Earth medicine, p.1
Earth Medicine, page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Kenneth Meadows
Title Page
Preface
Introduction
Part One: The Philosophy
1. What is Earth Medicine?
2. Setting up the Circle
3. The Eight Directions
4. The Four Winds (1) The East
5. The Four Winds (2) South, West and North
6. The Personal Rainbow
7. The Elemental Powers
8. The Wheel and the Web
Part Two: The Analysis
Poem: Look to the Earth
Introduction to Part Two
1. 21 March – 19 April Awakening Time: Falcon
2. 20 April – 20 May Growing Time: Beaver
3. 21 May – 20 June Flowering Time: Deer
4. 21 June – 21 July Long Days Time: Woodpecker
5. 22 July – 21 Aug Ripening Time: Salmon
6. 22 Aug – 21 Sept Harvesting Time: Brown Bear
7. 22 Sept – 22 Oct Falling Leaves Time: Crow
8. 23 Oct – 22 Nov Frost Time: Snake
9. 23 Nov – 21 Dec Long Nights Time: Owl
10. 22 Dec – 19 Jan Renewal Time: Goose
11. 20 Jan – 18 Feb Cleansing Time: Otter
12. 19 Feb – 20 March Blustery Winds Time: Wolf
Part Three: The Practice
Poem: Wakan-Tanka’s Talk
1. The Path to Rediscovery
2. ‘As Within – So Without’
3. The Personality Mask
4. The Personality Modes
5. Totems – the Symbolic Sensors
6. How to Obtain Your Own ‘Readings’
7. Travelling the Web
8. Earth Medicine and the I Ching
9. The Eight Fundamental Principles
Conclusion
Poem: The Great Spirit of the Redman
Acknowledgements
Recommended Reading
Index
Copyright
About the Book
Native Americans had a close affinity with the earth and an understanding of the natural forces which shaped their environment. They recognised that not only were our physical bodies composed of the elements of the earth but our core personalities also were influenced by seasonal characteristics and by the tides of time governed by the sun and the moon.
The time of birth was no chance happening of fate, but an indication of personality traits and inherent potentials we were each born with to meet the challenges of life. The key to exploring your individuality is a Birth Totem – an animal representation which indicates the characteristics and attributes which combined together comprise your ‘medicine’ – your inner power and resources.
Learn how to:
- Identify your own Birth Totem
- Connect yourself to your true potential
- Discover your life purpose and learn how to fulfil it
- Explore all aspects of your life including health and relationships
About the Author
Earth Medicine is one of a collection of books written by Kenneth Meadows on the Craft of Life and how we, as individuals, can attune ourselves to Nature and the Earth and discover our own inner resources. Each book in the collection is a complete self-help manual in itself on an aspect of personal development towards a more fulfilling life.
For more than thirty years, Kenneth Meadows sought answers to some of life’s most perplexing mysteries: Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is life’s purpose? He explored the world’s great religions and was offered beliefs. He considered the philosophies of great thinkers and gathered opinions. He examined the theories of materialistic science to find that most were based upon assumptions. His persistence brought him in touch with the simplicity of indigenous peoples whose wisdom had been passed on through oral traditions. He was directed to look not in the archives of learned institutions, but into the Book of Nature which reveals how the Universe is and that we humans are part of it and it is part of us. He found that by reconnecting with Nature we can make contact with our own Source and thereby find the answers we seek.
Kenneth, a Leeds University qualified teacher and former college lecturer and journalist, is internationally respected for his books on the application of shamanic principles to personal development and the extension of human potential. He has studied shamanic teachings directly under Native American, British, Scandinavian and other European shamans.
Kenneth meadows is internationally respected for his work in adapting ancient shamanic wisdom to modern times. He is the author of a number of best-selling books including The Medicine Way, Shamanic Experience, Rune Power and Where Eagles Fly.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Medicine Way
Rune Power
Shamanic Experience
Where Eagles Fly
EARTH MEDICINE
Explore Your Individuality Through the
Native American Medicine Wheel
Kenneth Meadows
Preface
EARTH MEDICINE IS THE FIRST BOOK I COMPLETED IN WHAT HAS now become a collection of books which provide a distillation of ancient shamanic wisdom adapted to modern times and conditions and presenting a unique process of personal development which can change lives for the better.
Shamanics is the name I have given to this adaptation of shamanic principles to the practicalities of modern-day living. Shamanics is a word I coined to distinguish this process from the regurgitations of customs, rituals, and practices which have been taken from their tribal and historical context to form a feature of some representations of ‘contemporary’ shamanism, and which have little relevance to the challenges of everyday life in a modern society.
Earth Medicine is a method of exploring your own individuality and connecting with the potential powers that lie within you. The word medicine is used in its Native American sense to imply an empowerment that comes from within and which enables an individual to become more ‘whole’ or ‘complete’. That empowerment connects him or her with the Earth and to the realm of physical reality. It is a principle based upon a shamanic understanding that Time itself has qualities which vary in accordance with the changing movement of the Earth as it orbits the Sun. These qualities are absorbed within our own energy-system at the moment of birth and so are inherent within ourselves. An understanding of Earth Medicine thus leads us not only to a fuller understanding of ourselves and others as personalities, but also enables us to come more into harmony with the benevolent forces of Nature which influence us from within as well as affecting us from without.
It helps us to recognize that the potentials we were born with are a part of our energy-system and that we can develop these potentials in order to fulfil the purpose of our lives for which they were given. Earth Medicine is an aid, too, to better human relationships for it helps in the understanding of others.
Since it was first published in 1989 by Element Books, Earth Medicine has been reprinted many times with translations into several foreign languages. The unsolicited complimentary letters I have received from so many appreciative readers in different countries are indications of the practical value of the principles and teachings it contains. This Rider edition is an updated version which draws on its past success in bettering the lives of those who read it.
Kenneth Meadows
Introduction
I HAVE CALLED THE SYSTEM OF SELF-DISCOVERY CONTAINED WITHIN these pages ‘Earth Medicine’ because it describes the nature of inner powers provided to each of us at birth through Earth energies prevalent at that time. Earth Medicine is derived from the ‘hidden’ teachings of the North American Indian Medicine Wheel and their correlation with the Taoist teachings of the East, and the shamanic wisdom of the ancient Caucasian peoples of Britain, northern Europe, and Scandinavia.
Earth Medicine is a method of personality profiling, based upon North American Indian Medicine Wheel principles which were part of the oral traditions of some tribes. Only now, with the Earth entering a critical New Age, which could become either a golden era of enlightened consciousness or an ecological and human disaster, is it necessary to make such teachings more generally available.
This book can show you:
How to discover what you are, who you are, and what is a primary purpose of your life.
How to release your creative energies and develop self-confidence through an appreciation and respect for this wonderful Earth that will put you in harmony with Nature and the environment.
How to recognize subtle Earth influences and make use of them to bring you in tune with the pulse of the planet’s time-energy.
How to discover your own psychic sensors – your own totems – and make use of them to extend your awareness.
How to obtain guidance and advice from your own Higher Self – your own ‘Spirit’ Self.
How to compile monthly, weekly and daily ‘readings’ of the way the Earth energies are manifesting in your life and how they can be directed for your benefit.
Earth Medicine can free you from the impediment of assuming that you are the victim of circumstance or controlled by ‘Fate’, and help you to take responsibility for your own life.
Earth Medicine can not only help you to understand yourself and others, but bring about the kind of changes you want to happen in your life.
Quite literally, Earth Medicine can transform your life and give purpose and direction to your ‘Ea rth Walk’ and enable you to ‘Walk in Beauty’.
* * *
PART ONE
The Philosophy
* * *
1.1
What is Earth Medicine?
YOUR EARTH WALK IS THE WAY YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE. IT IS THE WAY you express your personality. The way you live out your dreams. Your aspirations. Your hopes. Your fears.
Is your Earth Walk an aimless stroll, or a weary trudge? Does it show the flounce of impatience or the stiff step of anger? Or is it the brisk, determined stride of ambition which will let nothing stand in its way?
Whatever the mood of your Earth Walk, where are you on this Earth journey? Where are you situated now? Where have you come from? And where are you headed? Is life an exciting adventure, or just a bore? If you are bewildered through frustration and disappointment, if you are confused, is it not because you have no clear directions? You have been give no map of the territory, and you can see no signposts to guide you. You have no co-ordinates by which to plot your position, nor any chart on which to locate it. Is it, then, any wonder if life to you is an unsolvable puzzle?
Earth Medicine is a unique life science based upon North American Indian Medicine principles which had their origins in an even more ancient wisdom and which once lost, is now being regained. These principles were not confined to a particular tribe or group of tribes, but were the essence of a knowledge that impregnated them all.
This knowledge, though tempered in the American Indian mind, is structured here into a complete system which has been fashioned for modern times and adapted to the needs and circumstances of men and women living in a materialistic, consumer-orientated society that has lost its contact with Earth and with Nature.
The American Indian Medicine Wheel had many uses, including methods of self-knowledge and self-realization. Earth Medicine develops those methods and sets out to explain how the Soul puts on a garment of a physical body in order to experience matter and how, according to its position or perception point on the Wheel of Life, it connects with Earth influences and forces that can further its development through physical experience.
