A Cheyenne Native American teacher, Thunder, told us that when a person goes
into spiritual vision during a sweat ceremony, everyone involved usually goes into vision at the same time along with them. The first time I experienced this, my "seeing" was in the form of Water Vision (as described above). I had a clear view of the fire where stones for the sweat are heated, for the fire pit was straight across from the sweat lodge door. What I saw in my vision was four Native American men sitting around the fire, one on each of the fire's four sides, all looking outward with their backs to the fire.
The one facing west―and therefore facing me―caught my attention because his
mouth was unnaturally wide open and circular. Also, his headband held a circle
firmly to the center of his forehead. This circle had designs on it, and I was
making a point to remember those designs so I could ask about them later.
As I was studying them, the girl sitting on my right whispered to me that she was "seeing things" and was frightened by it. I quietly explained to her that this was natural and desirable, that she was "going into vision" and seeing things with her spiritual sight like the medicine people in charge do. I told her not to worry
because I was "seeing things" too―everyone probably was―and that it means
she has the potential to really learn the spiritual side of the Native American way. I also advised that she should talk with the medicine woman about it after the sweat. "Please talk with her," I said, "because she can help you to understand what you're experiencing now and much more for the future. Maybe you can become a medicine woman yourself!" Well, she didn't seem to think I knew what I was talking about and left us right after the sweat, not talking with anyone.
Days later, another Native American teacher held a class in which he taught that
the Lakota name for God, Wakan Tanka, actually breaks down into the names of
each of the four gods of the four directions: Wah, Kuhn, Tahn, and Kuh, each god
having a special purpose and meaning. But at the time of the sweat, I had never
heard about this.
On yet another day, I was sitting on a couch with a Native American lady who
had studied under a medicine woman named Nadine who always stayed on the
reservation. We had time to spare, so on a piece of paper I drew the images I
had seen within the circle on the west-facing forehead. She immediately
recognized what I had drawn and called it "the medicine wheel," an important
Native American symbol used in many ceremonies. The symbol encompasses
the meaning of the four gods and their four directions, west being the direction of completion and death, while east is the direction of birth and new life.
Later still, I went to a Native American store and was surprised to see a small
stone carving of a man with his mouth unnaturally wide open and circular, just
like the man I'd seen facing me in the vision. When I asked about this, I learned from the store owner that the wide-open mouth represents one's spirit leaving the
body through the mouth at death. Now it made sense to have seen this mouth on
the god facing west during the sweat. He was obviously the god of death whose
presence leads to rebirth.
At the time of my vision in the lodge, I had never heard of the four gods, the medicine wheel, or even the four directions, yet these teachings were all there within my vision, ready for me to begin learning about them.
HOW SWEAT LODGES HEAL
Many people know the sweat lodge is used for healing, but few know anything
about the technology that makes it actually work. As a starting point, think of how astral energies become "painted" over objects in the environment when events
happen near them, even if those events are simply someone's thoughts and
feelings as they pass by. Now attached to objects exposed to these events, these
astral "paintings" contain a recording of the events that made them, recordings
which some people can actually see, hear, or more often feel within.
That is why hotel rooms where bad things have happened can cause future
sleepers to have bad dreams or even wake up with a vision of the past event
thinking it's happening now. But all the hotel management needs to do to end the
problem is to change the room's color, put in different furnishings, or make
whatever changes will make the room distinctively different. After doing so,
guests can sleep peacefully in that room again, unaware that anything bad ever
happened.
This is because astral energy is like paint. It dries hard after being "sprayed" onto surrounding objects. If the surface of the object it was sprayed onto changes, the
"paint" no longer fits the surface of the object and chips into bits, falls off, and blows away, just like hard paint covering a rubber ball does when the ball is squeezed and distorted.
****
The same principle applies to sweat lodges used for healing purposes.
The first step in building the fire for the sweat is to use a stick to prayerfully draw a special sacred symbol in the clean, smoothed dirt below where the fire will be
made. Correctly drawing this symbol is very important, as it forms the basic
foundation for the ceremony to come to fruition. Then the firewood is laid over the symbol and the fire is built.
