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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Religions & Faiths > North American Indigenous Spirituality

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  #21  
Old 30-12-2015, 02:04 AM
darkangel91 darkangel91 is offline
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Thank you very much Raven Poet, I found your reply quite inspiring. :) I agree that the only real way to learn any spiritual knowledge (traditional or otherwise!) is to work for it - to sacrifice - to actually do the rituals. I've began recently a work which will take over a year and a half to complete, doing at least one longish meditation that I invented for myself every day, then praying, and then listening silently for guidance - I have already, after only a few days, had some success with it. My hope is that within a few months I will be able to start having dreams where I can communicate with whatever spirits are out there and want to talk to me, and hopefully within a year or so I will be ready to do something major, like a vision quest or the like, to cement the relationship. But I'm going to go slowly and focus on building up my willpower, which is my greatest weakness, by making sure that I do this meditation every single day, as deeply and intently as I can, thereby proving my devotion to the path. It's going to be hard, but very worth it, and along the way I'm going to learn as much from as many different sources as I can, most especially dreams which are a boundless source of wisdom.
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  #22  
Old 30-12-2015, 10:55 PM
Raven Poet
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Dear darkangel91: Wow! Now you are the one inspiring me! (love it when we can reciprocate, eh?)

I really admire the sacrifice and commitment you are currently undertaking. I am most certain those doorways will open to you. You are following your intuition and spiritual knowing, and trusting what you know to be true inside you. That is incredible!

I look forward to hearing, if you care to share, what connections you've had during this ceremony you are committing to.
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  #23  
Old 31-12-2015, 02:14 AM
darkangel91 darkangel91 is offline
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Thank you for your kindness. :)

As I said earlier in this thread I am devoted to the gods of the ancient witch faith, known in Wicca as the Lord and the Lady (though Wicca is really just the tip of the iceberg). If you're interested in them, you can look them up, there's loads of information, but basically they're fertility gods: the archetypal or quintessential man, and the quintessential woman. But they can also be seen from a cosmic perspective as the embodiments of masculine and feminine energy in the universe - the Father and Mother of all living creatures, and even of the entire universe - I actually see connections between the Lord and Lady, and the Christ and Sophia of Gnostic Christianity. But anyway.

In the style of Austin Osman Spare, who pioneered the technique of creating an "alphabet of desire" - a set of symbols representing aspects of the world, from one's own unique perspective, to be used as a way to communicate with the unconscious mind and / or the spirit world - I created over time a set of symbols, for an entirely different reason (a script for an invented language of mine), but realized that they could be used to express abstract concepts, deep facets of reality, the way the Norse runes can, but then that's the way all alphabets of desire work - they're ways of categorizing reality. Each of my symbols (there's 24 of them, like the norse runes - weird coincidence) is associated with some combination of masculine, feminine, and neutral forces, and thus as a whole they express all the different interrelationships of the God and Goddess - all the different parts of reality.

So, some time ago, when this all started, I was contemplating these runes of mine and tried to find a way to create with them an affirmation or a spell to combat a major problem of mine - lack of motivation and willpower. I came up with a word which in my language (which you remember these runes are meant to write) means "I conquer / empower myself." I then, through meditations on this word and various intuitions, realized that I could achieve this goal of self-empowerment through self-discipline by devoting one day to every possible pair of runes - that's 576 days! Plus this would embed me deeply into a mystical system that I could use to communicate with reality and with my own mind on a deep, possibly magickal level. I gave myself two weeks to prepare, during which time I have been doing a lot of meditating and thinking. In a few days I will begin the work, and by the end I will have proven to myself that I am capable of doing something so big and difficult - and this belief in myself, I think, will cure my willpower problem, AND I will understand 576 individual facets of the universe and of the Lord and Lady's interrelationships in a way I never have before!

Wow, that's a lot of stuff to say, I hope it all made sense. :)

As for what I've learned yet... well, I've discovered loads of meanings hidden in my symbol system. It really is more a map of my own PERCEPTION of reality than of reality itself - but only through understanding my own mind can I figure out how to reshape myself in the image of my true, ideal, destined self. So an artificial runic system is the obvious method. I've also, during my meditations when I am in a deep trance, heard (in my mind) the voices of the Lord and Lady telling me things that I can do to improve myself, giving me advice, and I often see mental visions, like waking dreams, which involve these runes and depict symbolically meanings of them that I didn't know before.

