Vegetation
Vegetation denotes slow material growth, unconscious life, nourishment, fertility, abundance, and the recurring passage through death into resurrection.
Our paraphrase of what the sources say it carries.
At a glance
- Type
- Symbol
- Borne by
- 1 figure
- Traditions
- South American folklore (general) (1)
Figures that bear it
A model judged each figure against its own description, one term at a time. Is: the figure is, or is partly, this thing. Bears: it carries the thing or is marked by it. What a figure does is filed under motifs and powers. Open "why" for the sentence the judgement rests on.
- Lik bears South American folklore (general)
why
What distinguishes the accounts is the emphasis on age and stillness: the creature is described as so long-established in its river that vegetation has taken hold on its exposed back, so that what looks like a bank or a stand of palms may be the animal itself.