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    Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple: The Only Book You'll Ever Need
    Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple: The Only Book You'll Ever Need
    Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple: The Only Book You'll Ever Need
    Ebook207 pages1 hour

    Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple: The Only Book You'll Ever Need

    By Deborah Durbin

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    About this ebook

    An Introduction to Native American Astrology

    Like their Western and Chinese counterparts, Native Americans developed an astrological system for understanding the world and envisioning harmony in the universe. Based on animals and clans and including corresponding trees, stones, and colors, the medicine wheel is broken into 12 moons similar to the 12 signs in Western astrology. In fascinating detail and with illustrations throughout, this new entry in the Plain & Simple series explores an exciting and little-known aspect of Native American culture.

    In addition to analyses of all the signs, symbols, and seasonal associations, there are illuminating charts, explanations of the medicine wheel, and practical ideas for using Native American astrology as an oracle. This is a book for the thousands fascinated by Native American legend and lore.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHampton Roads Publishing
    Release dateNov 1, 2017
    ISBN9781612833958
    Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple: The Only Book You'll Ever Need

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      Book preview

      Medicine Wheel Plain & Simple - Deborah Durbin

      1

      An Introduction to Native American Astrology

      The earliest inhabitants of the Americas most likely migrated from the continent of Asia across the Bering Strait to what is now known as Alaska, during the last Ice Age, when a land bridge connected the two continents. This migration may have begun as early as thirty thousand years ago, continuing until about ten thousand years ago. The migration of these first people spread southward through present-day Canada, the United States, Central America, down into South America as far Tierra del Fuego. These early inhabitants, called Paleo-Americans, settled and diversified as they migrated, forming the many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes that we know of today.

      These days, we collectively refer to these First Nations as Native Americans. In Canada, the United States, and in Central and South America, the variation among the groups is immense, their development is varied, and each tribe has its own traditions, beliefs, religions, and attitudes. One of the shared symbols among many of the Native American cultures is the medicine wheel. It is a universal symbol, but its use and meaning vary based on religious beliefs and tribal culture. Common among the uses of the medicine wheel is that it represents time, life cycles, the power of the natural and supernatural worlds, and each individual's path of personal growth.

      The Medicine Wheel as Astrology

      Every culture on Earth has a link to the invention of some form of astrology and various forms of calendar. Babylonian astrology led to Egyptian astrology, which was later refined by the Greeks and Romans. This form of astrology gave us our familiar signs of the zodiac and the Western system as we know it today. Other cultures linked times of the year to the creatures that they hunted or to those that were known to be dangerous to the inhabitants of their lands.

      Native peoples the world over observed animals and plants in ways that we have long since forgotten. For instance, we might consider the butterfly to be a strange astrological symbol, but the appearance of an abundance of butterflies probably heralds a good crop of something that humans can eat—perhaps some early vegetables or salad greens. Native Americans have historically been people of the land rather than city dwellers, so it is not surprising that the animals related to the seasons and areas in which they lived have become part of their astrology.

      Over the millennia, there must have been many hundreds of forms of Native American calendars, millions of different religious beliefs, and just as many different astrological outlooks. Now, what is known as medicine wheel astrology has become associated with Native Americans, but even so, the system continues to evolve, and there are still variations on the basic theme.

      In this book, we look at the medicine wheel concept and give you information that you can work with. We then look at totem animals and show you how to find your primary and important secondary totems. As the title suggests, you do not need to know about birth charts, Moon signs, and Sun signs, nor do you need any prior knowledge of astrology to be successful with this book. Simply read on and enjoy your journey into the world of Native American astrology.

      2

      The Medicine Wheel

      The word medicine may be confusing to readers who associate the word with Western doctors and medicine. In many Native American tribes, the use of the word medicine is broad and can encompass physical remedies as well as spiritual. It actually refers more closely to the concept of putting things into order and creating harmony—in this case, incorporating a kind of yin and yang or I Ching concept of the natural order of everything. The confusion around the concepts of harmony, mending, and healing may have been created when white men tried to learn Native American languages. That said, the very term medicine wheel implies a concept that is unique to Native American thought and embodies lifestyle, cultural, and spiritual identity.

      Wheel as Measuring Instrument

      It is possible that the medicine wheel is based on some early Chinese system. As we saw in the introduction, the early Native Americans migrated from Asia during the last Ice Age, if not earlier, and we know that early forms of the I Ching and feng shui go back that far. The second possibility is that the similarities are just coincidental. After all, most early systems around the world used a circle, and all were concerned with the calendar and with compass directions. As with many other early forms of astrology, astronomy, and measurements of time and dates—Stonehenge included—the wheel is a very basic and ancient form of measuring instrument.

      As with Chinese and other systems, the medicine wheel pinpoints the seasons and also refers to the stages of life.

      The seasons of the Medicine Wheel, the Chinese Bagua, the Western astrological zodiacal wheel.

      In Western astrology, the cardinal signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn mark the times of the year when each new season begins, while the fixed signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius mark the midpoint of each season. The fixed signs frequently appear in ancient astrology illustrations, often with the sign of Scorpio depicted by its old symbol, the eagle. Even the ceiling of the church in the Vatican shows these four seasonal symbols, as does the World card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck.

      The Seasons

      Native American astrology also uses the images of creatures to depict the seasons. These creatures exist in addition to the twelve zodiac signs of the medicine wheel. They mark the turning point of each season and also the turning points during each day (dawn, noon, dusk, midnight). The four seasonal creatures are the white buffalo, the golden eagle, the coyote, and the grizzly bear.

      The Signs

      In Western astrology, each of the twelve astrological signs belongs to one of the four elements, which rotate through the signs.

      In Native American astrology, each sign belongs to a clan, which rotates through the system in a similar manner.

      These two charts are meant to show the structure of each of the astrological wheels. Readers will no doubt want to create a one-to-one relationship between these two systems—that is, corresponding Aries with Snow Goose, Taurus with Otter, and so forth—but will find that the astrological dates in the two systems do not match up. Medicine Wheel astrology is not meant to be a translation of Western astrology; it is a system on its own, and you will have to suspend your expections that all astrology is the same.

      Here is a typical Western astrological chart.

      Here is the medicine wheel with all the signs in place, along with the clans and seasonal animal totems.

      Some Native Americans still use the agricultural calendar invented by the Aztecs, while others use a lunar calendar. This has now been incorporated into the "calendar

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