The Lakota Way and Eastern Orthodox Christianity (similarities and a few differences in ‘creation spirituality’ and cosmology) [1]

By Jamie Moran

PRELUDE

Wilmer Mesteth, the spiritual leader of the Oglala Lakota [Western Sioux], and I were close friends. We spent hours talking about the Lakota Way and Christianity. We explored often overlooked similarities. The real split in Christianity is between the Greek East [Orthodoxy] and the Latin-Germanic-English West. Therefore, the real dividing line in Christianity is not Roman Catholic versus Protestant, nor among the myriad groups within Protestantism [Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Fundamentalist-Evangelical etc], nor between Protestantism and Anglicanism [low church versus high church]. An area where all the West and the East differ markedly is cosmology, or ‘creation spirituality.’ In this area, Eastern Orthodoxy and the Lakota Way have parallels. I once said to a Russian bishop, and expected to be rebuked for the remark, that Orthodox Christianity had much Shamanism in its weave. The Orthodox bishop agreed. He said the Shamanic side of Orthodox Christianity was certainly present but few Orthodox noticed it. He reckoned it was a cultural strand older than Homer and may have entered Greece from Thrace to the north-east. He and I reached the conclusion that the Shamanic aspect of Orthodoxy is rooted in ancient Greek Shamanism [predating Plato et al, yet still evident in Plato’s account of the four kinds of ‘divine madness’, and much more evident in the epigrams of Heraclitus]. It is a voice from the past, from the ancestors. The coming of the Messiah does not refute it, rather it is confirmed by adding something new to it.

There is certainly a gap between Lakota Shamanism and Western [Augustinian] Christianity. Not all of Western Christianity is rooted in Augustine of Hippo, and it is changing markedly at the present time. But much of it used to be. This is why Western Christians invading the ‘New’ World regarded Red Indians ‘pagan.’ But “pagan” should be distinguished from “shamanic.” The Indigenous Way of the First Nations is more accurately called Shamanic—especially if the Middle East provides the model of paganism. The Great Mother goddess in incestual congress with her son-lover, for the sake of the fertility of the crops growing in the earth, is nothing like the earlier and primal Shamanism of nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples. The remains of a campfire in a cave have been dated to one million years ago. Aboriginal rock art in Australia dates back to 80,000 years ago. The origin of settled crop growing is debated. Many scholars put it at no earlier than 4000 BC in Mesopotamia. Other scholars put it back earlier, here and there. But give or take 5000 years, settled crop growing is far more recent than nomadic hunting and gathering. It is the settled crop growers who evolved the Great Mother religion in the Near East, and elsewhere. Father Sky is left out. Mother Earth becomes the entire focus. Whether paganism takes an Oedipal turn, or does not, it is the religion of farmers. Shamanism predates the paganism of farmers by millennia. The first peoples — for at least one hundred thousand years and perhaps far longer — were nomadic, not settled, and their Way is rooted in values, activities, energies, symbols, qualities, of what it means to be in constant movement, to own little and not seek to possess the land as ‘private property.’  Their culture has both father and mother, sky and earth, and the many themes of Shamanism [including the primal understanding reached between humans and animals] are not restricted to fertility of nature, but many other spiritual, human, natural, themes, are prominent. Shamanism is complex [and has multiple forms]. Paganism is simple, by contrast. If anyone was ‘pagan’ in the battles for America, it was the invading whites. They espoused Christianity with their words but did not practice it in their actions. This has always been so.

When the Lakota Way is looked at in relation to Eastern Christianity, a contrast remains but the similarities and overlaps crystallize round several themes to do with= Cosmology; the Creator-creation interweaving [panentheism, not pantheism]; the Fall of humanity; the many Jewish meanings of ‘darkness’ [6 in all]; and finally ‘the sacred feminine’= Sophia-Temple-Mary the Mother of God in relation to the Beautiful Wohpe the Star Maiden, the White Buffalo Calf Woman, and the Seven Ceremonies brought by the Calf Woman to the Lakota.   

What differentiates Shamanism as contrasted with Judaism & Christianity is time. Shamanism is focused on the Sacred Beginning. Judaism & Christianity are focused on the Holy End. Paradoxically, the time that differentiates these three traditions also links them in a hidden way. The Mantra of Time=

Shamanism to hold the Sacred Beginning.

Judaism to contest the Existential Middle.

Christianity to win the Eschatological End.

 [1] Four Directions of the Sacred Circle

This is the account I learned on the rez from attending classes at the University in Kyle, and from private conversations with Wilmer Mesteth. Black Elk came was a major influence. This scheme is one among many versions. It is not Red Indian to standardize such things, or to insist on a single fixed dogma for them. Different sub-traditions within the Tradition approach the Sacred Circle differently. It is reminiscent of ‘two rabbis, three opinions.’ Different interpretations respect the ‘mystery’ of sacred and symbolic realities.

In Lakota spirituality, the Sacred Circle [or Medicine Wheel] represents the universe [the whole cosmos, visible and invisible, material and spiritual], and the interconnectedness of all life. It is differentiated into four cardinal points, the Four Directions [or Four Winds who are the sons of the Wind, Tate]. Each direction has a theme, and is guarded by a spirit being, and further symbolized by an animal spirit. The four directions point to the seasons of the year, phases of the day, and stages of human life.  Many other meanings, spiritual, psychological, physical, can be represented by the fourfold circle.

NORTH

Old age

Winter

Night

WEST                                                                              EAST

Adulthood                                                                     Birth-&-Rebirth

Autumn                                                                           Spring

Afternoon-Evening                                                      Dawn

SOUTH

Childhood

Summer

Morning & Mid-Day

 [2] Guardian Spirit Beings

NORTH= Waziya, the White Haired Old Man of the North, also known as the Frost Giant. Waziya is the North Wind, living in a tipi in a remote region of cold, ice and snow. He lives alone. His breath freezes everything. He tests human endurance and presides over the necessary spiritual meaning of life’s losses as we age. To accept losses is a path of wisdom. To resist losses is a path of folly. The winter cold is harsh yet also cleansing. The plant is cut back to reach fuller blossoming. Wazyia guards the entrance to the Star Path where persons go after death. He also plays a role in the very sophisticated Lakota creation story.