As the fire burns, the shape, appearance, and structure of the burning wood
changes, causing attached energies to no longer fit the form of the wood. They
peel off, break apart, and go up in flames and smoke. The wood at that point is
like a vacuum, drawing in the astral energies from its surroundings. The stones to be heated for the sweat are placed on top of this wood, becoming the main
source from which the wood draws astral energies which in turn go up in smoke.
Through this process, the stones are thusly made pure, becoming like vessels
holding nothing.
To prevent the fire and rocks from drawing in astral energy from beyond the area
set aside for the sweat, a spiritual wall is first built to protect the area from beyond its boundaries. This is done by first setting up four posts, one at the edge of the sweat area in each of the four directions, with a colored flag atop each whose color represents that direction. Everything inside the area is now considered “sacred,” as the fire draws astral energies away from even the
surface of the ground, making everything inside the four posts pure and sacred.
All of these preparations help the Indian spirits who are called in to actually build the wall between the four posts, a process which takes about three hours for the land to become clean and the spirit wall to be strong enough to keep outside energies out.
Three hours later, the wall is complete and the rocks are red-hot, ready for the
sweat. The medicine person then uses a feather to cut a door in the wall. With
that feather still in one hand and sage smoldering within an abalone shell held in the other hand, each person is brushed over with the smoke as they pass
through this doorway on their way to the sweat lodge. Once everyone is inside,
the feather is again used to close the door in the wall, which is then sealed shut by the spirits.
Then the fire person, using a pair of deer antlers, begins carrying each stone into the sweat lodge. He carries them quickly to reduce the amount of remaining
astral energy that might be reabsorbed by the empty vacuum of the rocks. Once
dropped into the rock pit surrounded by sweat participants inside the lodge, the
vacuum of the rocks then begins to draw astral energies from the surrounding
people. Sacred songs―not to be sung elsewhere to avoid their
contamination―are sung here by the group amid prayers asking for the healings
each person needs. All the while, the "bad stuff" is being invisibly drawn out of
the participants by the empty vacuum of the rocks. Many participants have been
healed of both mental and physical problems this way.
To help with this process, water from a bucket is splashed over the rocks,
causing a large amount of steam to rise. This steam mixes with sweat on the
participants, creating a physical link between the stones and the people,
enhancing the process of drawing out all the bad energies from the people to the
rocks. The floor of the lodge is always dirt; the process happens directly on the
earth so as the steam falls to the ground, impurities within it and the rocks can
return to the earth to be purified.
When first stepping out of the lodge after a sweat, the feeling of meeting the
outside air is wonderful. It's the feeling of all nature touching your purified skin
with you ready to begin a new life, free from all that was washed away.
After a sweat, no one needs to take a bath or shower, for heavy sweating and the
steam have already washed the skin. People emerge from the sweat lodge truly
clean, in more ways than one.
DISTANT THUNDER
The first time we were invited to a sweat lodge in East Texas, I was in charge of
setting up the fire pit where rocks for the sweat would be heated. As is the
tradition, I sprinkled some tobacco in the new pit with a prayer. Then I listened
carefully, because in the book Lame Deer Speaks, distant thunder was heard as
Lame Deer prayed. Sure enough, I heard distant thunder, just like in the book, so
in my prayer I invited the Thunder Beings to come join us in our ceremonies.
When they came, they poured down heavy rain. They lit the sky with lightning
and shook the air with constant thunder. The medicine woman in charge said she
and several others saw a bolt of lightning strike directly into the fire pit where I'd
offered the tobacco, spreading rays of lighting just above the ground, one of
which passed about a yard in front of her feet! We had three more ceremonies on
that same piece of ground during the next few months and every time, the
Thunder Beings came, poured their rain to us, and struck a bolt of lightning
somewhere on our land.
The ceremonies had not been planned to occur during rain; in fact, each was
planned a couple of weeks in advance with hopes for clear skies and sunshine.
