North American Native Traditions

I still plan to do more library and online and maybe even in person research into past native mystics, which I hope will provide evidence that native spirituality is on a par with major world religions. However I do not plan to steal any native traditions and incorporate them in my path. Since my definition of totem may differ from native ones I have decided to switch from the term totem to the term SSOSOSS (species someone of other species of significant sign). I have also switched from using the term sundance to sun stare based on feedback on alt.native .

North American Native Salmon

As related in the thumbs section, in February, 1996I went to a local FPI store and bought a whole salmon to bake stuffed with wild rice for my sister's birthday. Later that day I went to Wordplay bookstore and while there picked up a book of Native American folk tales. Again, I RANDOMLY thumbed to a page, and it came open at the Dakota tale of the salmon youth transformation, followed by the one on Salmon's Magic Bath, so I had to buy it. These tales were from the Iowa tribe of the Dakota. But I didn't look into the story until recently. That book is North American Indians(:?) Myths & Legends, ISBN 1-85958-015-7, compiled by Lewis Spence, Senate Books, paperback, 1994, 393 pages, where the "(:?)" means try a blank instead of a colon if the colon produces no match, and leave out the parentheses in either case. That book is a reprint of the 1914 edition. ,

This story is about a salmon youth, transformed from ugly to handsome, and given inspiration on the "fifth bow?" (Where the salmon and the bow both can be related to the waning moon shape.) This is the fifth bow after rebirth/ascent from the underworld and travel to where Coyote dwells (first full moon after the full moon of release from psychic death) or I guess the sixth bow after the rebirth full moon. There I am assuming that Coyote is associated with full moon and salmon/bow with waning crescent moon.

This I relate to the "five cauldrons" or "eight score muses" of the Taliesin poems, and to the 5.5 lunar months between my "Arianrhod's prison" and "Ceridwen's inspiration" onsets. Of course the salmon is also important to the celts, especially in the story of Finn. Ha, good name.

Raven and the First Men

Haida carver Bill Reid's world-binding carving Raven and the First Men (where men includes women) is located in the UBC Museum of Anthropology just a few hundred metres west of the top of my thorn climb, and a little hillock behind it was one of my power spots to relax (as well as Nitobe Garden and the First Nations Longhouse big rock).

The Museum contains spiritual artifacts from all over the world. People from all over the world visit it, including during Expo86 and global leader summits (Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin met next door in I think 1995; the media crowd took over the grad student centre across the street that I was a regular and sound tech at, plus they had a sniper on the roof. They were going to meet in the Museum but Mr. Yeltsin declined due to the spiritual artifacts, but they did visit the Museum.)

Now I'm not saying it has magical bonding power, just bonds of commonality and love and peace. The carving is of Raven atop a giant clamshell from which humans are straining to emerge. This for me symbolizes strongly the pre-new-moon mystic stories that I have been recounting, which I believe to be common to many global spiritual paths. It also symbolizes our global common goal to produce a heaven/garden on earth.

Two Raven musical notes:
Victoria resident Mae Moore's Nightbird song goes "when the nightbird calls your name; don't listen or nothing will ever be the same..." (But do you want everything to stay the same, including environmental trends?)

On a Saturday night early in 1997 I walked into the Ship Inn for the Culture Club session and as I closed the door the line "does the darkness grant release" from Ron Hynes' Cryer's Paradise title track (about Elvis/etc) rang out from the stereo -- I thought this a good coincidence. This is also linked to the Darkest Night Embraces section. Some other sections in my biography that should be of interest are:

  • Orca Hot Foot
  • Luthien Seagull
  • a brief mention of an eagle
  • a self-sacrificing rat

    Also my comments about a Beothuk wake WOMAD festival healing ritual in the Asatru section may be of interest. I will probably separate those out soon since it is of course more than Vikings who affected the Beothuck.

    For now I have also linked to it from the celtic and Christian sections.

    Regarding the Beothuk, when I scanned the Newfoundland museum (which also has a stag with seven tines on both large horns) collection on them I was struck by one rectangular pendant downstairs with five sections, as if the number five was important to them too. Also the whale's tail drawing upstairs evoked the waning crescent moon to me. But I will have to get Ingeborg Marshall's big new book on the History and Ethnography of the Beothuk soon and scan that for important symbols, when I'm less poor. Oh, also red ochre could be associated with goddess menstruation or new moon, at least it is in some cultures. The new moon shamanic inititation I went through in September 1991 was like a rebirth, hence coating with red ochre may be a dedication to this dark night great spirit.

    I have lots of reading to do, including Brookes Medicine Eagle's Buffalo Woman Comes Singing, and hope that the Lakota White Buffalo Woman was a woman solar sunspot cycle prophet type, but will have to check the local library for Black Elk's words in The Sacred Pipe soon. Also is there a good bio of Black Elk? The buffalo/lightning paths I relate to the waning horn of moon and waxing horn of moon, with clear sky lightning before the inspiration and after a solar flare. The shaman must wind down and steady the sleep cycle by new moon to avoid the waxing horn effects. The picture in Brookes Medicine Eagle's book of a buffalo bull with lightning is such that if the lightning is coming down at you the horns of the bull are oriented like waning and waxing moon horns.

    Also the Lakota have a sundance tradition which I relate a little to the golden feathers of the sun of my own sun stare. However note that my sun stare incident is according to alt.native regulars not very similar to native sundance traditions, plus some of them claim the term sundance is exclusively native, so I now use the term sun stare instead of sundance. But I still hope to research the origins of sundance traditions (and other traditions involving respect to the sun) to find out if there are even slight similarities between said origins and my sun stare experience. But I don't plan to repeat my sun stare, and my sun stare was not influenced by native traditions, unless Sarah Mclachlan's song Into the Fire was influenced by native traditions.

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