EAST= Wanbli, the Eagle. This seems odd, initially, because the East does not seem to have a Spirit Guardian as such, only a spirit animal. However, Wi the Sun, and Anpetu the Day, rule the East gateway directly. Nor is the Eagle just another animal spirit. The Eagle is the chief of the flying, four-legged, crawling, nations. Humans cannot look right into the sun, because of the vast cosmic power it manifests. Thus, the Eagle becomes the messenger of the sun, becoming the visible, approachable mediator of the sun’s immense light. The Eagle flies closest to the Creator.   

SOUTH= Okaga [Itokaga], the South Wind= the warm summer breeze. He is seen as a beautiful young man, compassionate, pleasing, gentle, a master artist and creator. He is the spirit of warmth, physical growth, abundance, in the summer season. Every year Waziya, the bitter old man of the North, tries to kill off Maka, the earth, in an endless winter, but he is opposed by the Guardian Spirit of the South, a loving protector who every summer travels north to melt the snow and push back the Frost Giant of the North, so that the people can live again and thrive. ‘Itokaga’ literally means ‘where the face is made’, suggesting ‘towards the warmth.’ Look towards the warmth. Okaga the South Wind brings rains and warmth that empowers the earth to grow food and celebrate being alive. Thus, he is regarded by the Lakota with reverence as the ultimate spirit of youth and the joy of life. Okaga’s very presence causes joy. He wears garments that signify life, summer, happiness to be alive. He travels with a wooden flute. The music he plays on it is so beautiful that it wakes up the plants, coaxes the flowers to bloom, and moves the birds to sing. He is the music of the rejoicing to come back to life, after a season in death. The Lakota say his person is defined by his generosity toward and love for the earth, Maka. He will not see her despoiled or destroyed. Okaga is the power of the eternal renewal of the earth. Okaga loves and makes beauty. He plays a role in the traditional Lakota girls coming of age ceremony.

WEST= Wakinyan Tanka, the Thunder Being, Wakinyan Oyate, the Thunders. This is the place of the greatest power, says Black Elk. It grants a warrior the power to make live and to destroy. It is also the place of the cup of living waters. It is fire and water, in opposition and in complementarity. Wakinyan Tanka operates through the storm, the zig zag lightning, the shattering thunderclap, high winds and fist sized hail, and flooding rains. After the storm, the earth is refreshed, says Black Elk. The healing rain, mild and delicately tender, comes after the raging storm. The storm has to happen yet it comes and goes, it does not thunder forever. Black Elk says the storm comforts those too beaten down in the world and brings low those riding too high in the world. The Thunder signifies radical changes that befall human life as a fate not chosen, and not escapable by any human manoeuvring. The direction of the West is where all things reach their sunset, the place of endings. The awareness of impending death and the fragility of mortality becomes acute. ‘Nothing lasts forever’.. All things must end. This can hurt the heart desperately. The heart must understand that endings are part of something bigger and more mysterious. The Wakinyans are the patron of warriors. A Cherokee author has said, “a warrior is someone constantly saying goodbye to himself.”

In the beginning of time, the Thunder Being fought an epic battle against Unktehi, an evil serpentine monster lurking in the dark deep of the waters. This giant malevolent being flooded the land to drown animals and humans. The Wakinyans unleashed the lightning and fierce heat. This dried up the floods, burning the monster alive. The jagged formations and peculiar shapes of the Badlands in South Dakota are a reminder of that battle. Wakinyan Tanks is fierce in battle against evil forces. A commentator [who does not want to give his name]=

“The Thunder Beings have been described… as beings without form, with a body which billows and changes form like clouds. They have claws, but no feet; beaks, but no head; wings, but no shoulders; and a voice like thunder, but no throat.

The Wakinyan also live in an anti-clockwise dimension and cannot be understood by ordinary people because they speak backwards. It is said that this is why Heyoka speak and act in an anti-natural manner, as they become relatives of the Wakinyan.

In the Lakota tradition, one of the main purposes of the Wakinyan is to purify the world from all filthy things. They sweep it with wind, wash it with water, or burn it with lightning. They cause all that grows from the ground to flourish …and give nourishment to all things that breath. They enjoy the smell of cedar, and it is said that cedar trees are never struck by lightning. They control water in all it’s forms…”

The Storm in which Yahweh comes to rebuke the high and mighty, bringing them low, and encourage the broken and oppressed, raising them up, is in the same ‘Reversal’ paradox as the Thunder of the West. Yahweh says to humanity, “My Thoughts are not your thoughts, My Ways are not your ways.” What we call worldly wisdom God calls folly, and what we call worldly folly God calls wisdom. The sacred clown, or Heyoka, is a Reversal person. The ultimate Reversal is the Cross of the Messiah Jesus Christ.

In an older tradition, the four guardian spirits are really all sons of Tate, the Wind.

 The north wind Yata, the Cold-Maker, brings the testing challenges and ordeals of life, and the white hairs of old age. The cold of winter brings sleep to the earth, and this sleep frees dreaming. The stories are told on winter nights, deep into the night.

The east wind Wihoha [Yanpa], the Day-Bringer, brings the morning dawn, the sun rising, and the breath of new life. He is the guardian of light, clarity, and the waking world. He works in association with the daytime sun [Aŋpétu Wí] to grant humans wisdom and clear understanding at the start of each new day. Each day we have a new start, a new chance.

The south wind Okaga, the Life-Giver, is the spirit of warmth, growth, and affection. He is locked in a perpetual, seasonal battle against the frost-giant Wazíya. Every spring, Okaġa drives Wazíya back north, bringing the summer heat, green grass, and abundance back to the Great Plains.

The west wind Wiyóhipeyata, the Evening Guardian, rules sunset and the twilight, the ‘in between’ time, the ‘liminal time’ when dark is coming and light going. There is a different spirit being who guards and influences the west, however. The Thunder Being and the Thunders, of the Storm Power. The Storm Power fights evil, and it was the Thunders who defeated a monster dwelling in the Badlands far back in time.

