Working with the Medicine Wheel is a joyful direct experience. Is it not time for you to feel directly connected to life?
Wherever you are, the sun rises in the East. This is universally
true.
The beginning of your day is tied to the movement of the Sun. Your body
is conditioned by the Sun’s apparent movement through the sky. The circadian rhythm,
which brings the need to sleep, is linked to natural light. The day, which is
created by the Sun’s presence, is the essential unit of our shared social reality.
The economic day is also largely tied to the Sun. The first cause of the cycles
of our society and of all life on Earth is tied to the Sun’s cycle.
Now, we do know scientifically that the Earth is moving
around the Sun and that the Sun is moving around the Galaxy, but your body is not
interested in this detached perspective. Your body is at the centre of its
physical universe. Everybody is at the centre of their own universe.
The day begins with the Sun's appearance in the East, a point
in space, together with the moment which is the time we call dawn. Time and
Space as one.
Wherever you are, the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. In the Northern Hemisphere
(which
dominates the Southern Hemisphere at present), the Sun is at its highest point of the sky towards the South, around noon, and is
at its lowest point in the North, beneath the horizon, around midnight (in the Southern Hemisphere, this is North and South, respectively).
At midnight, the light of the Sun is further away from us – it
is dark and we can see millions of other stars of
the cosmos all around us.
The Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere is the point
when the Sun is furthest away from us, giving us the shortest day and the
longest night. The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol
(Sun) and sistere (to stand still). At the solstices, the seasonal movement
of the Sun's path (as seen from Earth) comes to a stop before reversing
direction.
The Sun is at its
lowest path in the sky on the Winter Solstice. After that day the Sun follows a
higher and higher path through the sky each day until it is in the sky for
exactly 12 hours. On the Spring Equinox the Sun rises exactly in the East,
travels through the sky for 12 hours and sets exactly in the West. On the
Equinox, this is the motion of the Sun through the sky for everyone on earth.
Every place on Earth experiences a 12-hour day twice a year, on the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes. After the Spring
Equinox, the Sun still continues to follow a higher and higher path through the
sky, with the days growing longer and longer, until it reaches its highest
point in the sky on the Summer Solstice.
In simple terms, the proximity of the Sun to the Earth gives
us our seasons. Our seasons provide us with major components of our context for
our physical and emotional experience of reality. You do have a yearly cycle – a
seasonal fluctuation of physical, emotion and mental energy. Your social life
is flavoured very strongly by the seasons.
The Medicine Wheel locates YOU in time and space. It orientates you physically to the natural world and
to our Star, the Sun. Empirical. Real. Basic, undeniable truth. The Medicine Wheel
locates you in time–space.
The clock orientates you in linear time, but not space. As far as your body is concerned – and therefore your basic feeling – the linear time measurement of the clock is not as real as the Sun’s time; the body knows the Sun clock. The Sun’s daily cycle is real time.
The clock orientates you in linear time, but not space. As far as your body is concerned – and therefore your basic feeling – the linear time measurement of the clock is not as real as the Sun’s time; the body knows the Sun clock. The Sun’s daily cycle is real time.
The satnav in your car can sometimes help you locate yourself
in space, but not in time – certainly not real time.
The Medicine Wheel brings time and space together as one
unified reality and is therefore a higher dimension of that which is absolutely
physically real. It is so obvious that it is hidden. We forget it, as is so
obviously creating the basic parameters of our life that we feel we do not
really need to fully register it – it is taken care of, and this frees the mind
up to engage with the social rhythms and – unfortunately – to partially disconnect from the fundamental
physical reality.
The Medicine Wheel is the fundamental of all Shamanism.
Shamanism was born from real needs in the real physical world – the need for
food, shelter, understanding of nature and of animals, plants and the weather, as well as the
need for healing and community within the natural environment.
This same basic
need to live in reality led to more sophistication from observing the movement
of the planets and stars. This was astronomy and astrology together.
The astrology chart also locates you in your empirically provable
centre of physical reality in relation to the planets of the Solar System.
Science provides proof that there is a larger reality, not
just based on our physical experience. However, your physical foundation, your
survival, vitality and health, is based on acknowledging that your body is at
the centre of its universe. What science provides, rather paradoxically, is the
reality of the mental planes, not the physical plane we directly experience. Science
is the truth of observing the physical world from the rational or mechanistic
linear mind; it is not the truth of physical experience we can see or feel; it
is not the reality of the immediate world of the senses. Science is removed.
The
next stage of evolution of our awareness is to acknowledge the value of the
rational tool, yet to also come back to the natural experiential truth, to integrate
with the larger context of our existence. I will not elaborate further upon this here, but
by studying the Enchantments of Life you can see this clearly for yourself.
The Shamanic science of the Medicine Wheel is based on
actual experience, honed through trial and error.
The Medicine Wheel provides with us a fractal of the day,
the year and the life cycle. The Medicine Wheel gives us access to the Holographic
Universe, the multidimensional reality of consciousness.
Here is a very basic outline of the four directions.
East, from where the Sun rises, is the birth of your day, the
birth of all things including yourself, the Spring Equinox, the spirit of new
things appearing in our life.
South, from where the Sun shines strongest, is midday, the
Summer Solstice, the acknowledgement and celebration of all things growing to
adulthood, the peak of growth, the manifest.
West, from where the Sun sets, is the evening, the Autumn Equinox, the contemplation and the understanding of life, maturity and wisdom.
North, from where the Sun rests, is midnight, the Winter Solstice, the
end of the year and the beginning of the next year, death and conception, the
point of the impulse for rebirth.
These four directions are gateways, portals, entrances or
doorways. If you want to connect to the visible and invisible environment, then
you need to evoke the portals of consciousness, based on reality, that give you
direct conscious connection. By acknowledging the structure of the day, the
year and the natural life cycle of all things, we acknowledge the separations,
the boundaries and therefore the boundary gateways or portals.
Until the gateways are acknowledged, you cannot consciously
and directly connect to creation, to existence.
The simplicity of this can and does yield books and books of
explanation, but you can only 'get it' if you do it.
My shamanic practice today, and the
shamanic sessions I offer, all incorporate the evocation of the directions.
Evoking the directions allows us to access the living cosmos we exist within.
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