Wilderness Maggid

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Mezuzah/Amulet Crafting on Taos Peublo

BS"D



posted by Maggid Sarah @ 4:26 AM  

3 Comments:

  • At 10:29 PM, Blogger Soferet said…

    BS"D
    Well! There's no comment on the pix, so what were you doing/writing & how were you doing/writing it?!?!
    Totally curious!
    :)

     

  • At 12:22 AM, Blogger Maggid Sarah said…

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

     

  • At 2:39 AM, Blogger Maggid Sarah said…

    BS"D

    I was spending some time out on Taos Peublo with new friends and one of them, being Jewish, needed a new mezuzah for an inside door. She liked the idea of blending elements from both traditions, Jewish and Tiwa Peublo, so I crafted an amulet in mezuzah fassion for her. On the surface this seems like a simple project, but an element of this kind of amulet making is the meditation and prep time that goes into it. All and all I'd say I spent two days prepping and only four hours in actual physical crafting. The meditation, of course, carries through the construction phase as well.

    For this project I chose to keep with the text of the Sh'ma on the inside... only problem was that the deer skin I had available to me was hard cured and I had no time during the days to prep the skins, so a scroll was out of the question. In the end I cut a strip from the hide and scribed on it our mantra, the single line of the Sh'ma. To scribe the text I cut a quill from an extra hawk or eagle feather they had in the house (I can't tell the difference yet between the two) (There was a plethora of feathers to choose from since we were staying with a medicine elder of the tribe.) The Ink used was red ocre clay from the land at Taos Peublo. I mixed it with water using an extra hard cup of deer skin as a container and stirred it with a wand of red willow (the Tiwa are the red willow people.) This strip with the Sh'ma was then wrapped in a soft casing of deer skin, bound with blue techelet colored string (I've been carrying that string in my medicine bag for months and months now, picked it up somewhere...) and sheafed along one edge with three species native to Taos Peublo, cedar, sage, and blue spruce. Finally, I had the woman whose mezuzah it would be scribe Hashem's holy name on the outside using the same ocre ink and quill that I used on the parchment inside. This was one of the most rewarding steps for me-- teaching her the calligraphy and practicing with her on spare paper (with hyphens) until she felt confident. It was such an empowering experience for this woman to be able to help craft her own mezuzah, and to scribe the holy letters herself.

     

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