 [3] Spirit Animals of the Four Directions

North= buffalo, Tatanka

East= Eagle, Wanbli

South= Deer, Tahca [Thahca]

West, Bear, Mato

NORTH= Buffalo

The buffalo guards the northern quadrant of the Sacred Circle and gives gifts essential to the survival, morality, and enduring of the people. The yearly migration of the buffalo covered 1000 miles north, and then 1000 miles back south. The buffalo herd does this journey step by step. This teaches humans the patience needed to not fall into ‘prematurity.’ The Lakota are called a ‘buffalo people’, so indebted are they to this animal. Other powers often spoken of as taught by the buffalo should be mentioned.

 [a] Sacrifice and Generosity [Wóčhaŋtognaka]

The buffalo is the ultimate symbol of giving everything for the survival of others. Historically, a buffalo provided the Lakota with food, clothing, shelter, tools, cord. The buffalo teaches humans the gift of true generosity—sharing everything you have so that the community may live.

 [b] Endurance and Fortitude [Wóksape]

While other animals run away from a brutal winter blizzard, the buffalo turns and walks directly into the storm, utilizing its massive shoulders and heavy fur to shield the herd. It brings the gift of mental and spiritual endurance, teaching humans how to face adversity, trauma, and hardship with dignity and courage.

 [c] Gratitude and Respect [Wóohoda]

The buffalo teaches humans to walk upon Mother Earth with respect and gratitude. Because the buffalo gave its life so the Lakota could survive, it reminds the people to never take more than they need, to honour the spirits of what they consume, and to live in accord with nature.

 [d] Sacred Law and Prayer [Wóčhekiya]

It was the White Buffalo Calf Woman who brought the Sacred Pipe [Čhaŋnúŋpa] and the seven sacred ceremonies to the Lakota people. The buffalo brings the gift of sacred law, prayer, and connection to Wakáŋ Táŋka [the Great Mystery].

EAST= Eagle

The eagle’s gifts=

 [a] Highest Vision and Foresight [Wóableza)

Because the eagle flies higher than any other creature, it possesses the gift of vision. It teaches humans to look beyond their immediate, everyday struggles and see the “big picture.” The eagle brings the gift of foresight, helping people understand how their current choices will affect the next seven generations.

 [b] Direct Connection to the Creator

The eagle flies so high into the heavens that it touches the realm of the Great Mystery. It brings the gift of divine communication, acting as the primary carrier of human prayers up to the Creator. Its feathers are considered the most sacred of all objects, functioning as physical conduits for spiritual energy and blessings.

 [c] Truth and Honesty [Wówičakȟe]

The eagle lives in the intense, pure light of the East, where the morning sun rises. It brings the gift of unyielding truth and integrity. It teaches humans to walk with honour, to speak honestly, and to live transparently without deceit or hidden motives. A ‘bad heart’ [with bad motives and bad intentions] always hides in darkness. The light of the east penetrates this darkness and unveils what it hides.

 [d] Courage and Self-Belief [Wówaditaka]

Facing the rising sun each morning, the eagle embodies the courage to start anew and conquer fear. It brings the gift of a strong, noble spirit, helping humans rise above pettiness, jealousy, and doubt, to achieve their spiritual potential.

SOUTH= Deer

The deer guards and brings gifts to the southern quadrant of the Sacred Circle. Deer is feminine gentleness and care that disarms hate and fear. The deer is also youth, in its innocence and vulnerability.

 [a] Gentleness and Compassion [Wačháŋtognaka]

The deer teaches that true strength does not require force, aggression, or violence. Its gentle nature is viewed as a powerful spiritual medicine that can calm anger, heal emotional wounds, and defuse conflict within a community.

 [b] Acute Awareness and Intuition

Because deer are highly alert in and sensitive to their environment, they represent the gift of sharp intuition and spiritual awareness. This is sometimes called ‘watchfulness’ [it can relate to mindfulness, which is why deer relate to Buddhist enlightenment]. Deer teach humans to listen closely to their surroundings, trust their instincts, and remain alert to unseen dangers or negative energies. This allows for swiftness in reacting to threat.

 [c] Grace and Unconditional Love

The deer embodies the grace of the youth stage of life. It brings the gift of unconditional love, reminding people to treat themselves and others with kindness, patience, and soft-heartedness rather than harsh judgment.

 [d] Fertility and the Renewal of Life

Connected to Okaga — the South Wind of warmth and summer — the deer is the gift of growth, abundance, and fertility. It represents the flourishing of new generations and the continuous blossoming of life on Mother Earth.

WEST= Bear

The bear is a paradox on many levels. In war, bear rushes straight in. The Berserker Viking warriors were bear men. Yet the bear showed to humanity all the healing herbs and medicines growing wildly, and thus the bear is closely related to the ‘medicine person’, the shaman, the healer. The Mother bear is unusual in having her babies in a cave in winter. This is a defiance of death= an assertion of life against death.

 [a] Introspection and Inner Wisdom [Wóableza]

The bear teaches the gift of looking inward. Because the bear hibernates in a cave all winter, the Lakota view this as retreating from the noise of the world to look into one’s own soul. It brings the wisdom that comes from quiet reflection and self-knowledge. This is, in more Jewish terms, ‘pondering in the heart.’

 [b] Physical and Spiritual Healing [Pežúta]

The bear is considered the main medicine animal. Because bears dig for roots, herbs, and medicines in the earth, they hold the secrets of natural healing. The bear gives medicine men and healers the spiritual power to cure illnesses and mend wounds.

 [c] Fierce Strength and Protection [Wóitkoze]

While the Deer of the South brings gentleness, the Bear of the West brings raw, physical power and the courage to defend the tribe. The bear fights by ‘going straight in.’ The bear teaches how to stand strong against adversity and protect the vulnerable, especially children and the home.

 [d] Transformation and Rebirth

Emerging from its dark cave every spring, the bear represents the gift of rebirth. It teaches humans how to endure dark, difficult periods of life [the ‘winters’ of existence] and emerge stronger, wiser, and renewed.

There are many different ways to understand ‘walking’ the sacred circle.

