Soviet Mayan Playing Cards
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
I recently came across an excellent post from the Russian entertainment blog, englishrussia.com. The post contains about 13 very interesting playing card scans from the Soviet era of Russia. Acording to EnglishRussia’s article, Mayan motives were quite popular during the era and the only vendor for playing cards, and most other products was the Soviet State, hence these awesome playing cards. I got my first dose of Mayan culture about 6 or so years ago from a “workshop” I attended at a music festival for the band STS9. Someone asked the band if they followed the Mayan calendar. The band’s reply was ultimately “yes” however they also briefly explained the correlation between the Mayan Calendar, time, and sound in which the Mayans concept of time was quite different than most modern societies. From what I understand, the Mayans believed in an ever changing present moment rather than the linear (a to b) time-line most are accustomed to these days due to fast pace society. The Mayans followed a lunar cycled calendar in which the moon orbits the earth once every 28 days and 13 times a year. Every day is associated with a particular tone as are objects in reality, for instance the earth. The band went on to explain that they craft their music around these concepts, which is probably why they totally blow my mind every time I see them perform. Needless to say, the Mayan culture in itself is quite magical and I wouldn’t be surprised if these cards somehow represent these amazing concepts.