I know none of this has ANYTHING to do with shamanism but I am a profoundly intellectual person, in terms of my spirituality. I have to have an intellectual, mental way of understanding and relating to spiritual reality - a map, if you will - so that I will, when the time comes, be able to understand the connections among things that would have confused me without that preparation. Honestly, it's sort of like reinventing the Kabbalah, only in my own image.

A simple example is that my rune "Dhet," representing a sound like the "th" in "father," symbolizes such disparate things as transformation, astral travel, song, mirrors, and prisms, linking all of those into one more abstract idea - thus, whenever I need to embody those ideas somehow, or interact with them, I can invoke that particular rune. It's like the way people say the Norse runes have spirits, souls of their own, they're sort of alive - I think it's becoming that way with my own, artificial (or is it perhaps channeled? I don't believe anything is invented, everything we create we are really discovering) system, the symbols are like visual names for spirits or primordial, sentient forces in reality that I could call upon and communicate with. So, like, in the presumably rather common instance of a "shaman" - or in my case, a witch - travelling into the spirit world via trance and song, or by staring into a mirror and moving through it in their spirit, that very event or action is EMBODIED or expressed in my rune "Dhet." They are one thing. To understand the latter enables one to enact the former. To commune with the spirit of the latter is to learn from it how to do the former.

Is that too complicated? I worry that I sound a bit confusing when I talk about this. Someone not familiar with the "alphabet of desire" method of doing things might find it confusing, I'm not sure. As you can probably see though I have a VERY eclectic method - I take any idea that inspires me and combine them all together, because if it inspires me, I assume that means it will be useful to me! If you have any questions, do ask them.
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  #24  
Old 02-03-2016, 08:01 AM
GemDragon09 GemDragon09 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by darkangel91
So many people who have not an ounce of blood from any Native tribe in them (as I myself do not) claim to have "native american spirit guides" and to have been trained by "real medicine men" and all that, that it's difficult to find real information. Are there any people who are actually, truly of Native American descent on this forum, who know about REAL "shamanism", whom I could talk to to learn more about this stuff?

I really hate it when people steal the traditions of other cultures, but at the same time I believe we have a lot to teach each other. Properly I am in the European witchcraft tradition (though as a solitary practitioner who has yet to meet or work with any others, or even really to scratch the surface) but I feel that some form of "shamanism" would suit me in what I want to do - totem animals, spirit journeys, etc - especially as my distant ancestors, worshipping the Great Goddess and the Horned God, would have been doing similar things.

I feel that it is part of my destiny to learn how to interact with and receive wisdom from spirits of all kinds - ancestors, plant spirits, animal spirits in particular, which is an important part of the Witch Cult as well. My goal is to learn how to be a conduit for spiritual power for healing, especially emotional or spiritual healing, as I long to bring light to the world.

First of all, it's good to study and learn about other cultures and religions. But a lot of them are hard to learn about for a reason. They're usually closed to anyone but that specific group of people (they want to preserve their culture for a reason. You can't force your way in)
In order to really learn you would have to find someone who would accept an outsider. You would have to go through many rituals and ways to prove yourself. Not "vision quests" but prove you're there for the right reasons.
Or you'll just be turned down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_religion
Native Americans never use "shaman" or "shamanism" as that's an entirely different word and origin. They are called Medicine men and women (if they're allowed in that culture.)
In fact, it's a common misconception and even used as a negative term. Each tribe has their own language and their own word for a medicine person. But asking for THEIR traditions in order for YOU to be a healer and worker might not happen.
You can visit nearby places for cultural education or something, but they're not going to give you closely guarded secrets and verbally passed down traditions on how to heal people.
Some things are already well known because they have shared that knowledge with many people. Like for burning herbs (smudging) from spiritual practices is from all over the world, but certain herbs for certain things are strictly from one or a few Native American tribes.

Another big thing here, is that there are 562 federally recognized Indian tribes, bands, nations, pueblos, rancherias, communities and Native villages in the United States. Approximately 229 of these are located in Alaska; the rest are located in 33 other states. Tribes are ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse.
There is no one religion between all of them. Like there is no one language or origin of the earth story.
There are those who practice Abrahamic religions, but keep some of their old traditions alive orally or through crafting.