A straight-forward way of interpreting the Sacred Circle is to see its four cardinal directions as the four stages of life, childhood and youth, adulthood, old age, and the final liberation of death into life with Wakan Tanka. In this way, the circle is completed.

SOUTH= CHILDHOOD & YOUTH

The morning of life.

Innocence, play, openness.

Empathy toward peers.

A soft hearted, relational foundation crucial before facing the storms and responsibilities of adult life.

WEST= ADULTHOOD & MIDDLE AGE

The mid-day to the afternoon, into the evening of life.

Experience, responsibility, carrying the weight.

Introspection, inner strength through facing flaws and accepting one’s power and its limit, healing from life’s wounds.

Bear the unbearable, in keeping true to one’s road. “Passion is the adult we do not become.”

Stamina to survive, and help others survive, the harsh times.

NORTH= OLD AGE & ELDER

The endurance, and wisdom, of the elder.

Elder guides the younger.

A shield to protect the integrity, culture, spirit, of the community. Keeper of practices, sacred laws, stories, ways, that give the life to the culture, and in the absence of which it dies. Conserving what is good, letting die what is worn out and defunct.

Grandmothers & Grandmothers held in high respect and great affection.

The child and the aged elder are heads and tails of one coin. Both are the most revered in the community.

How we age is key. A person who has not walked the good red road south to north may be elderly, but that does not mean they are an elder. They have not spent their many years living in such a way as to ‘make sacred’ and attain ‘spiritual understanding.’ This makes death much harder. Death can be a welcome transition to the next step.

EAST= THE END OF LIFE & SPIRITUAL TRANSITION

At the very culmination of life, the person reaches the East. As this time approaches, the person detaches from earthly matters, especially those that are petty, and sees life more and more in a spiritual way. The person is ready to soar away, in their dying.

The East is the place where light rises.  While the West guards through fearsome power [Thunder] and the North tests through harsh conditions [Wazíya], the East guards through peace, clarity, and unclouded vision. Thus, its spirits — the misty Yáŋpa and the soaring Waŋblí — function as one. The warm South is the place where the soul exits this life, to go on the Spirit Path, or Ghost Road.

THE CENTRE [Čhaŋgléška]

All directions and inhabitants of the Sacred Circle converge in the Centre.

Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, dwells in the Centre, according to Black Elk.

The powers and gifts of a given direction can be sought in a particular time and place, a situation where help is needed.

A given direction can be the patron for a certain walk of life, as the West is for warriors.

When the blue of sky and the green of earth are added to the four, the sacred number 6 emerges. Adding the centre gives the sacred number 7.  Judaism has much to say about ‘4’ and ‘6’ and ‘7.’ The 7 is very important. Both the Lakota and Eastern Orthodox traditions have 7 sacred ceremonies, 7 sacraments. Numbers and the roots of words carry meanings in Judaism. Quality is woven in with Quantity.   

THE CROSSING OF ROADS, VERTICAL & HORIZONTAL

Black Elk speaks of the crossing of the two roads, the good red road running south to north, and the bad black road running west to east.

“The good red road of making sacred and spiritual understanding is crossed by the bad black road of worldly difficulties and war. It is the Great Mystery who has made the two roads cross, and the place where they cross is holy.” There is no unimpeded vertical ascent, from earth straight to heaven. The spiritual road has to accept being crossed by the road of the fallen world. The Crossing of these two roads is paradoxical. The vertical road is wounded by the horizontal reality, yet this is also the way in which the horizontal road is wounded by the vertical road. The two converse roads are brought together, in a dramatic intersection, in the centre of all that is. The greater is brought down low to the lesser, so that the lesser can be raised up to the greater. This is the holiness of the Cross of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The willingness of the spiritual to suffer the worldly is a stumbling block to moralistic Jews, and folly to metaphysical Greeks.

COMMENT 1

1,The Western ‘mind’ regards nature and the cosmos as made up of, and functioning according to, matter and mechanism. Life is confined to a few organisms on earth, and sentience to even fewer creatures. Westerners, including Christians, misunderstood the Indigenous Vision. For Western Christians, God is a Superior Being, in a world of beings. For Judaism and Eastern Christian, a more apophatic approach is taken. God is not a being like all the others, only more so. This is a Super Mind, a sort of Big Ego in the Sky overlooking, controlling, rewarding and punishing the other, lesser egos. God, as the Biggest Ego, is singular in the way the ego is, a distinct, isolate, being who commands all the other distinct, isolate beings. ‘The angry old man in the sky’ is a wrathful version of this biggest and most formidable ego. The top ‘I am.’ The error of this is basic. God is not the biggest ego in a universe of smaller egos. God is not the ‘I am’ cut off from any ‘Thou’, the ego that says “I am Me, not You.”  The personalness of God is nothing to do with the human ego. Nor is the human personhood [the ‘hypostasis’] anything to do with the human ego, or any kind of egoic existence. God is three persons sharing one nature. The ‘being’ of God is relational, it is the being of Love. The being of Love is communion.  

Even before God reveals the being of Love to humanity, God is first encountered in the awe that recognizes God cannot be comprehended by the human mind, in any of its forms, nous, reason, intellect. God cannot be fitted into created categories of any kind. God transcends being and non-being. Maimonides says God is “incommensurate” when God first finds humanity. We are awe-struck. “Nothing compares to you” can only be sung to God. We must initially approach God through the Way of Apophaticism, the Negative Way. We cannot ascribe anything from our own nature, or the natural world, to God. God exceeds it all.  We can only approach God through the darkness of the clouds of ‘unknowing.’ This is mystical, not visionary. All eyes are shut.

