influence of the prophet Isaiah.
The prophets fo ught most bitterly agains t idolatrous
cults that engaged in human sacrifice and worshipped
animals, and this struggle forms the crux of Oriental and
of Christian reform movements down to the most recent
times . Clearly the setting up of the serpent is in starkest
contradiction to the Ten Commandments, in sharpest op­
position to the hostility to images that essentially moti­
vates the reforming prophet s .
B u t there is another reason why every student of the
Bible should consider the serpent the most provocative
symbol of hostifity: the serpent on the tree in Para di se
domina tes the biblical narrative of the order of the world
as the cause of evil and of sin . In the Old and New Testa­
ments alike, the serpent clutches the tree of Paradise a s
t h e satanic power t h a t summons t h e entire tragedy of sin­
ning humanity as well as its hope for redemption.
In the battle against pagan idolatry, early Christianity
was more uncompromising in its view of the serpent culto
In the eyes of the pagans, Paul was an impervious emis­
sary when he hurled the viper that had bitten him into the
fire without dying of the bite. ( The poisonous viper be­
longs in the fire ! ) So durable was the impression of Paul's
invulnerability to the vipers of Malta that as late as the
sixteenth century, j ugglers wound snakes around them­
selves at festival s and fairgrounds, representing them­
selves as men of the house of Saint Paul and selling soil
from Malta as an antidote to snakebites . Here the prin-

l MAGES FROM THE REG l O N O F T H E P U EBLO l N D l A NS

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Fig. 2 7. Giulio Romano, Vendor of Antidote against Snakebite. Museo Civico
Palazzo del Té, Mantua. Alinari/Art Resource, N. Y.

ciple o f the immunity o f the strong in faith ends up again

in superstiti o u s magical practice ( Figure 2 7) .
In me d ieval the o l ogy we find the miracl e o f the bra­
zen s erp ent curi o u s l y retaine d as a part of legitimate reli­
gious devoti on. Nothing attests to the inde structibil ity o f
t h e animal c u lt as d o e s t h e survival o f t h e miracl e o f the
brazen s erp ent into the medieval C hri stian worl d view. S o
lasting i n medieval the o l ogical memory was the s erpent

ABY M. WARBURG

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 47

Fig. 2 8 . Serpent and Crucifixion from Speculum humanae sa lva tionis.

( By permission of the British Library, Add. Ms. 3 1 3 0 3 . )

cult and t h e need t o overc ome i t that, on t h e bas i s o f a

completely i s o lated pas sage inc onsi stent with the spirit
and the the o l o gy of the O ld Te stament, the image o f ser­
pent devoti on became paradigmatic in typo logical repre­
sentations for the Cruc i fixion its e l f ( Figure 28). The ani­
mal image and the staff of Asclepius as reverential obj ects
for the kne el ing multitude are treated and repre s ented as
a stage , albeit to be overcome, in h umanity's q u e st for

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48 salvation . In the attempt at a tripartite scheme of evolu­
tion and of the ages-that is, of Nature, Ancient Law,
and Grace-an even earlier stage in this process is the
representation of the impeded sacrifice of Isaac as an
analogue to the Crucifixion. This tripartite scheme is still
evident in the imagery adorning the minster of Salem.
In the church of Kreuzlingen itself, this evolutionary
idea has generated an astonishing parallelism, which can­
not make ready sense to the theologically uninitiated .
Here, on the ceiling o f t h e fam o u s Mount o f O lives
chapel, immediately aboye the Crucifixion, we find an
adoration of this most pagan idol with a degree of pathos
that does not suffer in comparison with the Laocoon
group . And under the reference to the Tables of the Law,
which, as the Bible recounts, Moses destroyed because of
the worship of the golden calf, we find Moses himself,
forced into service as shield bearer to the serpent.

I shall be satisfied if these images from the everyday and

festive lives of the Pueblo Indians have convinced you
that their masked dances are not child's play, but rather
the primary pagan mode o f answering the largest and
most pressing questions of the Why of things . In this way
the Indian confronts the incomprehensibility of natural
processes with his will to comprehension, transforming
himself personally into a prime causal agent in the order
of things . For the unexplained effect, he instinctively sub­
stitutes the cause in its most tangible and visible formo
The masked dance is danced causality.
If religion signifies bonding,S then the symptom of
evolution away from this primal state is the spiritualiza­
tion of the bond between human s and alien beings , so
that man no longer identifies directly with the masked
symbol but, rather, generates that bond through thought
alone, progressing to a systematic linguistic mythology.
The will to devotional zeal is an ennobled form of the
donning of a mask. In the process that we call cultural

