Jaguar

Jaguar America
The fanged god of pre-Columbian religion in South America. Statues of deities with staring eyes and double fangs exist dating from very early periods. In Mochica culture the remote creator deity of the mountain had a feline appearance. Among the tribes of Bolivia, where the jaguar is indigenous, men still go out to kill the animal single-handed and armed only with a wooden spear in order to win the status of warriors. Yet it would seem that the close association between medicine-men and jaguar spirits elsewhere represents a survival of an ancient taboo placed on the jaguar and puma. The jaguar is the power, the ambivalent force, which the adept has to master. It is also the personification of fertility in the widest sense, witness the statues of jaguars coupling with women.

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