It does not end there. The awe that allows us to respect and feel gratitude toward the Mystery of God becomes the ‘sacred ground’ [the first sacred space= first temple= first church] where God approaches us to reveal more. We cannot know the Essence of God — anything of God qua God is beyond our comprehension — yet God comes down and God reaches out to us. As the sun has many rays, God’s Unitary Essence has Many Energies coming to meet us. These Energies are termed by Jews ‘the names’ of God, and by other traditions as the ‘Qualities, Powers, Gifts’ of God. They communicate God’s Mystery to us and make it possible for us to commune with those Energies. All created matter, space, and time, is capable of receiving the Divine Energies and mediating them, in more tangible and visible forms, to humanity. We partake of the Energies of the Uncreated in the localized Forms & Dynamisms of the Created. God creates the creation so that it is permeable by God, and God can relate to humans through its created structures and created forces. This allows for the Cataphatic approach, the Positive Way, where God takes on created forms that are symbolic with which create a relationship, a dialogue, between the divine and the human. This is an ontology of connection, and communication, and this exchange is personal. It is always the I—Thou meeting of Love, never the clashing of egos, nor just the melting into God, like a drop in the ocean, which is impersonal. When a Lakota person on the Vision Quest receives a vision through an animal, the Great Mystery beyond all affirmation and all negation,  affirms a particular I—Thou relationship with that person, in sending the messenger who reveals a life path for that person, and no other persons. The tendency of all Red Indians to ascribe personal status to animals and other creations of God is a recognition of the way God indwells the universe and makes it into a single organism, living by connection and communication, a personal communion of Love.

God gives the First Nations a wisdom to live by, and care for, the Sacred Beginning.

Hence, the term Wakan Tanka has a double meaning which does not contradict but compliments.

Wakan Tanka has many translations into English. Great Spirit, Great Sacred, Great Holy, Great Mysterious. Tanka is great, and Wakan means what is ‘other’ to anything routine, every day, ordinary, usual, in the normal run of things. It speaks of encounters with the unusual and not in the run of things, the unpatterned and un-patternable, tending toward the incommensurate. My preference is ‘Great Mystery.’ Between the Shamanic Great Mystery and the Jewish God with a partially revealed name — YHWY – that no one knows how to pronounce [“Jehovah” is clearly wrong] and that cannot be spoken or written down [the Hasidic Jews will only write G-d] there is a strong apophatic affinity. If the Great Mystery has revealed nothing about itself to the First Peoples, it has done that so that the focus remains more on the Sacred Beginning of the Creation. It is thus enough to call God ‘the Creator.’ The task that God wants Indigenous Persons to do would only be confused if extra revelations concerning the Mysteriousness of the Ultimate Mystery were added. We are all, in different religious and following different spiritual roads, on a strictly need to know basis with God. We are empowered and gifted what we need for walking that particular road. It is the awe, respect, affection, in which Red Indian peoples relate to the Great Mystery that shows the Great Mystery is the same apophatic reality which the Jews encounter in first becoming aware of the divine. The Lakota and other Plains Tribes call the Great Mystery by the very affectionate and humanly personal name ‘Tunkasila’ – Tȟuŋkášila — which translates to “Grandfather.”

Grandfather, Great Mystery,
all over the world the faces of living ones are alike.

This prayer is addressed to some’one’, not to some’thing.’ This prayer is inter-personally I—Thou, it is not addressed to some metaphysical abstraction far removed from all that is human. It is not addressed to a maternal womb with the yearning to return to and dissolve in the waters that held the foetus. The womb is a tomb if you stay too long. This is not a prayer of any kind of maternal paganism. Nor is it a prayer of any kind of patriarchal religion. It is precisely the patriarchal religions of Western Christianity [Catholic, Protestant, Episcopalian] who misunderstood Red Indians, and thought them ‘animists’, worshipping the powers and processes of nature ‘rather than’ and ‘instead of’ acknowledging the real God. But the mistake about the Great Mystery who is God is from the Western Christians, and any other path in Judaism, Islam, or any other religion, that is patriarchal. Shamanism worships the same God of radical and ultimate mystery – holiness means ‘otherness’, not wholeness – as do the Jews, and as do the Eastern Orthodox Christians. In the depths of soul and heart, all humans recognize God.

To call the Creator of all worlds Grandfather is to establish a family resemblance between God and humanity ‘made in the image’ of and called to ‘grow to the likeness’ to God. This prayer addresses the Creator as a personhood, singular not multiple, a revered and respected family relation. If God were not personalist in some mystical sense far removed from the fallen ego, there would be no point in praying to him. The prayer asks for help, for mercy, for tenderness, for patience, and for gentleness. Such a helping God is without any doubt relating to humanity in Martin Buber’s I—Thou, not his I—It. There is profound respect but not the fear of punishment, rejection, condemnation, so prevalent in patriarchal distortions of God’s Mystery. What Hebrew calls ‘fear of God’ is better translated as a state of being awe-struck, leading to the thanksgiving of worship. There is in the Lakota prayer not only awe and respect but also trust in God’s love for those asking for help.

All created creatures and things on earth and in the heavens are humanity’s relatives. But better than blood relatives is the phrase spoken at the end of prayers. “All my Relations.” We are related to all that live in relationships of connection and communication, relationships of communion between personal centres, because these relations are all created by Love.

A prayer of ‘a contrite and broken heart’ also exists in the Lakota Way as well as the Jewish Bible.

Truth is coming

It will hurt me.

I rejoice

You can heal me.

The Great Mystery is declared in prayer and ceremonies, more apophatically than cataphatically. More in the awe demonstrated by Silence than in the sound of words, more in the respect manifest in Stillness than in the busy rushing hither and yon. The Red Indians, and First Nations peoples, ‘stand before’ the same Great Mystery of God as do the Jews and the Christians who build on the Jews in their embracing of the Messiah. Awe and respect, yet trust and affection, are mixed in this way of Standing Before the Mystery. You remain yourself, you do not melt. Not matriarchy. You retain your dignity, you do not kow tow. Not patriarchy. You bow head and heart to the Mystery so beyond you, yet you take it on trust that this Mystery created you and loves you, not wanting to see you suffer, but wanting to see you happy. Martin Buber likens this standing before God [literally on your feet, not sitting or laying prone] to walking a narrow ridge with chasms on either side. The Eastern Christian Tradition calls this standing before God ‘Ortho-Doxia.’ Right praise, right worship, right understanding leading to true wisdom. It is Formal and Informal at once. It is not casual— taking the Mystery of God for granted or presuming on it. Nor is it fearful of a remote, austere, unapproachable, Majesty or Lordship. This ‘stand’ respects the Otherness yet leans on ‘for very life’ the friendliness, accessibility, love, of that Mystery. The Mystery and the human share a home= they are linked in an extended cosmic family of relations. This is why the first duty of any Shamanic person is to learn to become a good relative, a good relation, a good kin [Wochangi]. It starts with other persons but extends to all creatures and all things.  The web of creation is an interlocked kinship system. The Mystery is not alien to the human, and to all the creatures and things created by it. The Mystery has ties of kinship, of personal I-Thou dialogue and love with the human. Revelations later in time to the Jews and to the Christians rest on this primal revelation to the primal peoples. The focus in Judaism shifts to time and the fallen world, in ‘tikkun olam’ [repair of the world, repair of time]. This is carried to its climax in the Messiah Jesus Christ. But if we look at in terms of time, then there are three steps – Shamanism, Judaism, Christianity – all of which come from the same God, but each of which is given a different, utterly necessary and crucial, task by that ‘one’ God.

