Mother Cacao Ceremony

Historically, puro cacao or pure cacao went through harvest, fermentation, drying, roasting and stone grinding to attain the finest degree of smoothness when whipped into hot water. The cacao drink, melted into water without the addition of dairy or sweetener is a sacred libation. This libation strengthens and supports healing and health qualities of mind heart, body and spirit within the wholeness context of the medicine wheel teachings. The facilitator makes and offers prayers from beginning to end. There is much rarified and etheric support flowing from higher realms to lift us to new, higher frequencies and experiences ... and many proven and worthy helper ceremonies and Mother Cacao is one powerful heart opener.

Autumnal Equinox 2022 Celebration

Bozho jayek, ni je na ...

This most beautiful transitional season of balance was hosted and celebrated in the Bodewadmin Teaching Longhouse on September 25, 2022 deep in the Blackjack Hills of Okla-Homa.

Kristen Arambula officiated a powerful Mother Cacao Ceremony at the renewed Fire-Flower altar.

Historically, puro cacao or pure cacao went through harvest, fermentation, drying, roasting and stone grinding to attain the finest degree of smoothness when whipped into hot water. The cacao drink, melted into water without the addition of dairy or sweetener is a sacred libation. This libation strengthens and supports healing and health qualities of mind heart, body and spirit within the wholeness context of the medicine wheel teachings. The facilitator makes and offers prayers from beginning to end. There is much rarified and etheric support flowing from higher realms to lift us to new, higher frequencies and experiences ... and many proven and worthy helper ceremonies and Mother Cacao is one powerful heart opener.

Two-four day land participant-guests from out of state built, painted, blessed and sang with their first 10” elk and deer skin hand drums. 

The event was followed with a feast of traditional Native American bounty, including corn soup and a dish of the four sacred berries, Lake Michigan wild rice and Wasaksing Preserve Canada maple syrup.

Migwech, Mamogosnan, Heart of the Sky and Heart of the Earth, for all of the gifts that we might each of us know with full awareness, that we ‘walk in beauty-all ways and all days ... now and forever more’.

AHO!
Bama mine,
Minisa Crumbo Halsey
Wabaksekwe

Autumnal Equinox, September 22, 2018

Greetings Kin,
A fire will be Kin-dled. Bring your emptiness and fullness of the season in quietness and peacefulness into the reception chamber of all matter to observe and sit together, with the season.

Offer what you have or what spirit suggests … these breath offerings are designed to feed and nourish all sentient and insentient beings, including ourselves, through intent. It is through these things, thoughts, and actions we come to more deeply know ourselves and nourish the intent of this unified ‘knowing’ of ourselves within the structure of the Medicine Wheel Teachings.

Like minded community furthers each person’s opportunity to both see clearly and to be seen clearly, a deeply held blessing of knowingness that can further happiness and calm and to develop a growing sense of compassionate detachment and loving kindness in the context of the seasons and the natural world ... these first, most beautiful and lasting gifts from the Creator, are for us and all beings to live upon and within, all days, all ways, in balance and harmony. AHO!

Prepare to enter three circles of spirit energy, beginning now, as you approach the ceremonial grounds, from your personal central tree of integrity. We are the new myth makers, done from where we sit, stand or lay, be we a physical part of this circle or not. Let us be increasingly alert and aware of the emerging myths ... stories. Their times to be told come near with the winter quiet. The new creation stories ... they arise from out of the seeds of this harvest season, lying dormant for the blessing of their telling, remembering and telling of the fires that will make them ready for the new growth. This is one of the medicines of this season that make us ready for winter sun and winter rest ... as does our mother, the earth (sekmekwe) and our father the sky sun (kisus).

Through these ways we reconnect with the original instructions and link them where desirable and recognized, with the current stories and emerging myths/medicines by which we can know ourselves and live … feeling like we have a right to be here and to live. These ceremonies then assume a grounding and a radiance that can and does contribute to the continuance of all life, just by virtue of ours and others positive beingness. These then, are some of the sacred charges and as such, belong with the original instructions. Without them we are wanderers ... and to these ones, we would extend a helping hand of in-spirit … inspiration to those who would be seeking or in need, through vibration or physical service.

Bama mine, until we see one another again,
Wabaksekwe (Dawn Woman)

Fall Equinox

Greetings and bozho to all sweet grass swingersand Redbud Singers,

As we each move along on our personal path ... engage in home ceremony. At this time ... We seek to forge and maintain the center path that the balance of seasons offers. SPIRIT TALK (excerpts below) may offer some support if you want to have a look and this might be a good time to consider journaling, if not already doing so ... in order to accurately track our story and to set, purify and hold positive intentions.

