For ancient civilizations, the navel was not only an object of desire associated with beauty, but also a part of the body to which powers such as healing and giving a person a sense of belonging to a place were attributed.
In memoriam. Gutierre Tibón (1905-1999).
Robert Diaz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
Part of an ancient tradition, the navel of newborns is buried by some indigenous peoples. Like the inhabitants of San Pedro Cholula, who buried the navel of the women in the kitchen sink so that the women would stay judiciously at home, or they were smeared with honey so that, when they grew up, they would be sweet and tender. The male stump was buried in the backyard if the father was a farmer; on the other hand, if the father was a warrior, then it had to be taken to the battlefield, because they thought that the stump was part of the body and that the destiny of the stump would directly influence the child.
The Cholutecas soaked the navel in water; then, they poured a few drops of the water into the eyes of the infants to cure the "evil eye" as well. The burial meant, according to anthropologist Miguel León Portilla, the search for "a path for the destiny of the children". The Popolocas and the Nahuas carefully cut the navel to a "fourth", taking care not to leave it larger or smaller, since the sexual life of the infants would depend on this.
This rite sought that girls and boys would obtain, under the influence of the stump, a sense of belonging to the place where they were born. In other cultures - such as the traditional Korean culture - the navel is wrapped in paper or straw and kept in the room where the person was born; that is, in the space where the goddess of childbirth is also found for them: Samsín. Then, it was to be burned slowly, and a member of the family was to watch over it; for there was also the belief that some woman who could not conceive could steal it to cure her infertility.
The navel is mentioned from the Song of Songssongs attributed to King Solomon, where he glorifies it as a place of beauty, a vessel of the Moon, a point of reference and desire to praise his beloved: the Shulamite. In the A Thousand and One NightsScheherazade also refers to it as a place where desires are contained and elixirs are carried. In China and Japan, women perfume their navel. In the Kama Sutra, it is appreciated as a point that reveals the depth of the joints where the osculi (kisses) must adorn with their caresses.
Omphale was the wife of Tmolus, king of Lydia (a city in what is now Smyrna and Manisa, in Turkey); she, whose name means "she of the beautiful navel", bought the demigod Hercules from the god Hermes after Hercules killed Iphitus, the wielder of Apollo's bow. Being a slave of Omphale, the also called by the Romans "Herakles", he enjoyed wearing the clothes of his beloved, while she wore the skin of the Lion of Nemea and his olive tree maso.
One night, the god Pan crept into his chambers and, believing that Omphale was the one lying on his lap, tried to possess her. His surprise was to find a choleric Hercules who gave him what he deserved. This allegory also served as a guideline to give entry to transvestism, and the navel as a form of parity, as men and women enjoyed the desire for clothes and tools and exchanged their roles, confusing the gods.
Given its proximity to the solar plexus - the most important chakra in the human body - the Third Chakra is where the emotional energies are concentrated, it is the point where movement, pleasure, desire, sexuality and orgasm meet. Its color is orange and has spread in the religions of the world. New Age that covering the navel interrupts the flow of bad energy.
In the myth of the androgynous, Socrates tells a highly fantastic story that denotes the importance of the navel: in the beginning there were three types of sexes. The men, who were of the Sun, the women who were ruled by the Earth and the androgynous who belonged to the Moon. The latter had two heads, four arms and four feet; there were androgynous men and androgynous women. While men and women wasted their time suffering for each other, the androgynous were almost perfect beings that moved circularly and did everything with enormous efficiency and, in an act of pride, they tried to ascend to Olympus to defeat the gods. When they tried to perform the felony, Zeus defeated them and split them in half, leaving the navel as a mark of their punishment and threatened that, if they tried again, he would split them again, leaving them on one foot and with only one hand. The androgynes left on earth did not seek their opposite sex, the counterpart to love, but loved beings of the same sex. The navel is the memory of their punishment.
There is a last recipe that is performed on the coasts of Colombia as a witchcraft rite and that spread as a sacrilegious act in which the father of the daughter or son was given a chocolate, where the navel of the newborn was also put, which was first roasted and then ground and stirred by beating the liquid to make it foam so that the father would have a love for the infant that would not allow him to leave her or him in life.
Finally, the importance of our navel has been diluted in a sea of stereotypes, although our civilization really grants it little, its place will be there, with the rites that, by fashion or rediscovery, in the future will give it a new validity, a new opportunity to remind us that it is a part of the body, as part of the body, it has always been venerated as a watery cavity that emulates the moon, the night, our dark side, that attracts mysteries, that insinuates another sexual cavity of connection with the environment because we were life through it and it is a place of our intimacy that we have been forgetting.
EEJ
