C.M. Tenom, Anthropology, Uni. of City South – Field Notes
Face Painting Rituals on the Endless Continent (paper release title?)
(Summary thoughts from journals #1-5)
– Face painting is part of the religious/spiritual traditions of at least 27 different communities on Genpaa. The vast majority do not have written language, and oral traditions are the source of their history. Oral traditions are hugely helpful in every area except one – accurate dating. Once a story is told & passed down, it’s a part of the community’s canon. A story could be no more than 40 or 50 years old, but it’s told alongside stories that are many hundreds of years old. In short, there’s no way of telling when these face painting rituals began. Given their spread across the so-called Endless Continent, I’d hazard a guess that it was first used about 350 years ago.
– Origin location: Unknown. These people have traded and warred with each other for at least 7 centuries. The topography of the land allows for trade routes to be relatively easily established. Some in use today could easily be 700 years old, others haven’t been used for more than a few decades. Attempting to track the etiology of the ritual will be impossible until we can partner with archaeologists to dig up burial grounds, spiritual buildings/centers and run-of-the-mill homes from ages past. The beauty of the land, the many varieties of herd animals and the mild weather of the season all mix together to form a powerful travel intoxicant. It’s inspired me to forge ahead, to see what lies beyond that next ridge, with regularity, and I’ve only been here for 8 months. Imagine what centuries of that same spell has done to the continent’s inhabitants.
– Chicken or the Egg: Did the ritual arise as a result of attempts to commune with the gods of this land, or do the people now speak to their gods because of the “discovery” of the power that comes with correctly-executed face painting rituals? This is the most interesting question to me, and one on which the various oral traditions disagree in any number of ways.
– Ritual Synopsis: A master painter uses blessed paints to make a very specific face painting pattern on the Speaker. Patterns are specific to the god. There are 11 major gods in the region, and some communities recognize upwards of 30 minor gods. Each has a specific design that must be executed FLAWLESSLY by the master painter to allow the magic to work. The Speaker is, in every community, sent into a place of privacy. Usually a hut, tent or some other small, unadorned, fully-enclosed space. They speak to the god directly to gain the counsel/aid they seek. Most end the ritual with a breaking of the painted pattern either by smudging or splashing with water
– 1st Hand Account: The full details of my experiences are in the attached notebooks. For these basic notes, I just want a brief overview. Not every community guards this ritual with an eagle eye and a mother bear’s dedication. Some even believe it’s worthwhile for their own purposes to have outsiders act as a Speaker. In my first attempt, I was given the paint of Adresse, the goddess of personal expression, to ask a question about the face painting itself. Skepticism is a requirement of a scientist, but it’s anathema to the ritual. My own excitement at the prospect of the ritual being real, luckily, outweighed the voices in my head telling me that the ritual was very likely nothing more than an excuse for people to have quiet prayer and manufacture visions of a god bestowing on them some profound answer.
So imagine my delight when I was greeted with the semi-transparent form of Adresse in the Speaker Hut of the Gevyrin people. I actually spoke to her, a tangible (mostly, anyway) god of the Endless Continent. Her answer to my question was, of course, vague and ephemeral and only led to more questions without giving me anything concrete. But the conversation itself, despite being no more than 40 seconds long, was such an enormous breakthrough for my studies that I still count it as the biggest moment of my career to date. Magic has always been a part of our world, but I know of no other place on earth where it’s capable of connecting the divine and the earthly.
– Next Steps: I’m through 16 of the area’s 27 communities that use the face painting ritual. Before I go further in depth, I’ll need to hit each of the remaining 11. My main goals are to examine the type of painting, the designs used and the specific gods that are called down by a Speaker. In short, the mechanics of the ritual will dominant my early papers. Future studies will concentrate on content – what questions are asked, what answers are given, how they are applied to the lives of the people. This is a lifetime’s worth of work, and I’m not as young as I once was. But I’m bursting with vigor and questions for the people and their gods.
The Tall Tale Year 