 

This is who we are and what we have.
I go with you, Mamogosnan.
Blessings and Bama pi,
Dawn Woman

Excerpts from Spirit Talk:

The animals often associated with [the West direction] are the bear and the deer. However, many people find that personal affinities with each of the directions may reveal themselves differently in time … Personal colors and animals may be added alongside the universal [Medicine Wheel] motifs, as contacts, experience, familiarity, and intuition accrues with the seasons … [West] is a direction of deep return and recognition. The west receives us in our mysterious entirety … links the physical plane—west, with the mental plane—east … With the arrival of Autumn, we reach a culmination of medicines and seasons. Our harvests, the time of gathering and picking is among the most mysterious, gathering these secretive and familial beings, the beings of seed. We can join our essences with theirs—our dualities, singularities, multiplicities, and universalities, unique and connected upon all directions of the Medicine Wheel, but especially the direction of the west in the autumn, twilight of the year. 

Excerpts from 'Spirit Talk': Spirit Plate

The Spirit plate makes out recognition and gratitude visible to the beings who are making a gift of their seed history, and when properly addressed they can become actively involved in an ongoing life path through other agents, namely ourselves. Their seed histories, with cultural family trees grounded in the natural world that make contributions of inestimable value and tensile strength to the DNA of any bonding entity, are at least as hugely long and venerable as ours.

Most of these connections and contributions are beyond our ken, but heartfelt gestures of gratitude and respect for these living things are ours to express through remembering our connections to the best of our abilities—where and when they lived and grew, who harvested them, how they were handled and for what purpose and by whom. The questions are always, what do we have to do that these things will live?

The Spirit plate is prepared by selecting very small and representative pieces of each feast food on the table ... mindfully collected with the left, offering hand, taken outside, and offered with a prayer of recognition and gratitude ... I like to raise the plate and turn it to the seven directions, lastly approaching the Mother Earth four times before lowering the plate to the earth ... Shewen dagzewin! A blessing is visited upon us this day!

Let us celebrate being 'breathed alive'!

Come! Let us celebrate being ‘breathed alive in the natural world’. Let us make gratitude talks, sing, drum, dance, feast, and make offerings to our beautiful Mother Earth, Father Sky/Sun ... first, most beautiful, and enduring of gifts from the Creator ... we say, Mamogosnan, in the Bodewadmin tongue. Come and speak praises, ‘raise a voice’ ... to the Creator in the tongue of your tradition or choice, be it spoken or silent and unnamed.

Let the wisdom of the people and the land come together ‘in a good way’ that life may go on in a ‘good way’ as well.

We pray, Mamogosnan, that our minds, hearts, bodies and spirits might truly come into conscious Spirit Talks with the Plant Beings, and those of all of Creation come together, for without these talks, we are lost. Let us come together to share our wisdom and make prayers as a people … from our vast hearts … that strong ties to the Creator, ourselves and our relatives … might be renewed and celebrated.

Excerpt from 'Spirit Talk':

 

Excerpt from 'Spirit Talk':

Let us now assemble the honoring gifts once again, the high and personal inner gifts of qualities which only we can know, and the gifts of the known and understood common tradition such as tobacco, water or candles; chocolate … fruits … flowers; special drinks or nectars; ritual paintings, foods, cornmeal … and gifts of inspiration and the moment … 

Notice, attention, and gratitude for ‘being breathed’; 

Gratitude to the Father Sky-Sun for return at sunrise and sunset;  

Mindful Gratitude to the water beings as we drink, see, remember or feel them … 

Mindful Gratitude to the Fire Beings … 

Speak in a friendly way to the Wind Beings … 

Talk to a stone and a tree, a shrub, and the hill in the distance … 

Open the soles of your feet and invite them to ‘pick up on’ the Mother Earth as she vibrates and breathes through our bodies and connects with the upward solar rays of her lover. They are our elemental parents. 

Go outside and lie first facedown, then turn onto your back … Draw an arm’s-length circle with a stick around you, think a little introductory offering … and sit there as unmoving as possible, except for the eyes, for at least twenty minutes … Notice and follow the breath until something else engages your attention. The natural world soon comes to accept our presence … It is best if no food/water/phone enters the circle or is in sight/smell/earshot … and the sitting is best done in complete solitude … Then, when you are ready, stand up, or crawl out, noticing which direction you entered, faced, and departed. Try to make them the same. Then, make grateful farewells, and go.

Sacred Berries Ceremony

From May 15, 2020:

Bozho and a very good Rainy morning to all, from the Bodewadmin Longhouse... an early summer, ancient and current women's teaching that can all be active within ... providing valuable focus in and on the women's seat of the soul, the woman place. A proven and worthy tool by which to live in harmony with the Creator and the natural world.

