The Ao Nagas are one of the indigenous Naga tribes that occupy the Naga hills in the North eastern region of India. Swept up in a hurricane of change, the tribe has been subjected to a number of upheavals both internally and externally. Originally animistic in their beliefs, one of the biggest changes the community had faced was proselytyzation. However, the tribe has been able to maintain a balanced grip on both the indigenious practices and traditions going back to their days of animism and have resulted in a harmonious marriage between the old and the new worlds. For the Ao Nagas, land is identity and therefore parsimony between man and nature and the belief in an elevated spirituality between the two have been a point of our livelihoods. The our dependence on nature for our sustenance have long been a driving force for how we conduct ourselves and how we see interact with the land. Respect given shall be respect received.
One of the times when this can be observed is through our harvest festivals. In this paper our pre-harvest festival of Moatsu and the myth of its origins will be treated and interpreted through a psychological lens using the Jungian tool of archetypal amplification. Mircea Eliade(1959) proposes festivals as our way to return to the "eternal mythical present", where we re-enter the sacred time of our ancestors and relive the creation of our cosmologies, leaving behind the profane time of our present. This paper will unpack and traverse the rituals and sacrifices practiced by the Aos, the cycles that helps us navigate through the threat of destructive modernity and keep a hold of traditional values and practices supported by the newly embraced christian values.
