Serpentine cosmopolitics: cross-cultural analysis of the Rainbow Serpent by Ivan Tacey 25 March 2025
From Amazonia to Australia, rainbow snakes coil at the heart of the cosmologies of Indigenous peoples, embodying forces of creation, destruction, and renewal. Known variously as nagas, dragons, or rainbow serpents, these chthonic entities are intimately entangled with water, blood, women, and untamed power. Among Batek hunter-gatherers of Malaysia, as well as other Southeast Asian Indigenous communities, the violation of taboos—especially those linked to blood—is believed to incite the wrath of these beings who are said to unleash catastrophic floods capable of annihilating entire settlements.
Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Malaysia, Ivan Tacey examines the roles of rainbow serpents in Batek creation myths, rituals, and cosmological landscapes, comparing these traditions with similar narratives and practices from Amazonia and Australia. Offering a cosmopolitical analysis, Ivan critiques the limitations of New Animist approaches, proposing instead that the global prevalence of rainbow snakes in Indigenous cosmologies reflects a 'time-resistant syntax of myth and ritual,' as theorized in Knight, Power, and Watts’ model of human origins.
Lecturer at the University of Plymouth, Ivan Tacey
No comments:
Post a Comment