Ticuna knowledge, Worecue stars and sky movements

This paper focuses on the Ticuna interpretation of the iconography inscribed on ritual artifacts collected by the ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju in the early 1940s. The Ticuna describe certain celestial bodies depicted in the iconography of artifacts that are used in the Ticuna girls' puberty festival as 'Worecue stars'. They relate these stars to various aspects of indigenous mythology expressed in ritual songs and speeches about worecue , a Ticuna word meaning the girl for whom the initiation is being performed. I hold that by incorporating Ticuna mediations into anthropological analysis we enrich this analysis by associating iconic images with mythical meanings transmitted generation by generation through ritual performances in which mythical thinking has the persuasive force of prescriptive action. In thinking about how the Ticuna read the iconography I avoid seeking a strict correlation between Western scientific explanations and the Ticuna's own knowledge about a special star known by them as the Woramacueri star. However, by postulating an association between the Worecue stars and the planets, we can examine the possibility that the Woramacueri Star is correlated with a particular planet at certain times, in specific circumstances.