Shamanism and Native Spirituality

Monthly Archives: June 2019

According to Crow tradition, a man must fulfill certain requirements to become chief of the tribe: command a war party successfully, enter an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, wrestle a weapon away from his enemy and touch the first enemy fallen, without killing him. Joe Medicine Crow was the last person to meet that code, though far from the windswept plains where his ancestors conceived it.

During World War II, when he was a scout for the 103rd Infantry in Europe, he strode into battle wearing war paint beneath his uniform and a yellow eagle feather inside his helmet. So armed, he led a mission through German lines to procure ammunition. He helped capture a German village and disarmed — but didn’t kill — an enemy soldier. And, in the minutes before a planned attack, he set off a stampede of 50 horses from a Nazi stable, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode away.

Joseph Medicine Crow (October 27, 1913 – April 3, 2016) was a war chief, author and historian of the Crow Nation of Native Americans. His writings on Native American history and reservation culture are considered seminal works, but he is best known for his writings and lectures concerning the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. He received the Bronze Star Medal and the Légion d’honneur for service during World War II, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

He was the last surviving war chief of the Crow Nation, and was the last living Plains Indian war chief. He was a founding member of the Traditional Circle of Indian Elders and Youth.

The False Face Society is the best known of many medicinal societies among the Iroquois. The society is best known for its dramatic wooden masks, the “false faces.” The masks are used in healing rituals which invoke spirits and a dream world. Those cured by the society become members. Also, echoing the significance of dreams to the Iroquois, anyone who dreams that they should be a member of the society may join.

The masks are considered to be living and breathing. They are fed with cornmeal ‘Mush’ and they accept gifts of tobacco as payment for rituals. The design of the masks is somewhat variable, but most share certain features. The masks have long, black, reddish brown, brown, grey or white horse hair. Before the introduction of horses by the Europeans, corn husks and buffalo hair were used. The eyes are deep-set and accented by metal. The noses are bent and crooked. The other facial features are variable. The masks are painted red and black. Most often carry pouches of tobacco on their foreheads and/or nostrils. Basswood is usually used for the masks although other types of wood are sometimes used.

When making a mask, an Iroquois man walks through the woods until he is moved by a spirit to carve a mask from the tree. The spirit inspires the unique elements of the mask’s design and the resulting product represents the spirit itself. The masks are carved directly on the tree and only removed when completed. Masks are painted red if they were begun in the morning or black if they were begun in the afternoon. Red masks are thought to be more powerful. Masks with both colors represent spirits with “divided bodies.

A story about False Face can be found here: The Story of False Face

So, today my morning meditation was interesting!

I opened the book and a Navajo medicine man wearing a strange mask looked at me and immediately yelled “Muhaha!!” Well, he didn’t yell that exact word, I can’t describe the sound he actually made, but it scared all the evil spirits right out of me.

It was very invigorating! And I really did feel quite a bit better for it.

The story of False Face as told by Mad Bear Anderson.

I will tell you his story – who he is and how he came to look like that. But he is gone on now, evolved beyond this. These Beings have graduated and gone to a higher world – and they are high, high, high, beyond us. Yet we keep the False Face in this form and we pay honor and respect to it. It reminds us of a lesson far ahead of us – a hard lesson that we have yet to learn.

I call him False face even though that wasn’t his name at his time. That was never the name of him or his people but that is how we refer to it. False Face had studied and learned all the basic things in the universe. Then he had prepared and developed himself in all the medicine ways. It took centuries of hard work, but eventually he developed all the spiritual powers known on this Earth. He knew all the ways of the Creator.

One day False Face stood out in a large field looking at the skies and at the mountains in the distance. And he thought to himself: Knowing as I do all the ways of the Creator, all things in this world are possible for me. I now understand how all things are done. Why, if it should be my will, those mountains should have to move.

And then he heard the voice of the Creator whom he knew as the Great Lord of the Universe. The voice said, “Yes, I am the Lord and the mountains are there by my will.”

