The Andaman Islands are home to a people who actively smell and dream.
Their calendar is based on bloom seasons, cycles of emitted fragrances. Each season presents its vital energies of aroma-forces. Navigation in these islands of fragrance is smell-based ... such as closer to the sea = saltier, further from the sea = sterculia flower. Space differentiation is known by fluctuating olfactory perimeters of village and environment.
Coincidentally, while revisiting the article on smell cultures, I was revisiting Robert Moss' books on dreams, coincidence and imagination. Moss relays that the Andaman Islanders are an active dream culture. This means that people individually and as a community share dream work for life-supporting information, often dreaming as a group. It is documented that they left their fishing areas for hillside shelter prior to the 2004 Asian tsunami and survived, specifically due to heeding their shared dreams. There are nasal-centric and dream-centric cultures.
Coincidentally, perfumer Vedat Ozan's radio show Koku this week covers, you guessed it here is the radio show link, the show is in Turkish.
Ozan's show covers:
- "Calendars that change on aromas/scents, not on the movements of the sun
- Places fixed by aromas/scent, not by meters/latitude/longitude
- Andaman Islands and the Onges
- Rain Forests and the Dassanetchs
- Colombia, South America, and the Desanas
- 'All these primitive savages* stink ! Oh god, why are they not clean as us ??'"
Smelling and Dreaming. lastor says it doesn't get much better!
* Savage comes from the Latin silvaticus "of the forest"
Sources
The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination
and
The Secret History of Dreaming
both by Robert Moss
Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell
by Constance Classen, David Howes, Anthony Synnett
for your pleasure may I recommend
On Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination
Dreamers through History
Cultural History of Smell
Coincidentally, Arianna Huffington wrote of her dreaming today read here about Luxor Temple sleep/dream chambers and more.
The Andaman Islands photo: Venkatesh, K
