Note 36 — CLASSIFICATION OF KATCINAS

The Hopi report that the Zuñi believe that the dead are changed into Katcinas and go to a Sípapû, which they descend and tell the “chiefs” to send the rain. The Hopi believe that the dead become divinized (Katcinas in a loose meaning) and intercede for rain. (See discussion of Mrs Stevenson’s statement that the dead send rain.) It seems to me that students of primitive myth and ritual have hardly begun to realize the important part which orientation plays in early religions. As research progresses it will be found to be of primary importance. The idea of world-quarter deities sprang from astronomical conceptions and was derived from a primitive sun worship in which the lesser deities naturally came to be associated with the four horizon points of solstitial sunrise and sunset.