Intertwining Roots
You may already be familiar with the Celtic wheel of the year: the four solar festivals, the equinoxes and solstices, combined with the cross-quarter festivals Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. These are observed by practising pagans, including Druids and Wiccans, witches of all sorts, and by very many people who simply have an interest in connecting with nature and old ways of being.
The seasonal wheels I am most familiar with, from my wilderness training over the last ten years, map the Body in the south, Soul/Psyche in the west, Heart-Mind in the north, and Mystery in the east.
These maps, deeply woven with nature’s cycles and our own natural cycles, are known as the Four Directions Medicine Wheel and the Nature Based Map of Psyche. Their teachings of nature within us, and around us, contain sacred paths and ceremonies which were once the life-blood of our ancestors and communities.
Various forms of these ancient, cyclical, seasonal teachings have been used pan culturally by peoples to navigate what it means to be humans deeply connected to the wild.
They show us paths that enable healing, whole-ing and transformation - how to align with our true nature and embody the gifts we carry so that we can live as powerful, healing influences in our communities.
My journey with these ancient medicine wheel teachings has taken quite some time to evolve. It was only when I folded my ways of navigating life specifically through my body and faith in the wisdom that comes though direct experience, that they have come more fully alive.
A northern tradition called the Utiseta can be a commitment to walk at night time in the woods for an entire year (called Årsgang), or sitting quietly on a lonely mound between dusk and dawn, or going to an isolated part of the forest or landscape and waiting for the sunset.
The old sources: Voluspa (Poetic Edda), The Story of Svipdag, The Islengingabok, the Law books, the Swedish Black Books, are all filled with this sacred practice.
Andreas Kornevall
You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.
In the old days, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peaceand light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.
Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.
The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
from Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt