Autumn: Earth Ceremonies of the Gathered Plant, Seed, and Root

AUTUMN: EARTH CEREMONIES OF THE GATHERED PLANT, SEED AND ROOT

The picking and gathering activities of all seasons are remarkable and important but the autumn harvests of the just completed growing season are the final preparations for this winter and often prized and stored against drought, famine or lack, for many years to come.. Prayers, intention, labor and the growth supporting warmth and moisture have produced the fruit, nut, vegetable, green that feeds all beings. Beings such as ourselves, the four-legged, those that swim, fly, slither and crawl that eat more than water, minerals, air and light, as do the seed beings.Most of these plant beings also produce valuable medicine seeds, roots, leaves and stems. The abundantly produced,gathered and stored skebyak, the green beings, and their seeds will feed, clothe and house; they will provide materials for tools and most importantly, they will provide instructive stories which will be told during the long winter nights and in the coming years. The genetic imprint of the seed nourishes our bodies and contributes intelligence from the natural world, the elemental directions and colors, the physical cycles of other living things- composted materials of all kinds-, electric solar emanations, the life carrying vibration of the water beings, fire charges from the fire beings, manifold Spirit breaths carried by the ethers, winds and air beings and minerals released by the rock beings.
 
The abundance of the autumn harvest is a life metaphor which speaks of and demonstrates a mutual and respectful interaction representing the basic giving-away and receiving nature of duality of Spirit as it evolves out of our minds and the mind of the Creator, assuming and manifesting in physical form, life incarnate.
 
And this physical form itself, may change it's face many times and undergo a multitude of shifts. The cycles of life suggest many possibilities of being. Spirit may once again enliven a two-legged form or the intelligence may elect to merge with the water beings, sprout as a grass, shrub or tree, run with the fire, air or wind beings, join with the salts, crystals or minerals, fuse with a direction, color or animal or to dance with the Mother Earth. Spirit can and may elect to expand concurrent knowingness with many of these beings, then as now, alive in a living world.
 
The principle objective ceremony is that of cultivating and maintaining a mindful consciousness, healing, personal ritual, prayer, sacred movement, gratitude and high intention is to honor and celebrate right relationship with ourselves and all of these beings so that perceptions of separation with the Creator, ourselves or anything else are narrowed, closed and made whole...this is harvest made enduring, whole and ongoing. Seed is what carries the harvest of wisdom, knowledge and new life forward.

The Seed Beings Relent, Release and Scatter in the Wind – Breath of 1 IK

A Message for the Wind/IK Trecena by Minisa Crumbo Halsey, 1 Wind/IK

The autumn, medicine direction, so mysterious in it’s unfolding is driven by so many things both coming and going. All things and beings are finding themselves within an active stage of transition. This transition brings us to ride the free floating, first breaths of wind, ourselves no more nor less than the bobbing milk weed seed parachuting out of a bursting pod, the ovoid snow precursing clouds visiting from the north lands, wild rice stems feeling the beaters stick knock loose seeds falling to canoe bottoms…how many are the allusions and metaphors of the season…all of them written by previous seasons and now loosening all but the most ephemeral and essential controls of discovering core identities as we pause within the great autumn cyclical count of days.

The winds breath spirits to the spirit world. Within the ongoing Evolution of all beings, including our beautiful Mother Earth, we find ourselves once again in an active act of separation from the previous known. We remember the instructions to be breathed alive and count the harvest that the Mother provides equally, irregardless of whether we sowed and planted, gather or simply observe, surrender and be.

The Power Platforms of Seasonal Certainty and Uncertainty

Balance-imbalance ... the walk and dance of duality produces movement and time
The predictable power of planned, focused and goal activity can produce, seat and hold stable concepts and provide platforms for measured growths of every kind. The given and structured bedrock measuring tables of favored plan, are positioned to broaden and shift beyond their original parameters, becoming a format to measure unplanned and evolutionary changes, platforms stationed, if not prepared, to receive and absorb the unexpected shocks of any medicine journey. However, the transitional medicine journeys over seasonal thresholds hold particular piquancies of swirling, therefore uncertain merge and movement of medicines as now, one gives-away and now, one takes on past and future history, navigating the NOW center, well-greased axle hole window of the Medicine Wheel. (Continue Reading)

The Gratitude Time of the Early Harvests

THE GRATITUDE TIME OF THE EARLY HARVESTS

Rabbit Brush' Golden Flowers Time
By the natural calendar, autumn arrives now, in the southwest, with chokecherry picking, making chicos (horno roasted sweet corn), roasting and drying of red and green chiles, mud plastering of adobe buildings and restoring trips into the mountains. The long pinion fires which will not go out until spring, have not yet been lit. The short fire cook and smoke but are not yet needed for heat.

My cousin Bud Jeffries receives his Indian name: 

Washedo, Bright Shining Face of Evening Light.

A true harvest Son name.

Staking or marking with string, the medicinal roots, barks and berries which will be gathered when the green plant tops die back with the first frosts and before the snow falls hiding where you thought the plant lived. Beginning to make the house, barn, fence, field and ditch repairs, taking care to think of us all; the songs, dances and prayers that life might go on 'in a good way'; the waters; the four-leggeds; those that swim, crawl, fly and move very slowly; the homes; the stored seeds of seven years; the Spirits of Place;  the ancestors and those yet to come, and of us, the two-leggeds.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We recount the days.

Crepe Myrtle's Bloom in the Great Heat
Regardless of climate, August bounty and harvests begin with remember once again, that picking and gathering 'in a good way' is made up of noticing and remembering SO many things. Traditional things like picking and storing, pickling and  freezing, drying and bundling abundant fragrant herbs, sweet fruits, uncountable vegetables, red and yellow fleshed melons; blue, white, yellow and red corn..some with white eagles in flight; greens and beans; bushels of tomatos...all things and beings that our ancestors and relatives brought forward...all kinds and sorts of bounty from the cultivated and wild garden coming forward to meet our song..and to participate in their/our interactive winter give-away ceremonies of meals, teas and medicines, songs and offerings..'good medicine', food and nourishment to us, the two-leggeds and all other living things.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We remember the ways.

From the Northern Alder Thickets
Walking the Wild Smoked Salmon of the Pacific Northwest back from the spring catch for the winter sustenance and enjoyment of us, the sacred two-leggeds from the sacred ones who swim..From harvesting  the cranberry bogs and wild rice fields, from braving the thorny wild Florida sour orange, picking tiny, dry astringent wild plums; to the myriad of undocumented plant, leaf, fruit; the rock bottom stream, the 'eye of the Mother Earth' spring and her issue, the thin mossy rivulet; the moist clay floored cave; the found hair and dry grass woven nest, the nut and mushroom littered forest floors; the natural places..raucous with sound and movement..stilling at our approach until we slow and allow our Indigeneous and unique song to to tell our  story and to restore confidence to the native dwellers.

These things and more take up their place in our new songs. By these things we live.

Autumn: The Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Division Takes Final Shape and Form

Autumn: The Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Division Takes Final Shape and Form

First there was Spirit.

Then Spirit organized into conceptual, linear and physical duality.

Duality found a home and expression upon and within another system.

Opening consciousness from one season into another.

The Medicine Wheel is an independent but evolutionarily related, secondary, four quarter, cellular division of linear duality, possessing a center and concentric circle-ringed divisions ... an eighth fold division exists. It is present in Spirit, silent, unseen and unspoken. Cellular division continues  until it must fold back into the linear, initiating the differentiation of species and subsequent specific development.

These interwoven lines, circles and dots are the stuff and substance of creative material, crackling and moving in the fires, waters, airs and ethers with variable lights, sounds and electricity. They are the present and available primal building blocks of intention, generating wormholes of vibrant and positive awareness and consciousness track, demonstrating seen and now, unseen evolutionary patterns and possibilities, without cease.

EARLY AUTUMN

The first 21 days of autumn can bear the mark of instability as have the initial (initiation) 21 days of each previous season. Harvests of medicine and introspection bring happiness, a sense of accomplishment and deep reflection upon that which been wrought in the previous three seasons, recognitions of that which is certainly coming forward and revealing the fullness' of itself. The past no longer is and the new is not yet.

Early Autumn, a time to pause, reflect, to BE in rest ... before the foot turns onto acquaintance with the West-East hard road of life.

The Autumn Harvest and the Fall Equinox

The Apricot Tree of Life

The Autumn Harvest and the Fall Equinox

The autumn harvest has a similar signature to all other completion and fulfillment moments but is also uniquely different owing to its deep roots in the fundament of Creation. For this reason it will always be counted as one of the original templates by which to gauge and measure natural progress of any kind. It mounts and takes it's place as a real and conceptual template alongside the other seasons of winter, spring and summer as a massive barometer and register that exceeds full comprehension. Autumn is a 'crack between the worlds' of summer and winter and as such, is similar to the 'crack between the worlds' of spring, between winter and summer...the dusks and dawns of the year. The sun stands still at the time of the autumn sol-stice, it's light balanced by time and becomes the physically visible balance beam, fourth quarter, of the Medicine Wheel.

The Path of Light

The western balance beam of the 'hard road of life' that completes, closes and connects the Western direction of medicine, introspection and the physical with the Eastern direction of Inspiration, illumination and the mental. The Balanced Path of Light we walk between body and mind, the Path of the Sun as it traverses the sky and circulates in ceaseless mutual partnership and rhythm with the Earth. The path of light, the sunrises and sunsets, may be viewed as one half of our lateral earth walk, balance.

The other half of our earth walk, the noons and midnights, may then be viewed as the cross beam of harmony that connects the Southern direction of emotion, love and the heart with the Northern direction of purity, wisdom and Spirit breath.

The connection center, where the Sacred Tree Flowers is a well known and well traveled crossroad upon the paths of balance and harmony connects with the outer points on the Circle, a lunar, stellar and solar system, replication of our cosmos!

This diagram and seat of mind, heart, body and Spirit energetics is encoded in everything. To understand this is to incorporate a comprehensive tool that can unlock the unknown by shining the intelligent light beams of balance and harmony, center and unified circle in an identifying and imprinting way upon all things. This is a metaphor for the intelligent mind, loving heart, creative and all-seeing eye and adaptive body, stepping up to and inheriting a position as co-creator in active evolution...most fully 'alive in a loving world'.

The words balance and harmony have oft been heard, repeated, spoken, written, sensed, hoped and longed for. They have been thought unattainable, at a distance and then, as suddenly, the words can live and merge seamlessly with every fiber and quality of our being, blessing, encompassing and affirming the the inner framework of the Medicine Wheel and all that resides upon, within or around it. The natural world personifies and exemplifies the merge of a center unified balance and harmony, taking these qualities beyond emotional and mental  concepts, making these them visible, known, comprehensible and available.

The natural world; the first, most beautiful and enduring of the Creator's gifts to us will ever and always be our schoolhouse, lover, art gallery, Mother, Father and Grandmother, friend, font of scientific discovery, teat, bloodier of knee and elbow, emergence point and final resting place ... home.

This year's paths have been walked. We sit in a center of our universe and call it good. The harvest is being picked, gathered, cleaned, sorted, evaluated and counted, for would we remember, 'every harvest is a new beginning' ... 'every seed counted is a new tomorrow'.

