KUTA TEACHINGS

"The Chumash Indians live in a large area of California, north of Los Angeles. Belief in reincarnation of the soul was a basic component of their theological teachings, and it profoundly impacted their ethical and mythological teachings.

If one is ignorant of Chumash beliefs about reincarnation, one is fundamentally incapable of understanding Chumash history" (Anderson, Sept 6, 1999) .

This web page provides additional information about a small book called Kuta Teachings. Click on the link called 'home' (below) for further discussion.

"The Sun and Eagle played key roles in Chumash theology, as cleansers of the earth and as destroyers of human bodies. Their contribution to Chumash death and burial practices is discussed in The Chumash House of Fate where I describe them as "not demons but rather deities characterized by highly purified souls." The Sun's heat is especially significant to Chumash burial practices, because it forced the Chumash to quickly bury their dead during the hot months. By placing earth over the body, they shielded it from the heat of the sun's rays and thus slowed its decay.

Shup is an important cosmological concept associated with burial prescriptions of traditional Chumash. After creating the stars of the heavens the Creator began to manifest Itiasup, the physical realm called Earth, the Middle World, and the 'real world (by ignorant persons). This world was affectionately called Shup by the Chumash, referring to the female deity Europeans call Mother Earth. She was the protector of buried souls, and was particularly complex in her personal attributes. Although the highest concentration of physical matter in the cosmos was located in her massive body, she also had a soul just like the stars. She was a very influential goddess with the Chumash, as can be seen in the fact that Chumash patriots used her name as a rallying cry in their wars of liberation.

Traditional Chumash families buried their dead in Mother Earth, because in this act they were honoring the proper integration (decay) of the dead body into Mother Earth [Shup]. J.S. Naiyait of Ventura thus taught Kitsepawit about the importance of the concept Ple in Chumash theology. Ple means to disappear, to perish, to vanish.

Naiyait was an old mane when he spokes to Kistepawit and his niece one evening about ethical issues facing them as impoverished Chumash working for minimum wages in the American economy. Naiyait advised them not to despair at their poverty since spiritually knowledgeable Chumash did not place much importance on ownership of physical wealth, "for these things will someday disappear. You also are going to disappear, an so will it be with everything else and everybody else.

Naiyait as not making up idiosyncratic ethical teachings to console his niece and Kitsepawit. Naiyait was passing on traditional teachings about the eventual disappearance of all things both spiritual and physical in the eternally changing time/space continuum of history. Life for Naiyait and other Chumash traditionalists was a process, a circle of dynamic change that only a foolish person would try to grasp, to hold back, or define with final authority.