the Origin of Knowledge
hot threads of truth
…my Kogi friend Alberto usefully explained that shibʉldama (knowledge) is ‘something that since the beginning was constituted as truth and always will be'. His father, Mama Francisco, then explained that shi means ‘thread’, shibuldzi means rope, and ldama relates to namak, meaning ‘true’. Ma means heat. Shibʉldama could hence be translated as ‘the hot threads of truth’.
… Like everything else, knowledge has an identifiable spiritual origin and is cosmologically structured by the Sierra Nevada. For them, this conscious, predefined knowledge simultaneously constitutes truth. Shibʉldama linguistically captures how the world was intricately ‘spun’ and ‘woven’ by the ‘Mother’ with her ‘thought’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978f) from one common creational origin through ‘threads’ that bind everything together in a unitary rope of being and knowledge. - Falk Xué Parra Witte, 2012.
Just as the creational descent of the Kogi people begins in the darkness, before the dawning of the light, before the illumination of a new world, before the Great Mother opened her eyes and poured out creation out from the black high mountain lakes of the Sierra Nevada — so too are the kuivi trained in the beginning, in the darkness, near the creational peaks and lakes and only emerge after their thought has been born in Aluna, gestated and prepared to take on the enormous eco-spiritual responsibility of balancing Life and humanity.
Selected as very young boys for their sun-like qualities or interest in learning, the elder Mamas select the kuivi, or apprentices, to train in their generational succession of cosmic-care takers, or spiritual guides, called Mamas (sometimes also called Mamos).