The Pueblo vision of death and the relationship between rainWorks Cited MissingOne of the fundamental elements of the Pueblo worldview is: The concept of a double division of time and space between the upper world of the living and the lower world of the dead. This is expressed in the description of the journey of the sun in its daily rounds. The Pueblo believe that the sun has two entrances, variously referred to as houses, dwellings, or kivas, located at each end of its course. It is assumed that in the morning the sun emerges from its eastern seat and in the evening it descends to its western seat. During the night the sun must travel underground from west to east to be ready to rise the next day in its usual place. So day and night are reversed in the upper and lower worlds... (Titiev 1944). Life and death, day and night, summer and winter are seen not simply as opposites but as involved in a system of alternation and continuity: indeed, a fundamental relationship of cycles. These opposites form what we can call a bipartite vision. For black there is white and for something like the sky there must be a corresponding underworld beneath us. As part of this bipartite view, death is "birth" into a new world, and many Pueblo burial practices parallel those of birth, except that four black charcoal lines separate the dead from his home in the village while four white with corn flour mark the walls of a newborn's house. This world and the spirit world are transformations of each other. At death a cotton mask - a "white cloud mask" - is placed over the face of the deceased. The spirits of the dead return to this world as Kachina. All kachinas are believed to take the cloud form of what the Pueblo call "cloud people," and their spiritual, or naval, essence is a liquid that manifests as rain. When the kachinas (as ritual figures) leave, they are asked: "When you return to your homes, bring this message to them so that, without delay, they may have mercy on us with their liquid essence [rain] so that all things can grow." and life can be generous." Everything, in the Puebloan belief, depends on rain which, when combined with Mother Earth, is the essence of all things. Therefore navala is also the essence of the individual self, conceived as a liquid, and a Pueblo will say, "I have the liquid essence of my fathers," to express the English notion of being of the same flesh and blood.