False face paused for a moment. Many times he had heard the voice of the Creator; but now he was thinking only of himself. Speaking aloud, he announced in a powerful voice, “I have come to know the ways of the Lord and I can duplicate them all! I can move these mountains if I wish!”

And the Creator repeated, “Yes, I am the Lord and I can move mountains.”

“Not you!” shouted False Face. “I am referring to myself, I am talking about me. Have I developed all this for nothing? Can I do nothing myself? I have learned all the rules of power and creation! Do you still think I am useless without you?”

“You are never without me,” the Great Spirit answered in a gentle voice, “for I am always with you.”

“But I know all your secrets now,” False Face protested. “I know how you do all these things.”

“It is because you have come to me,” said the Great Spirit.

In spite of all that he had learned, in spite of all his training and wisdom, False Face experienced a rush of great pride and anger, and he shouted at the Creator. “Go away. Leave me alone. I don’t need you anymore. I am now powerful and you want to think of me as your little child. I am not your little child anymore. I can do anything that you can do. So just leave me alone.”

“Alone?” said the Great Spirit. “There is no alone. How can I leave you? We are one and cannot be apart.”

These gentle, loving words only made False Face more angry. It seemed to him, in his anger, that the Lord was discrediting him in spite of all his long efforts and the remarkable knowledge and power that he had attained. It seemed to him that the Great Spirit was still claiming all power for himself.

In his angry state, False Face determined to have a contest with the Lord of the Universe and he challenged Him. “I know you don’t want these mountains moved, Lord. But I am going to move them against your will. Then you will see that I am something in my own right. You can pit your power against me if you wish, Lord!”

“I do not pit anything against anything,” answered the Lord. “This idea of a contest is a temporary dream. Wake up and come to me now and you will see that nothing is anything in its own right apart from all that is.”

But False Face repeated his challenge, “You are trying to take everything away from me, Lord. You cannot take this chance away. Do what you like. Oppose me if you like, but I am going to move these mountains anyway, knowing that you want them where they are, so that it will be clear that it is done by my will alone.”

False face waited there in the field, grim and determined, and there was nothing but silence. So he went about the contest. Though he strained with all his might, trying everything that he had learned and developed over the centuries, nothing happened. Nothing at all. There was only a soft breeze, and the mountains stood in the distance as always. he flew into a rage, cursing in a way that cannot be repeated and, when there was only silence, daring the Lord to respond. He called the Great Spirit a fake and a liar, claiming the Creator had pitted his Great Will against him in spite of promising he would not.

Then an idea occurred to him. He would have his contest yet. He shouted at the Lord, daring the Lord to move the mountain while he tried to block Him with his own will as the Lord had done to him. He believed that if the Lord had neutralized his power then he could do the same to Him. But he also believed that the Lord might well want the mountains where they were and would be unwilling to move them. In either case, nothing would happen. He craved to claim victory over the Lord and he felt sure he would win his dare.

He shouted his challenge again. He clenched his fists and squinted his eyes and screamed into the sky; and before he could finish his sentence, he heard a trembling and a rumbling. He spun around to look just as the mountain was coming to his side. That was a mistake, for that caused the mountain to strike his face and break his nose.

And at that the gentle voice of the Great Spirit was heard again. “Now look what we have done to our beloved self. No matter. It is very temporary. We shall now set it right with our collective will, shall we?”

False Face felt a moment of great pain, and then he had a sudden awareness. There was no contest. There had never been any contest. This was another of his countless lessons. But this was the ultimate lesson and he had arranged it – he and His Own Self – so that he could be free from the desire to be a separate, independent something in its own right. So that he could be free from being apart and alone.