This system is not concerned with how the movement of the heavens might affect what happens to us in the future here on Earth, but with how our Earth connections may be used so that we can take hold of the present – in which our future is largely fashioned – and so assume responsibility for our own lives, and thereby attain mastery of our own destiny.
Perhaps before you picked up this book you had never heard of Earth Medicine. It has not been known because Medicine teachings themselves have been largely hidden within the oral traditions of American Indian Medicine men and protected by tribal shamans.
Before the period of great tribulation and suffering finally overwhelmed the much maligned and once proud and noble North American Indian people, elders representing principal tribes met together and determined that Medicine teachings were to be preserved by being conveyed orally down through the generations until it became possible for them to be practised fully again. The essence and spirit of the teachings were committed to their Sacred Fires, and to the spirits of the Elements with an assurance that they would be rekindled in another Age and at a time when the Earth itself would be in travail and suffering, and arise among people who were not of American Indian blood.
That time is now. Part of that knowledge is here in your hands and about to be communicated to you through the pages of this book.
However, before we can begin to grasp the basic principles, it is necessary to understand what the Medicine Wheel is.
To the North American Indian, ‘medicine’ meant more than a substance to restore health and vitality to a sick or maladjusted body. ‘Medicine’ was energy – a vital power or force that was inherent in Nature itself. A person’s ‘medicine’ was their power – the expression of their own life-energy system. ‘Medicine Wheel’ meant a circle of generated energy – personal empowerment generated from a source that is within.
Basically, the Medicine Wheel is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual structure that enables its users to attune themselves to Earth influences and forces and with the Source within themselves.
Some American Indians represented its circular structure with stones which were placed on the ground. Ancient stone circles in other parts of the world – and notably in Britain where there are the Rollright Stones on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire near the town of Chipping Norton, and Castlerigg in Cumbria – are larger examples and served similar, though not identical, purposes.
An advantage with the American Indian Medicine Wheel was its portability. A basic Medicine Wheel could be constructed by simply placing small stones in the form of a circle with spokes like a wheel. The four spokes, or arms, indicated paths to the centre which represented the Creator/Source or the Quintessence and which could also represent the self.
So it was a symbolic map or chart that could be set up anywhere.
The perimeter of the circle was marked by eight outer stones which represented powers in the Universe and within us and how they could be brought into harmonious balance. They served also as a reminder of the Law of Octaves – harmonic laws.
An inner circle of eight stones encompassed the ‘Source’ at the centre, and these represented inner and deeper realities.
The remaining eight stones formed the arms of a cross, two stones being placed in each of the four cardinal directions between the inner and outer circles. These four arms represented the Four Great Paths – Love and Trust in the South, Wisdom and Knowledge in the North, Introspection and Transformation in the West, and Illumination and Perception in the East.
American Indians sometimes used a buffalo skull to indicate the Source at the centre of the inner circle, and this was because the buffalo was particularly symbolic. In the old days, it was an animal that provided them with everything that was necessary for survival. Its flesh supplied food, its bones the material for making eating implements, tools and weapons. Parts of its body provided the means to fashion vessels for water and for cooking. Its hide was material for clothing and for covering their homes – the tipis – and its sinews the thread for sewing.
The human skull was regarded not just as a container for the brain – the human bio-computer – but as the seat of the consciousness. So a buffalo skull was seen as a representation of Wakan-Tanka – the Great Everything, the All That Is.
From this basic Medicine Wheel, an Earth Wheel can be constructed by adding a further 16 stones, or symbols, making a total of 40 to represent a universal web of power in which all things are connected.
Of these 16 additional stones, one can be placed in each of the four cardinal points to represent the Four Directional Powers, sometimes referred to as the Four Winds. The 12 stones formed the perimeter of the Medicine Wheel. Each represents a perception point and a segment of time in the Solar Cycle of the Year, and approximates to what we call a month.
Figure 1. A basic Medicine Wheel of stones
The Medicine Wheel could be constructed of larger stones that made it suitable for numbers of people to participate, or of pebble-sized stones for use by an individual. Similarly, the Earth Wheel is adaptable and can be represented just as meaningfully by a simple drawing. It should be borne in mind that what is important is not the stones or masks themselves but the symbols the stones or marks on a piece of paper represent. Nor is it necessary to have a representation of a buffalo skull at the centre. Again, the important thing is to have in mind what the buffalo skull was there to indicate. In my view it is best to leave the centre empty as a reminder that the ‘Void’ is the invisible Source of Everything.
An Earth Wheel laid out in stones is shown in Figure 2.
A basic Medicine Wheel could be represented by simply drawing a cross within a circle, as in Figure 3, indicating the four cardinal directions.