But each time as the ceremony began, the Thunder Beings came with their rain,
lightning, and, of course, thunder. Several people, including the medicine woman,
complained that someone must be doing spells against our ceremonies to cause
this to happen every time.
Maybe I should have explained that I was that person, having invited the Thunder
Beings to participate in our ceremonies in the first place with the thought that it
would be a good thing, helping us all to be more in tune with the spiritual realm.
But I didn't see a benefit in telling them about it at that late date.
PRAYER TIES
Prayer ties are an important part of many Native American ceremonies. They are
made by pinching tobacco between your thumb and index finger while praying
something specific, allowing that prayer to go into the tobacco. Then that pinch of
tobacco is laid in the center of a piece of cloth about two inches square, the sides
of which are then tied together using thread, securing the tobacco inside. A
number of prayer ties are made this way, each with a different prayer, and tied
along the same thread spaced a couple of inches apart. The power in making
prayer ties is that each prayer continues emanating from its tie. A group of ties
act as though several people are praying together at the same time, having an
effect far more powerful than if only one person were praying alone.
Eventually, we bought our own property in West Texas at Wizard Wells, where
we soon performed a sweat ceremony in which I was given the job of creating
the weather prayer ties. Most prayer ties are made with cloth in one of the four
colors of the four directions: yellow, black, white, or red. But weather ties are
made with gray cloth to represent the gray color of clouds, intended for prayers
regarding weather-related needs.
took my job very seriously, working alone in a separate room. With one tie, I
prayed for summer rain, vividly imagining a downpour of rain cleansing both the
people and the land and helping to keep things growing even through the dry
season. In four other ties, I prayed for the safety of our property. With each one
46
of those four ties, I imagined a different corner of our property being struck by a
bolt of lightning, the four strikes together forming a shield of protection over all
our land. Lastly, I prayed for myself, imagining myself in a rain forest sitting in
front of a gentle stream bubbling over rocks as I sat under a fern gently dripping
cleansing rainwater onto my back.
Naturally, I intended for my visual imagery to strengthen the spiritual effect of my
prayers. I was making no effort to cause my visual imagery to become physical
reality. But . . .
Soon, everyone's prayer ties were hung from the top of the sweat lodge over the
rock pit―the yellow, black, white, and red ones plus my gray ties. It was
noontime on a hot summer day. The air was still and the sky totally clear as far as
we could see (which wasn't far, due to high hills on all sides). Everyone took their
places sitting around the rock pit, and the red-hot rocks were brought in with deer
antlers to create the heat for our sweat. The first water was sprinkled from a cup
to make the first steam, officially beginning the sweat! It was at that point that a
summer thunderstorm quickly rolled in from an unseen location over the hills.
So instead of a normal sweat, every image I'd mentally pictured while placing
prayers into the weather ties became our physical reality! (1) Heavy rain―really
heavy rain―began falling. (2) Soon, separated by a minute or two, there were
four very loud cracks of thunder nearby, which the fire person outside later told
us were four lightning bolts that struck each of the four corners of our property.
(3) Then, with so much water falling so fast, a stream formed and ran right in
through our lodge door, across the ground in front of me, bubbling over the hot
rocks as it flowed on its way through and out the back side of the lodge. (4) As I
sat, still dry but fully astonished, warm rain water began dripping on the center of
my back through a small leak in the lodge roof.
It was all there―everything I'd mentally imaged while making the weather prayer
ties. The Indian spirits didn't miss a thing!
The stream of water coming through soon filled the rock pit, completely cooling
the rocks, so we had no way to continue the sweat. We then filed out of the
lodge, trekked through the rain washing over us, and returned to our main
building nearby. Later, I told everyone what I'd done, about the prayers and the
imagery placed along with them into the weather prayer ties. No one said a word
at the time; they just gave me some really strange looks. But a few days later,
one of the medicine woman’s students-in-training came to me and said, "Our
teacher told us you will never be allowed to make the weather prayer ties again. I
hope you understand." Quite a bummer. But in its own way, that's a fitting
punishment for what I did.
