The Butterfly Dance is a Hopi ceremony petitioning for rain, and health for all living things, thanking the beautiful butterfly for pollinating plant life.
Hopi Butterfly Dance: Ceremonial Gratitude
Rituals and Traditions
WilderUtopia celebrates world culture with a frame of environmental sustainability. Our inspiration sources from ethnically-based indigenous arts, myth and storytelling, as well as dance and music, played out in the rituals, customs, and traditions of the many peoples of the planet.
Hopi Legend Part 3: Wildfire of Purification and Old Spider Woman
Mytho-Historical Prophecy: Facing certain destruction by a massive wildfire raging down from the high peaks, the Oraibi village leader consults Old Spider Woman on overcoming the state of koyaanisqatsi, or life out of balance, that had befallen the land.
Hopi Legend Part 2: The Yaayapontsa Dance of Fire
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Following the dances of the kachinas in the wayward village of Pivanhonkyapi suffering the imbalance of Koyaanisqatsi, the dreaded Yaayapontsa arrive to purify the world with fire.
Hopi Legend: Koyaanisqatsi and World Destruction
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The Hopi curse of Koyaanisqatsi marks the total disintegration of the life of harmony and balance. The subject of a 1982 tone poem of modern day environmental devastation by Godfrey Reggio, also shown in the mythological destruction of the ancient Hopi city of Pivanhonkyapi.
Chumash Legend: Hole in the Blanket
The world covered in a blanket of darkness, the rock, plant, and animal people found through cooperation and council to give thanks for the goodness of Mother Earth and Grandfather Sun, and let the light shine down.
Other Worlds Documentary: The Cosmology of Ayahuasca
“Other Worlds,” a documentary by French filmmaker Jan Kounen, is an informative journey into the cosmology of ayahuasca shamanism practiced in the Peruvian Amazon.
Day of the Dead Ofrendas: Calavera Fashion Show and Walking Altars
Short poems, anecdotes, mocking or reverent tributes, called calaveras or “skulls,” are given to celebrate public or private figures. In Los Angeles, for the last seven years Tropico de Nopal Gallery has taken the custom into the realm of performance art-fashion show-walking altar display.