The complex Lakota creation story is where the ‘Western’ and ‘patriarchal’ accusation of polytheism and animism gets going. There are four main spirit beings, four companions of the primary four, and then two additional waves of four spirit beings, to make up all the 16 actors in creating the world humans dwell in. Some commentators call these spirit beings ‘deities.’ A group of gods and goddesses, not a singular ‘God.’ Thus, Wakan Tanka means the totality of the spiritual actors involved in creating. This interpretation simply does not float. Wilmer Mesteth and I discussed it at length and we both rejected it. While some forms of Shamanism really do have gods and goddesses, as is the case of the Greeks or Hindus, most have Spirit and spirits, not gods and goddesses. [The roots of divinity [theos] and spirit [pneuma] are different in Greek.] But might the 16 spirit beings then be spirits, or angels as known in the West? The spirits can ride the wave of the divine powers, so to speak, but spirits as themselves created by the Creator cannot have made the creation by their own efforts. That they help out, augmenting divine activities, is certain. But the 16 spirit beings could not, as only spirits or angels, create the creation. Wakan Tanka does not refer to a collective of ‘spirits’ as if they were God. The spirits, or angels, are creatures– like us, the animals and plants, and all things.  

The opposition between Mono-theism and Poly-theism is academic in the worst sense. Gerald One Feather told me that this logical distinction of Western metaphysics and theology between one static superior being versus a plethora of many deities racing around is false. God is unity in diversity. The 16 actors in the Lakota creation story must be seen through unity in diversity, such that unity implies diversity and vice versa. Gerald One Feather put his point thus= “We walk in One Spirit, but we walk with many spirits.” The One and the Many are complimentary aspects of the same ultimate reality of God. The 16 spirit beings are not “16 deities competing with the one supreme God.”

Black Elk explained to non-Lakota using the analogy of the human body. Just as our hands, feet, heart, eyes, are distinct parts of one person, so the 16 spirit beings can be regarded as the ‘operational powers’ of the Creator God.

The Essence of God is One, but the Energies of God are Many. The 16 benign spirit beings can, in the primal wave of creation, be understood as diverse Divine Energies radiating down, and radiating out, from God, and going to work in the creation. These Divine Energies do not work alone, discretely. They bring spirits of various kinds with them, and these are assigned multiple, different tasks. The Jewish Bible tells us that spirits ‘ride’ the divine energies of God, to get specific jobs done. Psalm 104, 4= “He makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.” The elements of nature are not mechanistic= they are shepherded by spiritual intelligences executing the divine will.

But the co-operation goes much farther than that. God creates the immaterial and invisible forms and energies of creatures as capable of co-operating with God, a vessel and a vehicle of Divine Energy. This vessel [soul] and vehicle [heart] is the inner essence of the material and visible forms and energies in their outer crystallization. Thus, the work of creation is shared among the creatures. They too are a wave in the creation work.

The Lakota creation story tells us creation is in four waves. The waves are hierarchal, those coming first are closest to God, or rooted in God, whilst later waves involve spirit beings and spiritual powers. A synergy between spiritual forces and all created happens through the response and initiative of created forces. Everyone has a contribution to the creation! It is the ‘work of many hands.’ The work of creation continues down time. It is a once and for ever event, beginning from nothing prior to it, yet it is an ongoing process as well. This is especially true of water, the mutable element of creation, whose final state is not yet decided.

Thus the 16 spirit beings are symbolic of the Great Mystery’s ‘creative action’ in the cosmos, on earth, in nature, and going into the human world of history. The four waves are four stages of creation, four descents and four outreaches in creating. The creation will forever be imbued, permeated, not so much by some passive presence of God, but by the active presence of God at work in the creation [‘behind the scenes’]. We cannot speak of just God, and the creation, in an Eternal Duality. That is Western. We must realize there is a new ‘third reality’, of God working in the creation, working with the creation, working for the creation. As Abraham Heschel puts it, less ‘God is in history’, and more ‘history is in God.’ “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” The Lakota creation story is telling us that creation is not a dualistic event, but operates through a third thing, a space of relationship, a bridge, actively binding together uncreated and created. Such co-operation has four main actors, four subsidiary companion actors, and two further waves of actors. The ‘third way’ is operating with, as in the interlocking swirls of energy depicted by the Celts in their sacred art.  

The 16 spirit beings of the Lakota creation story are to be understood, then, in a ‘third way’ interpretation. Together, they constitute the totality of the Great Mystery’s action in the cosmos, the totality of the Great Mystery’s work in creating the creation. They are symbols of active process, doings, not personifications of static ‘things’= static beings. This is not transcendence versus immanence. It is transcendence coming down and going out in immanence. This is not pantheism. It is pan-entheism, as scholars nuance it.

2, The First Wave of the Chief Four

The primal goodness= wakan waste

Rock= Inyan

Earth= Maka

Skan= Sky, Motion

Wi= Sun.

Inyan opens a wound in his impregnable nature, and blood spills out. From this blood, everything is created. This is the Hidden Father.

Maka is the earth as receptive to the action of heaven that makes creating possible. This is Sophia.

Skan is the Holy Spirit, he moves all that moves, and his is the vault of sky protecting life on earth.

