Transforming "Spiritual Warfare": Day 19 (Minnesota)

Hegman Lake Pictographs. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Minnes-ota.
Pholi-ota.

Pretty much everything I know about Minnesota comes from Garrison Keillor. So sad. So American. I was trying to get a handle on this land & perused the WikiCommons for some imagery, a focus, if you will. While I was terribly tempted to continue with my tongue-in-cheek "missing link" theme from last night & use the "Minnesota Iceman," I resisted in favor of the ancestors. I found myself intrigued by the pictographs at Hegman Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The pictograph above is believed to be illustrating a person, a moose & a wolf/dog/fox under Ojibwe meridian constellations. They may have used this as navigational tool to direct themselves through the densely forested area. The constellations shown in this drawing belong to the winter skies. It was probably drawn for travel during the winter hunting season, though there is also speculation that this & other area pictographs might be documenting the occurrence of a supernova.

Among the many pictographs in the area, this image is the most complex, symbolically rich & artistically rendered. There is an incredible amount of symbolism & possible interpretations to this image as well as some wonderful lore & cultural history which can be found here: Interpreting the Pictographs of North Hegman Lake, MN.

Perusing the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness photos on the Commons, I also discovered that the last two photos of the set were of mycological interest. Two photos, labeled "Unknown Fungi 1" & "Unknown Fungi 2" were hailing me from the bottom of the page. Each image shows a batch of very familiar fungi... batches of Pholiotas.

Pholiotas. There are about 150 species; most a bit slimy, most a bit scaly. Abundant, saprobic, perfect. Works for me, works for the plan. May I quote myself many days ago when I began this task & said, "...saprophytic agents of change, my beloved brokers to the underworld... absorb & transmute the combative energies targeted at our homelands." 


My chant du jour:

Minnes-ota.
Pholi-ota.