THE HIGH COST OF DISRESPECT
Four flags―representing the medicine wheel, its four colors, and the four gods of
the four directions―stand on poles around the lodge and fire, marking the edge
of the sacred ground on which the ceremony is held. All the ground inside the
area marked by the four flags is considered "sacred" during all parts of the
ceremony, for impure energies are removed from this land by unseen Indian
spirits through the fire during the three hours before the actual sweat begins.
I don't know how they go about it, but during those three hours, the line between
flagpoles becomes like an invisible fence that one can actually feel. All those
three hours, the spirits are making that "fence" stronger and stronger so that
outside energies don't rush in while the rocks are being carried from fire to lodge
and everything inside the "fence" is kept pure for the ceremony.
But one time when I was in charge of the fire and the rocks, the medicinewoman-in-training (who was in charge of this sweat) brought two folding chairs
and sat down with a close lady friend. They sat down to chat, facing each other
with both of their chairs situated right across the line between flagpoles where
the spirit wall was being built! That is so not allowed! I walked over and pointed
out her mistake, asking them to please move. Neither one got up. The medicine
woman just looked at me and laughed as she said, "The spirits will understand."
I totally disagreed but said nothing. After all, she was the medicine woman!
However, I regret having been so shy and cooperative in those years. I should
have insisted they move, warning them that I was quite sure the Indian spirits
needed that space to complete their work of building the wall and there would be
serious consequences to pay if they didn’t respect what the spirits needed. But
unfortunately, I was too shy to confront a medicine woman (*shudder*) and
walked away without another word.
Not wanting to be involved in the consequences I knew were coming (having
seen such things happen before), I refused to enter the sweat lodge that day. I
did continue to fulfill my responsibilities outside the lodge as their fire person, but I participated in nothing more beyond that.
And consequences came indeed: During the sweat, the friend who refused to
move fell down unconscious inside the lodge, her face going splat right into a
thick mud puddle. Outside, right after the sweat, the sister of the medicinewoman-in-training who had always been in charge of the kitchen area went
ballistic without any visible cause. No one seemed to understand it, but I knew
exactly what was going on, for she voiced exactly what the spirits would naturally
have wanted to say. Aiming her words directly at her sister, she yelled, "I have
worked for you very hard every time we do this ceremony, but you do NOT
appreciate what I do. You do NOT respect my efforts. I might as well not be here!
You don't care. I've done all I can to support you and your work. But this is the
end. I'm finished."
The friend who had refused to get up could easy wash her face off and move on,
as the mistake had not been her responsibility. But the young medicine woman
and her sister never made up again. They never shared another sweat or any
other important experience together. They remained unable to meaningfully
communicate (always quick to misunderstand one another) for the rest of their
lives.
In conclusion, I want to say the Native American spirits are wonderfully helpful
during ceremonies, but as would be true with anyone in a position of high
responsibility over the welfare of others, they demand our respect while they do
their work. It's not optional, for they are real people, too, not toys to be played
with.
TENDING THE FIRE
The first time I had the job of building and tending the fire for a sweat, it was a
miserable experience. I was with a small group of people who assumed I knew
what I was doing, but never bothered to ask. In reality, I didn't even know there
was a special symbol to be drawn on the ground first before laying even the first
piece of wood. I hadn’t yet learned that this symbol on the ground was to become
the spiritual foundation for all parts of the ceremony taking place above. Without
that symbol, doing the ceremony is a bit like operating a lamp or radio without
knowing to plug it into the power socket on the wall.
Without having the proper spiritual protection, the fire felt extremely hot to me. I
could hardly get close enough to adjust the logs or set the rocks in place. It
burned my skin. In short, it really hurt! I'd run up, do something quickly, and then
run back in pain, cussing up a storm. Then I'd realize how wrong it was to cuss at
the sacred fire and apologize to it (and the spirits involved), trying hard not to say
such things again. The whole experience was far from being anything enjoyable.