Wi is the Logos, the Son of the Father yet known in tradition as the ‘Sun’ of Righteousness, and the Eros that fructifies all of the earth, making it bear fruit and blossom.

Creation involves a sacrifice by God. He gives his divine blood to create the earth and everything that exists.  

Maka the Earth is called Grandmother because she nourishes and sustains all life.

The Sky is the Holy Spirit who gives the breath of life to humanity, and all living [as in Genesis]. Skan — Holy Spirit – is the ultimate dynamic and forcefulness of Divine Energy, moving all energies of the creation. Skan is also concerned with justice, just as the Holy Spirit ‘moves’ the heart to seek truth in all action.

 Wi the Sun is the ruler of all the spirits involved with the creation, and he gives light, warmth, and personal power. The Sun – Logos – protects courage in the heart [Daemonic] and constancy of soul [eros]. The Incarnate Logos, the Messiah, is the Sun of Righteousness, and the king of all Messianic Age. His title is, Pantocrator, Master of the Universe.

The Creator looks at the creation when it is brought from nothing, and in the Greek of the Septuagint, he sees the creation is ‘good’, and that also means ‘beautiful.’ The Four Agents of the First Wave of creation are the ‘sacred goodness’ of creation.

3, The Second Wave of the Companions to the Chief Four

Partnerships are needed= the kin, the helpers, of the primary four.  

Hanwi= Moon, companion to the Sun

Tate= Wind, companion to the Sky

Wakinyan Tanka= Thunder, companion to the Rock

Whope= White Buffalo Calf Woman, the Star Maiden, companion to Earth

Hanwi the Moon is helper to the Sun. She rules over the night, the cycles of time [time as circular], tides of the ocean, and governs feminine energy and the supernatural gifts and qualities unique to woman. She is a manifestation of Sophia.

Tate the Wind is helper of Skan the Sky, controlling the seasons, and commanding the paths of ‘walking in a sacred manner.’ Wind is also the Holy Spirit, ‘blowing where it wills’, answerable to no man. The roads of religion, when they are walked not just talked about, are ‘spiritual’ in their movements, steps, leaps. The Holy Spirit is the motor of spiritual journeying and spiritual battle.  Tate is the caretaker at the entrance to the Spirit World.

Wakinyan Tanka the Thunder Being [the Thunders] is the helper of Inyan the Rock. He is the lord of the storms and cleanser of the world from evil. He is the Anger for Truth that God wields to protect the world from take-over by evil forces. The Wrath of God is protective, and directed at the evil spirits, not humanity. ‘After the storm, the healing rains.’ In the Jewish Bible, God acts in the same way= compassion comes after anger, and anger lasts only for a short time. Only God’s love lasts forever.

Whope the Star Maiden embodied in the White Buffalo Calf Woman. She is the spirit of peace, harmony, beauty. [Whope is called ‘the Beautiful One.’] She is a manifestation of Sophia, as the chief mediator in the creation. The White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the sacred pipe to the people and also gave them the seven sacred ceremonies. This is Sophia building her House, the House of Wisdom. The sacred space and sacred rituals are a ‘place’ where Gold is present, and active, in a fuller way. It is the Temple in formation. Sophia’s House is the companion to Maka because it reveals the ultimate goodness and beauty of the Earth. Mother earth and mother church are sisters. Feminine Mysteries cannot be understood by reductive concepts. We should not poke and pry into them, from a motive of idle curiosity, or fear and mistrust, or arrogant conceit.

4, The Third Wave of Creation= Spirits of the Creation

These spirits provide the created, and earthly, counterparts to the supernatural beings and their supernatural powers in the first and second waves of creation.

Tatanka= Buffalo spirit

Mato= Bear spirit

Wani= the Four Winds & Four Directions of the Sacred Circle

Yumni= Whirlwind

The Buffalo is the provider, the Give Away that undergirds human life as its sacrificial rationale. The buffalo hunted by the Red Indians on the plains gave food, clothing, and robust health. They teach that generosity is the foundation of a good life. The buffalo signifies the spiritual alliance between humans and animals [the job of Shamanism at the very beginning was to establish this understanding between human and animal, and keep it in the sacred law].

The Bear is the healer, protecting sacred medicines growing in the earth, and the cave that invites looking within and coming to a mature wisdom about the ups and downs of human existence. The bear is also the fighter who goes straight at the adversary, and thus a patron of warriors and the courage to not hold back, prevaricate, but charge right in. Not a fool, but a bear, rushes in where angels fear to tread. The bear is a protective mother, as well as a protective fighter, having her young in the dead of winter, and protecting them thereafter from all manner of threats, including irascible male bears.

The Four Winds, sons of Tate, are controllers of climate, messengers of the holy, and guardians of the four cardinal points of the Sacred Circle.

The Whirlwind is ‘the little wind’, a spirit of love, play, sport, and a restorative medicine to feminine energy to bring it into balance.

A possible misunderstanding of ‘Divine Energies’ is to think of them on the model of physical energy widely [but not necessarily accurately] conceived in the modern era. Some commentators claim that energy is impersonal, but can be differently characterised by, for instance, war. The energy extends through time and space with this quality. Then humans personify that energy as a ‘war god.’ There is no ‘god’ at the origin of the energy, it is claimed. The energy, in its impersonality, precedes the god, and the god emerges from that energy. In this way, these commentators think they have dispelled the Single God of Judaism. Their tone is often smug. But this line of thinking is wrong, in many respects.

Humans, and other creatures, are not just puppets pulled on the string of impersonal energies filling time and space for no reason. Judaism does not believe in the Angry Old Man in the Sky, a Satanically twisted and distorted image of the Fatherhood of God. The Lakota do not pray to an impersonal energy that they personify as a grandfather. They pray, in reverence and affection, to the Great Mystery who is, out of love, the Grandfather of all humanity. The ‘energy-before-the-god’ interpretation is loveless, as well as impersonal.

Divine Energy has a personal, inter-relational, loving, source, and as it manifests different qualities and different powers in its energetic movement, so these qualities and powers are inherently imbued and shaped by the personalism of God the Creator. The energies with their distinctive natures and forces are neither loveless nor impersonal. They relate and ‘speak’ to us, dialogically. They are actually forms of friendship, alliance, allegiance, kinship.