A B Y M . WA R B UR G

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progress, the being exacting this devotion gradually loses 49
its monstrous concreteness and, in the end, becomes a
spiritualized, invisible symbol .
What does this mean ? In the realm of mythology the
law of the smallest unit does not hold; there is no search
for the smallest agent of rationality in the course of natu­
ral phenomena; rather, a being saturated with a s much
demoniac power a s possible is postulated for the sake of
a true grasp o f the c a u s e s o f mysteriou s occurrences .
What we have seen this evening o f the symbolism o f the
serpent should give us at least a cursory indication o f the
passage from a symbolism whose efficacy proceeds di­
rectly from the body and the hand to one that unfolds
only in thought. The Indians actually clutch their ser­
pents and treat them a s living agents that generate light­
ning at the same time that they represent lightning . The
Indian takes the serpent in his mouth to bring a bout an
actual union of the serpent with the masked figure, or at
least with the figure painted as a serpent.
In the Bible the serpent is the cause of all evil and as
such is punished with banishment from Paradise . Never­
theles s , the serpent s lithers back into a chapter of the
Bible itself as an indestructible pagan symbol-as a god
of healing.
In antiquity the serpent likewise represents the quin­
tessence of the most profound suffering in the death of
Laocoon. But a ntiquity is capable also of transmuting the
inconceivable fertility of the serpent-deity, representing
Asclepius as a savior and as the lord of the serpent, ulti­
mately placing him-the serpent-god with the tamed ser­
pent in his hand-as a starry divinity in the heaven s .
In medieval the ology, t h e serpent draws from this
passage in the Bible the a bility to reappear as a symbol of
fate . Its elevation-though expressly considered a s an
evolutionary stage that has be en surpassed-posits it on
par with the Crucifixion.
In the end the serpent is an international symbolic

I M A G E S FR OM T H E R EG I ON OF T H E P UEBLO I N D I A N S

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50 answer to the question Whence come elementary destruc­
tio n , death, and suffering into the world ? We saw in
Lüdingworth how christological thought makes use of
pagan serpent imagery to express symbolically the quin­
tessence of suffering and redemption . We might say that
where helpless human suffering searches for redemption,
the serpent a s an image and explanation of causality can­
not be far away. The serpent deserves its own chapter in
the philosophy of " as if. "
How does humanity free itself from this enforced
bonding with a poisonous reptil e to which it attributes a
power of agency ? Our own technological age has no need
of the serpent in order to understand and control light­
ning. Lightning no longer terrifies the city dweller, who
no longer craves a benign storm as the only source of
water. He has his water supply, and the lightning serpent
is diverted straight to the ground by a lightning conduc­
tor. Scientific explanation has disposed of mythological
causation . We know that the serpent is an animal that
must succumb, if humanity wills it to o The replacement of
mythological causation by the technological removes the
fears felt by primitive humanity. Whether this liberation
from the mythological world view is of genuine help in
providing adequate answers to the enigmas of existence is
quite another matter.
The American government, like the Catholic Church
before it, has brought modern schooling to the Indians
with remarkable energy. Its intellectual optimism has re­
sulted in the fact that the Indian children go to school in
comely suits and pinafores and no longer believe in p agan
demons . That also applies to the maj ority of educational
goals. It may well denote progres s . But I would be loath
to assert that it does j ustice to the Indians who think in
images and to their, let us say, mythologically anchored
souls.
1 once invited the children of such a school to illus-

A BY M . WA R BU R G

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 SI

Fig . 29. Hopi schoolboy's drawing of a house in a storm with lightning.

trate the German fairy tale of "]ohnny-Head- in-the-Air "

( Hans - G u ck - in-die-Luft ) , which they did n o t know, be ­
cause a storm i s referred to and 1 wanted to s e e if the
children would draw the lightning realistically o r in the
form of the serpent. O f the fourteen drawings, all very
l i v e l y but a l s o under the i n fl u e n c e of the Ame r i can
school, twe lve were drawn realistically. But two o f them
depicted indeed the indes tructible s ymbo l of the arrow­
tongued serpent, as it i s found in the kiva ( Figure 29) .
We , however, do n o t want our imaginat i o n to fal l un­
der the s p e l l o f the s e r p e n t imag e , which l eads to the
primitive beings o f the underwo rld. We want to ascend to

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Fig. 3 0. "Children stand before a cave."

the roof of the worldhouse , our h eads perched upwards

in recoHection of the words of Goethe :

Wiír nicht das Auge s onnenhaft­

Die Sonne künnt' es nie erblicken .

If the eye were not of the sun,

It could not behold the sun.