****
Not long after that dreadful experience, an advanced medicine woman came to
our apartment and spent the entire night, from before sunset until after sunrise,
teaching my girlfriend and me the proper way to perform a sweat lodge
ceremony. So when my turn to tend the fire came around again, I understood
exactly how to start by drawing that symbol in the soil first, doing everything
prayerfully, offering tobacco, and then adding the first piece of wood, doing all the
steps with focus and in the right order.
It was amazingly different. The biggest difference was the fire didn't burn me―at
all. I could stand right up by the flames and even let them wrap around my head,
which caused a crackling sound in my ears but didn’t burn a single hair. I also
tried an experiment, stretching my arm out with my hand in the center of the
flames to see if it would hurt. After a few seconds, it did slowly start to hurt a little, so I pulled back and did not "experiment" like that again, believing that the little pain that had started to surface was a warning not to "play games."
While I was tending this fire, my Cherokee girlfriend walked up to me, then
squealed and ran away. I didn't know why. Much later, well after the ceremony
had ended, she explained she had wanted to tell me something, and she thought
that since I was standing at the edge of the fire that meant she could too. But
even though I was closer to the flame than her, the fire was burning her. She had
squealed and run away because it hurt. Then she showed me how the fire had
burned all the hair off her arm on that side in just those few seconds. Personally,
I'm sure it was because she was out of place being there, uninvited and having
no spiritually sanctioned role near the fire.
I didn't know there would be lasting effects from correctly working the fire in the
ceremony, but for the next year, I was always comfortable. Never too hot, and
never too cold. That was a pleasant surprise, because I'd been difficult to please
before that, often complaining about needing to turn on more air conditioning in
the summer or more heat in the winter. But now, I never asked for a change;
regardless of the temperature, it always felt "just right" to me already.
Additionally, during that year when I sat in the circle around the rocks inside the
lodge, I didn't sweat. One young medicine woman in charge of a sweat I attended
said she'd never seen that before and asked how I managed to stay dry. I pointed
out that my chest was wet, but she shook her head and said, "That's from the
steam, not sweat," and pointed out that even my shorts were still totally dry.
But my ability to be unaffected by hot or cold temperatures eventually wore off,
because I had not taken the role of being the sweat lodge fire person again for
quite a long time. After another year, I was back to being affected by hot and
cold, the same as anyone else would be.
THE PEYOTE CEREMONY
Peyote is a cactus used in its own special Native American ceremony for healing.
It contains the drug mescaline that is classified as a hallucinogen. As such, it
enables the participants to become conscious of their deeper selves, both seeing
and interacting with the spiritual side of what's around and within them.
The first time I was invited to a peyote ceremony, I didn't go. I didn't have the
right clothing with me to wear. But I wish I had gone anyway, because I missed
out on witnessing something amazing. A young woman was there who had an
inoperable tumor growing in her brain. The medicine man in charge of the
ceremony was able to remove this tumor by magically inserting a hollowed
eagle's leg bone through her skull and into her brain (effortlessly, as though
inserting a straw into a milkshake) and sucking the tumor out. He then spit it out
of his mouth onto the ground and his assistant came with a shovel, scooped it
up, and then buried it a distance from the ceremonial area.
I met this girl several times during the following weeks as well as others who had
witnessed the tumor being removed. They reported that when the doctors took a
new X-ray, they were amazed to find the tumor totally gone, her brain appearing
normal as though nothing had ever been wrong.
As you might expect, she fell hopelessly in love with this magical man who had
saved her life. They became lovers for a number of months, but eventually he
"moved on," leaving her emotionally devastated. Even powerful medicine people
are just human with the same frailties and shortcomings as the rest of us.
Sad to have missed something so spectacular, I did attend the next several
peyote ceremonies. In one of them, I got to see a similar use of the hollowed
eagle's leg bone. A young man had something growing in his back attached to his
spine. I watched the medicine man with one end of the bone in his mouth insert
the other end into the man's back. I watched the eagle bone move up and down
and around as he located and sucked out the offending material and again spit it
on the ground for his assistant to scoop up with a shovel and go bury. It really
was like watching a straw being moved around in a milkshake, because the
movements didn't pull or drag the skin the leg bone had been inserted through at
all.