Like you brought up "vision quests". A vision quest is an attempt to achieve a vision of a future guardian spirit, traditionally undertaken at puberty by boys of the Plains Indian peoples, typically through fasting or self-torture. Individual Indigenous cultures have their own names for their rites of passage. "Vision quest" is an English umbrella term, and may not always be accurate or used by the cultures in question.
And the Plains Indian peoples is another umbrella term for the 50 (probably more) tribes that lived in the middle of America, even going up to Canada.

It's similar to how people will use an umbrella term for a European religion. But which one? Celtic? Anglo-saxon? Germanic Paganism? Ancient Roman Pantheon? Finnish Paganism? The list is pretty long. You'll hear people talk about Druidry but a lot of that was orally passed down and practically gone at this point because people either forgot or it was lost. Luckily some of it has been rediscovered.
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  #25  
Old 02-03-2016, 08:11 AM
GemDragon09 GemDragon09 is offline
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http://www.druidry.org/library/membe...m-celtic-world

http://www.slianchroi.ie/shamanism.htm

You can try looking around for something like this.

Fun fact tho: Shaman is originally a German and Russian word. From shaman and Schamane.
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  #26  
Old 02-03-2016, 09:33 AM
SoulsInMotion SoulsInMotion is offline
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It's a term I use out of convenience when communicating about certain issues because that's what people today understand in the west. It's also part of how I learned about various traditions. Specific words can become misleading when we focus on them too much however.
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  #27  
Old 02-03-2016, 05:52 PM
Thunder Bow Thunder Bow is offline
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The word shaman is from Siberia. However I will use the word on the internet, because most will reconise it as a healer. The Navajo word for a Medicine Man is "hataalii". It means singer.

The Vision Quest is the most misunderstood concept seen online. Even the description listed above is not entirely accurate. The Lakota word for a Vision Quest is: Hanblecheya.

Even the all above post is not entirely true. Although it sounds authoritarian.
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  #28  
Old 06-04-2016, 02:34 AM
Medicine Crow Medicine Crow is offline
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I, too, am seeking information on First Nations spirituality- but as was said early on, there is so much generic and misleading information it's very hard to know what is genuine and what is not.

As for my interest, I count myself as a Deist in the mold of Franklin and Jefferson; I believe in God (that's just a name, though, for whatever creative force is behind our existence- it might as well be Great Father) but beyond that I'm very skeptical- even rejectionist- of so-called organized and/or 'revealed' religions.

As for my name, it's a name applied to me in a recurring dream for years so I've just adopted it. I am not one to say 'I've always felt like I was connected to Native Americans' or claim an NA heritage (although family legend has it that there's some Iroquois way back in the closet somewhere), but this dream, I feel, is definitely trying to tell me something. If there is someone on the forums who is open to a go at interpreting the dream for me, I'm game to talk to them.

To that end, I've cast about looking for ways to incorporate some of the 'theology' of Native American spirituality in a very broad way. I use the names God and Great Spirit interchangeably, and as far as I'm concerned the legends of how we came to be are just as valid as any other. As I said, I don't claim NA heritage (even if I am a tiny bit, I couldn't prove it), and I certainly don't want to- or even appear to- appropriate or debase anyone's religion. I just think there's a lot of positive things we can all learn from the old ways, and I'd like to bring some of that back in some small way.
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  #29  
Old 06-04-2016, 05:32 PM
Thunder Bow Thunder Bow is offline
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Wakan Tanka means the "Great Mystery" and odes not apply to any singular enity, The missionaries of the time assigned the term "God" to that Lakota Word. This Lakota word was never ment to describe a creator.

A Crow Warrior and Medicine Man Known as Crow Medicine died earlier this week at the age of 102. Lets take a few minuets to honor this war hero and Medicine Man.
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  #30  
Old 07-04-2016, 12:41 AM
running running is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunder Bow
Wakan Tanka means the "Great Mystery" and odes not apply to any singular enity, The missionaries of the time assigned the term "God" to that Lakota Word. This Lakota word was never ment to describe a creator.

A Crow Warrior and Medicine Man Known as Crow Medicine died earlier this week at the age of 102. Lets take a few minuets to honor this war hero and Medicine Man.

War hero, and Medicine Man Crow Medicine will be in my thoughts tonight.
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