AH humanity stand s in devo tion to the sun . To claim

it as the s ymbo l that guide s us upward from n octurnal
depths is the right of the savage and the cultivated pers o n
alike . Children stand before a cave ( Figure 3 0 ) . To lift
them up to the light i s the task n o t o n l y o f American
s c h o o l s but of humanity in general .
The relat i o n o f the s eeker of redempt i o n to the ser­
p e n t deve l op s , i n t h e c y c l e o f c u l t i c devo t i o n , fro m
c oars e , sens e-based interaction to i t s tran scendence . I t i s
and h a s always be e n , as the cult o f the Puebl o Indian s has
s h own, a significant criterio n in the evolution from in­
stinctual , magical interaction to a spiritualized taking of

ABY M . WARBURG

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 53

Fig. 3 1 . "Uncle Sam. "

dista n c e . T h e p o is o n o u s r e p tile sym b o lizes t h e i n n e r a n d

outer d e m o ni a c for c e s t h a t h u m a nity m u s t o v e rc o m e . This
evening I was a b l e t o show you a l l too c u r s o rily an actual
s ur viva l o f t h e m a gica l s e r p e n t cult, as a n example o f t h a t
prim o r di a l c o n diti o n o f which t h e r e fi ne m e n t , t r a n s c e n ­
dence, a n d r e p l a c e m e n t a r e the work o f m o d e r n cultur e .
T h e c o n q u e r o r o f t h e s e r p e n t c u l t a n d o f t h e fea r o f
lightning, t h e inherito r o f t h e i n dig e n o u s p e o p l e s a n d o f
t h e g o l d s e e k e r w h o o u s t e d t h e m , i s c a p tu r e d i n a p h o t o ­
g r a p h I t o o k o n a s t r e e t i n S a n F r ancis c o . H e i s U n c l e S a m
in a s t o v e p i p e h a t , s t r o l li n g i n h i s p ride p a s t a n e o c l a s si ­
c a l r o tu n d a . A b o v e his t o p h a t r u n s a n e l ec t ric wir e . I n
t h i s c o p p e r s e r p e n t o f Ediso n 's , h e h a s w r e s t e d lig htning
fro m n at u r e ( Figure 3 1 ) .

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54 The American of today is no longer afraid of the
rattlesnake . He kills it; in any case, he does not worship
it . It now faces extermination. The lightning imprisoned
in wire-captured electricity-ha s produced a culture
with no use for paganismo What has replaced it ? Natural
fo r c e s a r e no l o n g e r s e e n in a n t h r o p o m o rphic o r
biomorphic guise, but rather as infinite waves obedient
to the human touch . With these waves, the culture of the
machine age destroys what the natural sciences, born of
myth, so arduously achieve d : the space for devoti on,
which evolved in turn into the space required for reflec­
tion.
The modern P r o m e t h e u s and the modern I c a r u s ,
Franklin a n d the Wright brothers, who invented the diri­
gible airplane, are precisely those ominous destroyers of
the sense of distance, who threaten to lead the planet
back into chao s .
Telegram and telephone destroy t h e cosmo s . Mythi­
cal and symbolic thinking strive to form spiritual bonds
between humanity and the surrounding world, shaping
distance into the space required for devotion and reflec­
tion: the distance undone by the instantaneous electric
connection .

A B Y M . WA R B U R G

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 55
N OTES

1. E. Schmidt, Vorges chichte Nordamerikas im Gebiet der Vereinigten

Staaten, 1 8 9 4 .
2 . J e s s e Wa lter Fewke s , " Archeological Expedition t o Arizona in 1 8 9 5, "
i n Seventeenth Annual Rep ort o f the Bureau o f American Ethnology, 1 8 9 5-
96 (Washington, D . C . , 1 8 9 8), 2 :519-74.
3. nÓTVla 8TlPwv; see Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to t h e Study of
Greek Religion ( Cam bridge, 1922), p. 2 6 4 .
4 . [Note from t h e 19 8 8 German edition- M . P. S . ] In t h e first draft of this
passage, Warb urg explained the symbolic power of the serpent image in the
following way:
Through which qua lities does the serpent appear in literature
and art a s a usurping imposter [ein verdriingender Vergleicher] ?
1. It experiences through the course of a year the full l i fe
cycle from deepest, deathlike sleep to the utmost vitality.
2 . It changes its slough and remains the same.
3 . It is not capable of walking on feet and remains capable
nonetheless of propelling itself with great speed, armed with the
absolutely deadly weapon o f its poisonous tooth.
4 . It i s minimally visible to the eye, especially when its colors
act according to the desert's laws of mimicry, or when it shoots
out from its secret holes in the earth.
5. Phallus.
These are qualities which render the serpent unforgettable a s
a threatening symbol of t h e ambivalent i n nature : death and life ,
v i s i b l e and i n v i s i b l e , without prior warning and d e a d l y on sight.
5. Lactantius , Divinae institutiones 4 . 2 8 .

IM A G E S F R OM T H E R E GION O F T H E P UE B L O IN DIA N S

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Fig. 32. Second Mesa, Hopi, Arizona. Photograph from the Warburg Archive.

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Fig. 3 3 . Heligoland. Postcard from the Warburg Archive.

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 This content downloaded from
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