 

Migwech!

My love,

Minisa


Yes, Jaguar Woman, there IS a strawberry-demen teaching and yearlong right of passage ceremony for the young girl becoming woman. The sacred berry is representative and guardian of the life carrying qualities of the womb and the potential of 'new life coming' medicine. 
 
The other berries, which follow later in the season, represent the certain cellular division 'medicines' of the 'new life coming' and as a metaphor of the young girl becoming woman capable of 'Carrying Life and the Waters of Life'.
 
In the demen-spring or early summer ceremony she and a circle of women will pray and prepare to seek, greet, offer thanks for the gift, gather and invite the 'medicine' to join in and with, the girl's body through the coming 13 moons, at which time the demen give-away ceremony will be seated and complete, with a feast prepared for all participants.
 
Through this time, the 'young woman becoming', will observe a 13 Moon strawberry fast. She will then be offered the demen and other traditional foods, at the conclusion feast to FEED and NOURISH her life and herself, the life of the circle, her people, and ALL life, 'in a good way'.
From this time onward she will be woman, having merged with this beautiful and powerful 'medicine', assisting her transition into the beauty and responsibility of an adult woman.

Migwech Creator, Sekmekwe, Gizes and all of the Demen for these and all of the gifts, known and unknown, spoken and unspoken ... mine (and) breathed alive.

Respectfully retold, in the appropriate season.
Dawn Woman 1IK

Excerpt from 'Spirit Talk':

This day we will consider visiting the natural world of the Mother Earth and the Father Sky-Sun … we 2-leggeds are walking erect color-beings … In the old honoring language … it is good to make an honoring prayer from the ‘grateful place’ … blow into an offering of tobacco 4 times, and then ‘put down’ the gift of the tobacco being, Se’-Ma’, onto the Mother Earth. Now offer honoring tobacco to the Father Sky-Sun in the same way … if it rains, consider collecting some of the ‘new water’, dip a finger into it and touch the top of your head 4 times, as the personal unification Water Beings blessing … If there is enough water, many things may be done with it, like ritually bathing the head, hair, face, body, eyes, wrists … If the wild green onions are up, make a tobacco offering from the grateful place: say your name and ask permission, and then you may take up a sharp stone for cutting or use your fingernail for gathering. Use no metal. Both the top and root bulb may be cleaned and eaten. 

Getegemen - Garden

Potawatomi ‘Garden’ Vocabulary:

Basket = gokbenaben
Bees = amoyuk

Beans = koje'suk

Bloom = jijen

Butterfly = memiki

Cabbage = e'shobuk

Cherries = siwswe'mnen

Circle = waye'yak

Cloud = ngwankot

Corn = ndamen

Cucumber = kokobe'

Dance = nimedi

Drum = de'we'gIn

Earth = sugmuk

Feast = wewesnakewin

Fire = shkote'

Flint Hill Grounds = shokinkik

Flower = washkone'to

Food = wisnawen

Fruit = washkbak
Full Moon = nibakises

Garden = Getegemen

Good Rain = mnogmowIn

Gourd = shishigwIn

Grapes = siwnwen

Grass = mIshkos

Honey = amo

Hot Peppers = wasgagIn

Indian Tobacco = nInse’ma

July/Month of Young Corn = We'shkitdaminkesis

Lightning = sawasmo

Milkweed = nInwezhe’k

Moon = tpukises

Mother Earth = Kumde’kwe’

Muddy = winkiwIn

Onion = shakwesh

Outside = sagec

Peace = e’tokmite’k

Plenty Potatoes = topeka

Plum = pokma

Potatoes = pInyak

Prairie = mskoda

Pumpkin = wapkon

Purple = we'je'pwate'k

Rain = kmowen

Sage = wabshkukbyag

Spider = aspeke' e'e'buk

Stars = nagosuk

Strawberries = demen

Summer = E'mnokmuk

Sun = kises

Sunset = e'pkishmok
Sweat Lodge = mdodmogumuk

Sweet Corn = wishpumnuk

Sweetgrass = wiingaashk

Sweet Potato = wishpupnyak

Thunderbirds = cigwe’k

Toad = mamkeci

Tobacco = se’ma

Trees = mtugwe'nIn

Turtle = mshike’

Very Dark (Outside) = gispuknya

Very Light (Bright Sunshine) = waseya

Warm Wind = shawnash

Water = mbish

Watermelon = ashktamo

Well-Being = matsowIn

Whole Kernel Cooked Corn = pakswayuk

Wild = pkoc

Wild Rice = pkocnomin

Wind = notin

World = otake’

Worm = mose