It is fair to say that in the Far Orient the energy coming down and flowing out, filling all things, is focused on more in its qualities and powers – Chi – than in its personal, loving, source. But it is understood the energies flowing through nature that can empower and heal, inspire and facilitate, human life are ‘meant’ in their ‘benign affect.’ They are gifts, given by some’one’ to some’one.’ Gifts are given as love between persons. All such ‘help’ ultimately comes from heaven in relation to the earth. Everything functions within that sacred parentage of heavenly and earthly. In the Chinese ‘Book of Changes’, the I Ching, heaven is the Creative and earth is the Receptive. This is fatherhood of spirit and motherhood of earth joined in a relationship that is set up by personal love and serves personal love. It is all a family, a network of kinship. All family members live in one House of ‘many mansions.’ God and Sophia create a pairing, a bonding, a love relationship, as the foundation and origin of the entire creative process, as it cascades down like a waterfall, coming down on the four ledges that hold and release the flow.

Wakan Tanks is the Mysterious, non-conceivable, non-imaginable, non-sensory, reality of the origin, the Creator. But Wakan Tanka then becomes God working in the creation, and employing spirits, spiritual powers, qualities, natures, to help further the creation. The creation is originated by the One God, yet the creating is carried through by an entire family, such that everything contributes to the final result, everything has a certain freedom and love, a nascent personhood, and so everything has a stake in creation. God is at work in all things, and communicates through all things, yet all things retain a core and a distinct essence of their own which will never be erased or dissolved. God is not a cosmic soup into which creation melts, nor is God a remote and magisterial Biggest Ego in the Sky, dictating to all the smaller egos on earth. God does not want puppets whose strings he pulls. This is why a state of spirit possession, such as trance, cannot be permanent. It is helpful in enacting a spiritual calling. It is not a model of future bliss.

5, The Fourth Wave of Creation= Multiple ‘Souls’ in Humanity & Nature

These constitute the human soul and its immediate spiritual connections. These connections function as spiritual ‘essences’ and ‘core’ spiritual powers that indwell human beings and all of creation, acting as a direct channel to the divine.

Nagi the ‘Ghost’= the soul’s essential self which survives physical death to go on the Star Path [the Milky Way].

Niya the ‘Breath of Life’= the soul’s vital Life Force, the breath sent by Skan that animates the body with soul, keeping it alive. ‘Ni’ means ‘to live.’ Woniya means Breath of Life. In death, the Niya departs the person and returns to the ancestors.  

Sichúŋ= the spirit animal helper, often encountered on a vision quest, who shields the heart from spiritual evil, and makes it possible for the person to find their heart’s mission in this world. An innate guardian power, destined to give the heart the inspiration and strength needed to answer its calling from God. A personal calling needs a personal helping potency. The sichun is the ‘ton’, the person’s spiritual power or supernatural efficacy.  This is what drives and lifts the heart to its deeds of heroic passion. The ton, or spiritual power, of a sacred being is given to a person along with a spirit name. By giving the seeker a name, the spirit in the vision has ‘officially’ extended a portion of their ton, their particular spirit power, to the person. The name acts as a permanent tether. When the person invokes the name or carries a physical symbol of the spirit [a bear claw, a hawk feather] in a medicine bag, that sicun is activated. The particular attributes of, for instance, bear or hawk envelops the person. If a wolf, then qualities are energized such as loyalty to the community, protecting the roads of people, far ranging stamina in the hunt.

Nagila the ‘Little Ghost’= the little soul in all humans, all creatures, all things, indwelt by the divine. In some commentaries the Little Ghost is regarded a cosmic thread connecting every thread of creation. Thus, the bird, the tree, the stream, each in their own manner, are all sustained by divine presence. A localized presence of the Great Mystery is woven into the very fabric of matter. This raises the question whether the Nagila might also be considered an aspect of providence. All things work together for good, in the love of God.

Every soul has a self, the seat of consciousness, and the golden bridge uniting ‘sea and land’, unconscious and conscious. In more Western, and modern, psychological terms, the Nagi is the soul in its aspect of unique ‘personality’, the specific ‘character’,  the particular inwardness of the soul in a person= their feelings, desires, sensations, rational assessment, imagining, intuitive sensing. The inner soul in its individuality shapes the person’s perspective and demeanour in life. This soul is called the ‘appetitive’ faculty in Eastern Orthodox monasticism because its basic drive is its yearning for Eros.  

In Genesis, the breath of life is breathed directly into the soul of humans by the Holy Spirit [Skan the Sky & Motion]. All living receives a breath of the Holy Spirit, but in a way different to humans. The human soul is given a different consciousness, self-conscious and unself-conscious. The human soul is tasked with a care for the creation in its Wholeness that is like that of God’s concern and love.  In China, Chi, or India, Prana, or in the South Pacific, Mana.  

The sicun is the ‘story’ of the heart in its service to God in this life. This story has specific meanings and purpose, and the spiritual power to enact it in the ‘real world.’ Crazy Horse ‘dreamed of the Thunders’ when confirmed as a warrior. He saw a vision of a horse dancing in a spiritual way not like the way horses move in the physical world. This was his war horse. The vision meant he and his horse would be able to move in a ‘crazy’ manner such that none of his enemies would ever be able to hit him. This proved true. Crazy Horse was never hit by the arrows of the Crow Tribe or the bullets of the American Army. In a scuffle occasioned by a bogus arrest warrant, he was stabbed by an Agency policeman, a fellow Oglala Lakota.

All things, even what the West calls ‘inanimate matter’, is ensouled in some manner. Some mysterious presence of the divine resides in everything, to guarantee its unity with God. It is because of the Nagila that the Lakota can end prayers with, “we are all related” [Mitakuye Oyasin]. All created ‘shares’ the divine in its own nature. What all created have in common is the mystery of divinity. Gazing into everything, we encounter a latent mysteriousness. All created are beautiful and good, coming from God’s hands, yet all created is also strange and mysterious. Its own nature is ‘user friendly’ to the divine.  

 (to be continued)