Now is a good time to invite and call a Circle Gathering, go deep within the year, mark and celebrate the first harvests and first ceremonies and begin to speak of tilling new soils and casting new seed. Call a new circle together or sit within a trusted and established one and count the coups, publish the failures and shortcoming, lament the losses and own the gains of the year. This can be a time to name the names of those who were born to us and those who made the long canoe journey to the western medicine mystery. A time to stand up, step out, come out and shine as farmers of our lives in the Divine Garden of the Natural World. Our endeavors have served us well or not so well, but we accept, forgive, refocus, renew, raise a voice in prayer and gratitude and keep 'being breathed'.

The feasting and fasting occasions and the year that made them give us the new stories to tell, new songs to sing and the new dances to dance in the long winter nights to come. This is the time to gather close around a fire and tell the stories until the children lay in slumber on floor or lap and the fire burns low casting long shadows on wall, forest, beach, wigwam or teepee.

The seeds of our endeavors and harvests stand in balance and harmony, prepared to enter Quiet Time, that we might all mindfully enter upon and within the personal and collective High Winter ceremonies of THE QUIET TIME and THE TIME OF FIRING THE SEEDS OF INSPIRATION for a new year!

This cycle and walk around the beautiful Mother Earth and Father Sky-Sun is complete. Thus concludes this sweat lodge ceremony of life. Thank you for your words, prayers, attention, your blood, sweat and tears....You are released. You are released to Make New Steps, balanced and harmonious steps into this New Year and all coming New Year's.

Blessings, now and forever more.....
SHEWENDOGZEWIN ODO PI......    A BLESSING HAS BEEN VISITED UPON US HERE.....
Dawn Woman

Street Renaming Ceremony

Bozho jayek,

Gathering of Potawatomi Bands, July 20-30, Shawnee, OK.

Principal Chief John 'Rocky' Barrett: Renaming the avenue leading to the Cultural Center, Neaseno: 'Soft Summer Wind' in honor of Donald Perrot, language and Spiritual Leader of the Citizen Potawatomi Band.

Mr. Perrot was not able to attend but his ongoing and dedicated work in language and heritage is truly marking an important cultural  Bodewadwimwin 'trail' for 'all our relations' to follow, now, and into the future, for the children ...

Kchemigwech, Neaseno, wewene kchemigwech.

Dawn Woman

SUMMER -- the 21 Days before Autumn Begins

July, 14, 2014
THE AUTUMNAL TWILIGHTS BEGIN & THE 13 BLUE CORN MOONS MEASURE TIME

The night after the Capricorn Full Moon is velvety black and silent. The moon casts the weakest of shadows and illuminates nothing beneath the trees and the following morning is still and quiet.

The Summer Suns begins to move us into the edges of all twilight. The Summer Sun leads us forward into the Autumn by softening the fiery mental resolves and physical intentions, by sponsoring the moist marriage hearts urge to seed and all the while, the Sun Spirit slowly continues winding the cyclical fibers of being upon the spool of spiral time, drawing us forward, binding the drying stalks and fruits into sheaves of harvest.

Already seed imprints know themselves. Knowledge of ourselves stumbles and looks about for clue and information. Most seeds remain encased in tender and tough sheaths until the final days of 'making' are complete. The twilight presages the deep rest, sleep and quiet time but for now, calm and caution, softening and waiting are the appropriate stances. These things, all things, ourselves, require this time, time to draw and color what has been 'made'. It is our time to 'make' the imaginary Spirit drawings and color in the first sketches out of the water filled ollas of summer. The winter stories, songs and dances continue to form and flesh out, gaining momentum in contrast to the outward looking stillnesses. It remains too soon to speak of the stories, to sing the song which is still but a hum, and to dance what is still a walk but we are coming to know some-things, and also know there is much more to come.

The late summer rains are fewer. The mulching, irrigation and sprinkling the rows of tasseling corn which is gaining its majority is required, so too are directed water streams flowing down the thirsty rows and gullets of growth. Clouds of pollen drift down upon the fair hairy heads of slim corn bodies. The final 'making' is done in the dry heat.

The passages upon the 13 Moon Calendar continues in beauty......