A word has come my way, several times, so new, yet such a great old concept.
“Cynefin” (pronounced KUN-EV’IN)
Glynis Livingstone on FB gives this from p. 250-251 of PaGaian Cosmology as follows:
"This cosmology is about sensing an organic space and time, Being in Place – knowing that the dimensions of Self-place, Earth-place, and Universe-place are not separate; that this is all one’s “country”. Another word for this “country” may be the Welsh word “cynefin” (pronounced KUN-EV’IN). It has been literally translated into English as “habitat” or “place”, but the sense of it is more: the word articulates a reciprocal relationship with one’s particular place, and may be understood to consciously include the multivalent dimensions of this nested reality of Place. “Cynefin”, like ”country”, includes the stories of one’s multiple belongings - personal, cultural, geographic, cosmic … they are all religious in the sense of connecting, and more than we can know.[1] This 'cynefin', this 'country' – a PaGaian sense of habitat - includes knowing that one IS a Place, a place of the sacred Interchange of Life – with all the complex web of stories, to which one belongs, and with which one acts. It is an intimate reality, but remains mysterious and unknowable in its infinite dimensions of belonging and action. The breath comes in – a gift of all that has gone before. You are the Place where it is received, changed and given forth again; your organism is the dynamic Place of this exchange. You are then the gift as your breath is released."
[1] At the website https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework/, “cynefin” is described as “more properly understood as the place of our multiple belongings;” … wherein our interactions are frequently determined by the patterns of our multiple experiences – personal and collective – “expressed as stories”. My understanding of the word as being similar to “country”, comes from Taffy Seaborne’s stories of his childhood experience in Wales and his later experience in central Australia.
Starhawk also spoke of "Cynefin" in her recent podcast on Strategy and Complexity.
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The other mention of language must be from a phone conversation with my son who recently was visiting Washington DC for his daughter's graduation. Several family members visited the Planet Word Museum.
It's all about words. He is meticulous in immersing himself in a museum experience, so was able to tell me about of lot of what he enjoyed. But what I want to share now was his telling of the pre-Inca's way of experiencing time.
The exhibit talked about the Quechuan word, which he didn't mention, but he did say it was from that language. And he explained how in the proto-Inca world before Spanish conquest, the concept of time had been completely different.
Apparently the time line ran in opposite directions, with a quite logical basis.
The future was unknown, thus was considered behind you, invisible.
The past was known, and could be seen, and thus was in front of you.
What a great concept...including of course the now being where one currently stood.
I just looked for more information on line for Quechua. I'm certainly not as much an etymologist as some friends of mine...but what I can enjoy was this little bit...(from world languages/quechua/)
First,
Quechuan, called Runasimi in Quechua, from runa ‘people’ + simi ‘speech,’ is a family of some 45 closely-related languages spoken in the Andean region of South America by close to 10 million people (Ethnologue).
Then that site emphasized that it had probably started in coastal Peru ...
around 2,600 BC. The Inca kings of Cuzco made Quechua their official language. With the Inca conquest of Peru in the 14th century, Quechua became Peru’s lingua franca. The Inca Empire flourished in what is today’s Peru from 1438 to 1533 AD. Although the empire lasted only about 100 years, the Incas spread Quechua to areas that today are Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century AD, Quechua had already spread throughout a large portion of the South American continent. The languages continued to spread into areas that were not part of the Inca empire such as Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina.
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These words came into English from Quechua via Spanish
coca cuca, the native name of the plant condor cuntur, the native name for the bird guano huanu ‘dung’ jerky ch’arki ‘dried flesh’ llama llama, the native name of the animal (with Spanish spelling) lima associated with Lima, Peru, from where the plant was introduced to Europe circa 1500. The city name is corrupted from Quechua Rimac, name of an Inca god. pampa pampa ‘plain’ puma puma, native name of the animal quinine kina ‘Cinchona bark’ (from which it is extracted). Cinchona is a tropical evergreen believed to have originated on the slopes of the Andes in South America. vicuña wikuna, the native name of the animal
I like explorations of so many kinds!
The PS from the Quechuan language site was this:
The fictional Huttese language in the Star Wars movies is largely based on Quechua.
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But I do consider a lot of my past (after all it's so much bigger than my future!)
So that's that.
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The Inca's kept some records with the Quipa system of knotted ropes. They apparently indicate an accounting system.