-oOo-

Mad Bear went on to say:

“Just think what we have to look forward to. After all our learning and development, we are still going to come to that last great contest – that last big hurdle for the powerful ego. Isn’t that something? But once you have made that last hurdle, that’s it. Then you graduate and go on to a higher level. “


For months now, I’ve been talking about needing to find a “teacher,” someone to teach me about magick, shamanism, healing, spirituality, life, living, and all those things that I am so intent on knowing. Finally, one day I suggested to my friend Daniel that maybe I should just make an appointment and show up and wait… like for example, I could tell the Master of the Universe that I could be found every Sunday at 2 pm sitting in the coffee shop at Borders in Lee’s Summit, and to please send my teacher there to find me.

God often speaks to me through books, and I figured that if no one showed up, maybe I’d at least find a book or a CD, and if all else fails, I will have enjoyed a good cup of coffee.

However… always there’s the buts and the howevers… it never seemed really practical or possible to commit to being in town at a specific place at a specific time on one of my days off, and I for sure wouldn’t be able to commit for the days that I work. So… the idea just sat there… unattended and well… fermenting.

Then, when I was in Texas, my sister and I visited Barnes and Noble and I found a really cool book on the bargain table. The North American Indian by Edward S Curtis.

I opened it up and flipped through the pages, and stopped, riveted by the image of this most amazing person. He looked right into me. I could hear… yes, really… I could hear him chanting Lakota prayers… almost I could smell the sage… and the warm red earth… the feathers and the skins and the people around me… almost.

It was like a revelation. Here was my teacher… here were my teachers… I would take that book home, and every day as part of my morning meditation, I would open the book at random, meet with my teacher, and listen, and learn. Cool huh?

Blessings from my heart to your eyes!
Enjoy!

Now this is the day.
Our child,
Into the daylight
You will go out standing.
Preparing for your day,
We have passed our days.
When all your days were at an end,
When eight days were past,
Our sun father
Went in to sit down at his sacred place.
And our night fathers
Having come out standing to their sacred place,
Passing a blessed night
We came today.
Now this day
Our fathers,
Dawn priests,
Have come out standing to their sacred place.
our sun father,
Having come out standing to his sacred place,
Our child, it is your day.
This day,
The flesh of the white corn,
Prayer meal,
To our sun father
This prayer meal we offer.
My your road be fulfilled
Reaching to the road of your sun father,
When your road is fulfilled
In your thoughts may we live,
May we be the ones whom your thoughts will embrace,
For this, on this day
To our sun father,
We offer prayer meal.
To this end:
May you help us all to finish our roads.

~Zuni

Words spoken by a mother to her newborn son as she cuts the umbilical cord:

I cut from your middle the naval string: know you, understand that your birthplace is not your home, for you are a server and a warrior, you are the bird called quechol, you are the bird called zacuan, you are the bird and warrior of the One Who Dwells in All Places. This house where you are born is but a nest. It is a way station to which you have come. It is your point of entrance into this world. Here you sprout, here you flower. Here you are severed from your mother, as the chip is struck from the stone.

~ Aztec

Igluik, an Eskimo shaman describes his shamanic enlightenment:

“I endeavored to become a shaman by the help of others; but in this I did not succeed. I visited many famous shamans, and gave them great gifts… I sought solitude, and here I soon became very melancholy. I would sometimes fall to weeping, and feel unhappy without knowing why.

Then, for no reason, all would suddenly be changed, and I felt a great inexplicable joy, a joy so powerful that I could not restrain it, but had to break into song, a mighty song, with only room for the one word: joy. Joy! And I had to use the full strength of my voice. And then in the midst of such a fit of mysterious and overwhelming delight I became a shaman, not knowing myself how it came about. But I was a shaman.

I could see and hear in a totally different way. I had gained my quamanEq, my enlightenment, the shaman-light of brain and body, and this in such a manner that it was not only I who could see through the darkness of life but the same sight also shone out from me, imperceptible to human beings, but visible to all the spirits of earth and sky and sea, and these now came to me and became my helping spirits.”

~From The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner

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Truth
"Take your false face off. There is no need to throw your hands up in despair!"
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I think it's time to go shopping... maybe even buy some really cool stuff at my online shops!!

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