Peyote itself has a terrible, bitter taste. So before the start of one ceremony, I
inwardly told myself it was going to taste like pumpkin pie and tried to psych
myself up for that taste. I didn't know the girl next to me at the ceremony; my only
connection with her was that I had helped her adjust the pillow she had brought
with her and placed behind her back to be more comfortable. Then when she
took the peyote into her mouth, she exclaimed, "Wow! It tastes just like pumpkin
pie!" Others looked at her strangely with serious doubt. And since I had not said a
word about it nor tried to transfer the flavor to anyone else, I wondered how she
managed to pick up my intention for a pumpkin pie flavor so completely. Spirit
can do marvelous things.
But such transfers of information between participants are not unusual. Often,
someone will say something that someone near them was thinking or feeling but
that was unrelated to the person who actually put voice to it. I would sometimes
have a question in my mind and the medicine man would answer it perfectly
within the flow of his discussion during the ceremony. The words intended for me
would sound louder that the words he was speaking around them. I thought it
remarkable that spiritual forces were somehow able to arrange his words in a
way that his natural speaking on other topics could contain exactly the words I
needed to hear, at exactly the point in time I needed to hear them, without
disrupting the natural flow of his conversation with others in any way.
Peyote also contains substances that cause nausea and throwing up. It is normal
for each participant to go far outside to throw up and then return to the ceremony
two or three times during the night. But during one ceremony, I did something I
clearly should not have―I mentally transferred my nausea to the man on my
right so I would not have to go out and throw up. He went out to throw up several
times more than others, because he had the nausea and need to throw up for
two people, while I never did throw up at all that night. Each time he returned, my
tummy felt so much better.
As I already said, that was completely wrong for me to do. It was totally selfish; it
was harming another without their knowledge or permission. I'm now ashamed of
myself for having done that, and I only tell the story here for completeness about
the kinds of things that are magically possible. I strongly hope no one will attempt
to follow me in that kind of dark action. It's just as easy to use that same power to
bring good into the lives of others instead, such as sharing the delightful taste of
pumpkin pie! Doing good moves your heart further into the spiritual light, bringing
happiness for everyone involved, especially the giver of good, while any dark
deed, large or small, moves everything that makes up what a person is closer to
inner darkness and sadness. It's like a law of cause and effect.
THE DRUM CEREMONY
Another type of Native American ceremony is performed with a certain kind of
drum about two feet across with sides two inches wide and an open back. The
drummer stands in the center with all the participants around him lying flat on
their backs. The drum is beat hard and loud at an even rate of about one beat
per second or slightly faster―the same rate as a healthy heart beat―and does
not stop for more than thirty minutes. The beating of this drum sends each
participant into their own spiritual vision.
As the ceremony began, I expected to need to focus hard and use my
imagination. I started out that way, but soon―and quite suddenly―zoomed into a
different landscape that I experienced as though I was asleep and in a vivid
dream. But unlike being in a nighttime dream, I still had full conscious awareness
and control, indicating I was still wide awake.
I found myself in a jungle clearing where a similar ceremony was taking place.
(Prehistoric South America, perhaps?) The participants there believed there was
a fully incarnate creature resembling a gargoyle but who had sensitivity in caring
for the people. They believed he was right there in the jungle, just a short ways
behind the trees they could see.
During the ceremony, music was being played that had four intertwining parts
played on four different instruments resembling a stringed harp, bamboo flute,
small drum, and a bamboo xylophone. (At least, that's my interpretation of what
their sounds were like.) I wanted to remember the complete music, but I soon
realized I wouldn't be able to. So I settled for concentrating on one instrument
and memorizing its melody.
The next day, I tuned my little zither's strings to those same notes and practiced
playing what I'd heard. It really was an interesting sound, wholly different from the
twelve-tone scale used universally today.
