by virtue of the womb. R

endering copying synonymous with reproduction, this organ ensures that mimesis fuses as a male secret with origins and, as we shall later see, with history as well. Mr. Charles Slater, a Cuna who had served as a sailor on English-speaking ships, wrote down the origin of the world in the late 1920s in English. "God came

from under the earth for himself," begins Mr. Slater's text, which was published by Baron Nordenskiold. That time earth was without form and darkness." He needed a woman. The earth was without form or firmament. And God thought to himself to take a heart because heart "is memo

ry to the woman and then he take heart of string that which is gone straight down to bladder, that which will make a woman way to come out of womb to form a child

• . In thus creating woman, God became dual in ways that imply his androgyny, and the world was then created by the womanly body in three ways: from her womb, from her body parts, and from her seeing souls of different colors. As an example we can see how an important plant is thus created in the Origin History (as the Cuna call them) given by Chapin concerning the black dye-plant genipa, a dye used ritually for painting the body. I paraphrase and occasionally quote it thus. God called his woman ("calling" being a
• euphemism for sexual intercourse) and she became pregnant. When she neared term he said to her that he would make a table. He took the flat forehead of her vulva-i.e. says Chapin, her stomach, in its spiritu
• al form-and as it was legless - he pulled off his penis and make legs out of that. Then he declared he would make a golden cup, and he pulled out the cup sitting in her womb, says Chapin-and he made a cup of good yellow from that. She climbed