Tree-Fish-Diggers and their Provocative Bodies

Pangolins, made

    for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,

on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,

  with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon, man slaving

  to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth having,

        needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;

           a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,

        like the ant; spidering a length

           of web from bluffs

             above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked

             like the pangolin - Marianne Moore

Got wiped by a twelve-hour shift and worked myself into a funk listening to Jewels of Thought on loop - still processing Pharaoh Sanders' death - so instead of Lupupan Magic Two, we're doing pangolins; looking at a pangolin is clinically proven to reduce stress. This post is brought to you by two women named Mary.

The other Mary is legendary anthropologist and ethnographer Mary Douglas, who wrote about the role of the pangolin cult extensively in her work with the Lele people of the Kasai River region. The Lele are very close to the Bushoong, most famous as the founders of the Kuba Kingdom's core paramountcy - separating them is mostly a matter of political identification. The thing that interested folks along the Kasai and the whole of the South-Central was the same thing that interests most of us about pangolins...they have scales. That's kinda odd. The presence of what was generally seen as a fishlike characteristic (partially because of the tail and the particular look of the scales) was significant, since animals that frequented waterways in forests were often associated with the spirits of the wood-spring-hill that the Bushoong called ngesh (after the Kete.) Bushbucks, crocodiles, elephants, monitor lizards, hippos, pythons, and river hogs all carried special connections to the spirits as border-crossers like them, but the pangolin was special even among that illustrious company as a sort of walking fish.

The role of the pangolin as a strange border-crosser was very common regionally, though which species took precedence tended to vary. The Lega held that the giant pangolin of the ground (yolabondu/Smutsia gigantae) taught men to roof the mat ceilings of their homes with leaves overlaying each other in scale patterns, esteeming it over the white-bellied pangolin of the wood (luwawa/Phataginus tricuspis) favored by the Lele. The Komo emphasized that the giant pangolin was a burrow-digger connected to the dark places of the earth and placed it alongside the aardvark, considered the pangolin's maternal uncle, in the significant role of stay-behind animals in their ritual moities initiation stories.  The Lega and the Komo both considered the pangolin to be a superlative diviner that could read the past and future in the patterns of termite movements. The Lele position was bit different - they agreed on the significance of the water-land connection but focused on some traits specific to the tree pangolin which heightened its transgressive magical powers. The tree pangolin is fishscaled and fishtailed, metaphorically connecting it to the water (they are also good swimmers in a more literal sense), and obviously trundles along on the ground BUT it also climbs trees. It thus "belongs, symbolically or literally, to the water and the earth, yet is able to distance itself from these elements by climbing skywards." Worth noting that they can do this bipedally, in a manner that appears like they're walking at a ninety-degree angle:

Magic!

The earth-bound giant pangolin can't do this, lacking the ability to bridge earth-water-sky. White-bellied pangolins also tend to have one baby at a time, like other powerful creature-people - elephants, hippopotamuses, chimpanzees. This grants them the respect afforded to the atypically fertile along this belt - human twins are extrafertile births for men, pangolin only children are hypofertile for animals - and connects them to humanity. In addition, the Lele say that the white-bellied pangolin has the particularly human trait of following kin avoidances and lowering its head politely at the approach of others like a man would. For an animal to display buhonyi, the shy nature of the cultivated person, strikes Lele observers as yet another transgressive feature. 

Occult technicians, modernist poets, and Tumblr users can't all be wrong

A final note: Douglas cautions against regarding the animal metaphors widespread in human cultures as “essentially a resource for thinking about ourselves.”  There is, she suggests, “a more fundamental, nonmetaphorical kind of connection between the way humans think of themselves and how they think of animals. Once this other way is established, metaphors flourish upon its basis.” As discussed, Douglas’s evidence comes immediately from the Lele people in Central Africa, but she does not restrict her conclusions to a particular era or culture. “The similarity that we observe between the two spheres, human and animal,” she continues, “would result from the fact that both spheres are constructed upon the same principles.” 

A MAN APPEARS BEFORE YOU

Pangolin Elder

Time has passed. Marx and Freud have been heard. Wittgenstein has had his say. Surely now it is an anachronism to believe that our world is more securely founded in knowledge than one that is driven by pangolin power. - Mary Douglas

"Figure 9.3  Aged white-bellied pangolin showing worn scales." 

Looks like: The result of a drunk spirit marrying an artichoke and a mongoose. Lunda-designs that chart ancestries and turn spells painted over old scales with holy kaolin clay. Absurd tongue. 

Sounds like: A soft clacking. Voice like raffia cloth scraped by fingernails. It's not used to speaking for long. Deep clear baritone when using dreamspeech.

Pollution Tolerance: Respects controlled breaking of taboo more than total purity. Will not address those wallowing in spiritual heat, though. Can smell your shame.

A wandering pangolin elder is invariably a magician of great strength: they are born with the transgressive body of a powerworker and miracles flow from their claws easily. Pangolins are not good at handling social stress and have terrible eyesight - some compensate for the latter problem with companion dragonflies. Most pangolin elders are familiar with a couple of entrances to the underworld and will trade for the information. You'd be better off asking an aardvark if you wanted a guide, but that would require interacting with an aardvark. 

Wants rare ritual components and musical performances. Willing to enter formal friendships but expects the bond to be upheld honorably.

Prefers to tank hits with armor and defensive spells while escaping, if attacked. Wields tail as a club in extremis, making rapid side movements that splay and “scissor” the long, very sharp scales near the tail’s base. Damage like a shortsword or something. 

Armor as plate except around the underbelly, can roll into a ball to cover the gap but can't move much in ball form. 75% chance to reflect any spell back at the caster.

Sources I used if you want more, in no particular order:

• Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology by Mary Douglas
• Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation edited by Daniel Challender, Helen Nash, and Carly Waterman 
• New Collected Poems by Marianne Moore
• Hunting the Pangolin by Mary Douglas, Luc de Heusch, and Ioan Lewis (what a collab)