The next time the group met, I brought my zither with me and explained to them
that the whole purpose of the ceremony in the jungle I'd seen was to bring the
people together in one united consciousness and purpose for the good of all. It
sought to help each member understand through their own experience that
spiritually, we are all one, and so we should live, act out, and appreciate that
oneness in everything we do each day. Then I played that one instrument's
melody from their ceremony on my zither. It was a rather strange sound that had
required me to tune the zither with each string a step and a half above the
previous string instead of using the modern twelve-tone octave made up of half
steps. The group was amazed, much more than I had anticipated. Several asked
me to record that lovely music for them, as they wanted to continue to enjoy it at
home! I should have done so for them, but I never did.
THE SHAPESHIFTER
I have long debated including this story, even though it's a big one. I had taken it
out and saved it in a separate folder for two reasons. First, this book is about my
own experiences. The experiences of others can be found in their own writings. I
was there as it all happened, but only as the “go get” person: “Go get us some
water bottles,” “Go get some blankets from the car,” “Go see if the children need
anything,” etc. As such, I missed out on all the main events! I was hearing people
talk about things as they were happening, but I didn't see or hear these things
firsthand due to being away from the main area so much of the time.
The second reason I removed this chapter is because . . .
well, who would believe a pretty young girl even could change herself into a large
bird and fly over the treetops in the dead of night? Claiming something that
unbelievable might cause some readers to assume other parts of what I've
written to likewise be fiction.
But today, I'm putting this story back into the book because first off, being the “go
get” person and hearing what others were saying WAS my experience. I WAS
there, even though only to help. And secondly, I myself am not convinced the
shapeshifting incidents really took place. I didn't see them, and what others
thought they saw on a very dark night in the forest could very well have been a
bit distorted by fear and imagination.
So with that as my disclaimer, I will share the story.
****
My girlfriend and I arrived at the forest clearing, opened our folding chairs, and
sat down in front of the log fire. Right away, she noticed that a protrusion from a
broken-off branch on a burning log looked exactly like the head of a wolf. It was
small, but it really did look exactly like a wolf's head, gazing straight toward the
two of us. My girlfriend, who was studying to be a medicine woman herself, was
notably upset by this, claiming it was a “bad omen,” meaning that something
sinister was preparing to happen that night. So she quietly began doing magic
with prayers, hand movements, and releasing small pinches of tobacco to
counter the coming “evil.” But I thought the “bad omen” concept to be rather silly
and didn't participate with her. Instead, I headed elsewhere to see how I could
become helpful.
The ceremony that night was a “vision quest” for several people. Each of the
visioners made four strings of prayer ties to lay around the blanket they would sit
on for the night, each alone in the forest. The prayers emanating from each of the
ties around them would protect them while their consciousnesses slipped into
visions to acquire the knowledge or spiritual help each visioner was seeking.
There were two medicine women in charge that night who, about three times
before dawn, would go check on each visioner to see if anything was needed. In
doing so, they reached the blanket of one girl just in time to see her change into
what looked like a large blob of raw hamburger meat that continued changing
into what looked like a gigantic black bird. The two medicine women were so
frightened by this, they took off running, but then quickly realized they couldn't
just run away; they were the ones in charge of everything and responsible for all
the people at the ceremony, including this girl. So, they returned but found the
girl's blanket empty.
Leaving one's blanket in itself is totally wrong. Visioners never leave the
protection of the prayer ties around their blanket. Everyone knows that, and yet
this girl was nowhere to be found.
Back at the main camp, people were talking about the huge black bird that had
been flying over the tops of the trees bordering the camp. I wondered how they
could tell what it was, what with the night being so totally dark. Did they hear the
call of a bird? Was there the sound of large wings flapping? Or perhaps the fire
supplied enough light to see it?
I arrived back from one of my errands in time to hear several children arguing
with adults, half-shouting in frightened voices, "No! It was a wolf! A real one! And
very big!" They exclaimed over each other's voices that it had come to the door of
their tent, then stood there, looking in at them. So we assumed the shapeshifter
had morphed once again, from a bird to a wolf.
Come dawn as light was returning to the sky, the medicine women went to each
of the visioners, still on their blankets, to bring each of them back to the main
circle where all were waiting. To their relief, even the shapeshifting girl was back
on her blanket, acting as if nothing unusual had happened, so she was brought
back to the main circle like the others had been.
