{"id":3426,"date":"2011-11-05T09:20:28","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T15:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2011-11-05T09:42:24","modified_gmt":"2011-11-05T15:42:24","slug":"talking-about-tlaloc-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3426","title":{"rendered":"Talking about Tlaloc, 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last June, as our creek began to dry up, I blogged about building a little shrine to Tlalo<\/a>c, “god of the hydrological cycle” as Craig Childs <\/a>described him, in a big culvert under our county road.<\/p>\n

It snowed, nearly a foot on October 26. The combination of trees pulling up less ground water after freezing weather came, plus the melting snow, started the creek running again. On Halloween night, M. and I were walking the dogs before bed, and we heard a gurgle in the creek bed. Slowly, rock by rock, tiny pool by tiny pool, it was coming back.<\/p>\n

By yesterday, the flow had increased. While everything in the shrine was natural (rocks) or biodegradable (turkey feathers, etc.), I thought that I should retrieve the glass jar for the votive candles, before it washed away, broke, and became litter. So I pulled on a pair of rubber boots-of-many-names<\/a> and waded into the flow.<\/p>\n

There was the little shrine, still dry. But what’s this? Here was a bundle of herbs, tied with a string. And here was a bunch of dried-out marigolds. Marigolds, hmmmm. Very traditional, but we had not grown any this year.<\/p>\n

I took the jar and left the rest. At night, as we set out on dog walk, I remembered to ask M. if she had left those offerings.<\/p>\n

Blank look. No, she had not.<\/p>\n

So who did? Not the bears and raccoons<\/a>. One of the neighbors\u2014and there are not very many of them\u2014has joined in on the cultic activity. But which?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last June, as our creek began to dry up, I blogged about building a little shrine to Tlaloc, “god of the hydrological cycle” as Craig Childs described him, in a big culvert under our county road. It snowed, nearly a foot on October 26. The combination of trees pulling up less ground water after freezing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,23,5,40,149],"class_list":["post-3426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-colorado","tag-paganism","tag-polytheism","tag-tlaloc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Tg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3043,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3043","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":0},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As I wrote about earlier, I have been maintaining a small shrine to the rain god Tlaloc under a nearby county-road bridge. Our creek\u2014currently dry except for a couple of beaver ponds upstream\u2014goes through a culvert there, one big enough for me to walk through standing straight. When my shrine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/tlaloc_dagger-300x193.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1875,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1875","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":1},"title":"Get Right with Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"On a recent trip to look at some Anasazi \/ Ancestral Puebloan ruins in northeast Arizona, I took Craig Childs' book House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest as my guide book. Driving and backpacking from southwest Colorado down into Sonora, Mexico, over a period of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4372,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4372","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":2},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 5","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it is time to rebuild the shrine to Tlaloc under the bridge \u2014 the one that was mysteriously augmented last summer.\u00a0 I had taken it down before the spring run-off, which is just a memory now. Once the heat abates a little, I need to hike back over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2824,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2824","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":3},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In her comment on my first Tlaloc post, Hecate Demetersdatter asks,\u00a0 \"What was\/is it about Tlaloc that called\/calls to you?\" It was my reading and re-reading of Craig Childs' House of Rain that made me conscious of how important a deity Tlaloc (under various names) had been from antiquity to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/tlaloc-culvert_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2776,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2776","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":4},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"On Friday morning, April 29, back from a early morning fire call (shed + trash + grasses at the edge of the prairie), I climbed the ridge behind the house and made an offering to Tlaloc, the god of rain. (I think I need to make a lot more of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Feather offering for Tlaloc","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/TlalocOffering4-29-11_sm-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5529,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5529","url_meta":{"origin":3426,"position":5},"title":"An Offering to Tlaloc in the Burned-Over Forest","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week M. and I climbed over the ridge to \"Camera Trap Spring\" (our personal name for it) to leave an offering to Tlaloc. Thing have changed a little bit since a year ago. The ground is black with ash. Stones have cracked from the heat of a forest fire.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bioregion\"","block_context":{"text":"bioregion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=bioregion"},"img":{"alt_text":"offering_at_spring_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/offering_at_spring_sm1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3426"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3434,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3426\/revisions\/3434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}