Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/731

 �662 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [s. s., I, 1699

Actually the figure is sometimes developed (as among the Pueblo peoples according to dishing) by laying down four billets or arrows radiating from a fetishistic Middle toward the east, north, west, and south, and then adding, as the ritual proceeds, shorter transverse sticks touching the extremities of the four cardinal billets; the whole being done in such a manner as to harmonize ritual and symbol, and impress the former by the objective repre- sentation in the latter. In any case, the symbol is raised from its original value of 4 + I to 8 + I ; and the graphic representation accords with the shadowy concept lying behind the number-sys- tem in which the mystical Middle is persistent, and can be counted but once howsoever the value be augmented. Similarly the pe- ripheral potencies may be multiplied by the addition of dots, as in a common form of the swastika noted by Wilson, 'fc or j^f ,' or by the development of the " meander, ' [jj§, which thus represent 12 + 1, 20 + •• ar, d 20 + 1 ; and the augmentation may proceed indefinitely, by either mechanical or mental addition, though always in accordance with the primary principle that the Middle is reckoned but once.

The law of augmentation in the senary-septenary system is similar. When the concept is directional, as in that form of the Cult of the Quarters in which zenith and nadir are reckoned as cardinal points, the mechanical symbol is complicated and even- tually modified through the difficulty of depicting tri-dimensional relations on a bi-dimensional surface. Among the Pueblo peoples

1 The Swastika, Rep. IT. 5. Nat. Museum for 1894, p. 767. Wilson, follow- ing Max Mallei and Burnout, notes Ihat the additional billets or bars completing the swastika proper may be turned either to right or to left (i. e., the development of the figure maybe either clockwise or counter-clockwise), but properly questions whether distinct names should be given the forms. In view of the fact that habitual motions of primitive peoples are predominantly centripetal or toward the body, while the predom- inant motions of advanced peoples ate centrifugal, it seems probable that the clockwise mail ilia represents the higher cultural plane (e. g., of writing toward the right), and would therefore be normal if the syrohol itself were normal to advanced culture ; but since the symbol pertains in all essential respects to the culture-stage characterized by cenripetal hand movement, the counter-clockwise form would seem to be more fairly

considered the normal one.

�� �