We all held hands around the circle as the medicine women prayed and then
closed the ceremony. With everyone being respectfully silent, I had no idea that
the petite, slim, and very attractive girl holding my right hand in the circle was the
shapeshifter! But they later told me, “That was her.” (Oh my gosh!)
After the circle broke, the eldest medicine woman met privately back in the
woods with each visioner, one at a time, to discuss the meanings of their
experiences. When the shapeshifter's turn came, she said things that perfectly
matched the events of the night, such as, “Then it felt like I was in a dream,
floating through the sky, looking down on the treetops as I passed over them.”
I totally disagree with how the medicine woman in question responded to hearing
these things. She got upset, telling the poor girl that she knew what she was―an
evil creature! She ordered the girl to leave immediately and never return! The girl
got up, walked to a sparkling new Cadillac, and drove off, presumably never to
be seen again.
That seems unreasonably unkind to me. She hadn't tried to hurt anybody. What
did she do that had any hint of “evil” in it? Even as a wolf standing in front of the
tent door, she had made no attempt to munch down on a small child. So why
even think of her as “evil”? I did not agree with that assessment at all.
After she left, there were only questions being asked: Who was she? Where did
she come from? How does a young girl like that acquire a sparkling new Cadillac
and drive it alone into the forest? How did she even know we were having a
ceremony here? I was far from being the only one left with a variety of question
marks floating around in my head.
So, what REALLY happened in the forest that night? I honestly don't know.
****
Weeks later, back in Arlington, TX, I was telling a Wiccan priestess about that
night in the forest with a shapeshifter. She totally believed me, saying she'd never
seen one shifting with her physical eyes but when watching from the astral plane,
she'd witnessed how they first turn into what looks like a lump of hamburger
meat―just like I said―before assuming another form. In fact, it was the
“hamburger” thing that clued her in that I knew what I was talking about.
When I got home after talking with that priestess, it was midnight with nothing
interesting to watch on TV that late. There was no internet yet, and I didn't have
cable either, so I settled for an old episode of Bonanza that was just starting on
broadcast TV.
As so often happens, the TV show fit perfectly what I'd just been thinking and
talking about. It was about a girl traveling over the Ponderosa with her gypsy
family who didn't even know herself yet that she was a shapeshifter. Unseen in
the darkness, she was turning into a wolf on certain nights, howling away deep in
the woods. As you might expect the story would go, her family found out and
wanted to kill her for being something “evil” instead of human. And of course, Ben
Cartwright and his sons came galloping in to the rescue, saving her life.
I would never have guessed the Bonanza series had done an episode about
shapeshifting. But as so often happens with me, there it was on the TV, right after
having been thinking about and talking about it.
In addition to the above, a more serious problem stems from the danger of being
enclosed within a single religion without understanding the role magic plays in
making all religions spiritually functional. Religions work in many ways to nourish
the believer within and without because of the magic that flows through them. But
positive reinforcement from one's religion (such as answered prayer or seeing a
vision) leads believers to conclude theirs is the one true religion, making it easy
to forsake all other thought and look down on those who believe differently and so experience differently.
Throughout my infancy, my mother would sit out on the porch in the evening,
rocking me to sleep while singing a song she created for me, a soft, gentle
melody filled with magical words for my protection, growth, and future. I have no
doubt her song did a lot to create the fact I've always been spiritually protected
from any serious harm. To this day I remember its gentle melody, one that still
makes me feel calm and ready for sleep each time I think of it. I've long forgotten
her words, but perhaps that's to keep them deeply internalized, still doing their
job, never to be brought out for intellectual dissection.
For years I believed that the cosmic rule was simply that you could not force
people to experience anything they are not willing to believe is possible. This, I
thought, was to protect people's right to maintain their own personal reality, free
from the intrusion of experiences others believe in but which they don't.
In addition to simple imagination, I often see visions produced via four different
media. I've named them "Sparkle Vision," "Water Vision," "Shadow Vision," and
"Purple Vision."