JENNINGS MEDICINE WHEEL, SOUTH DAKOTA
"The equinoxes are often mentioned in tandem with the solstices, apparently because, for many Western-minded modern people sharing superficial but evidently ethnocentric astronomical notions, they represent the only significant moments of the tropical year. Nobody seems to care that, while the solstices are marked by easily perceivable extremes of the Sun's annual path along the horizon, the equinoxes are not directly observable and can only be determined with relatively sophisticated methods."
TEMPLE OF THE SEVEN DOLLS Ancient Cosmologies and Modern Prophets
A good part of my early formative years were spent living under the auspices of my Uncle. By the time I reached junior high things had changed and for me he was officially pretty much out of the picture. However, for a short time and mainly through my own initiatives, some of those pre-to-early teens I spent with him, first as a runaway, then as a quasi-intern come apprentice at his studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico working with both him and the eminent Navajo artist Harrison Begay, who in turn gave me my Navajo name. For a couple of days during those stays my uncle visited an old WPA artist friend of his that lived in Oklahoma and took me along. The friend was a Native American named Oscar Howe, a member of the Yanktonai Dakota Tribe of South Dakota, a man who, because of our meeting, would play an interesting role in my life later on. At the time of the meeting Howe was still working on his B.A. from Bacone College, or had and was just about to enroll in or already enrolled in the University of Oklahoma graduate program leading toward a MFA. My uncle went there in some manner on his behalf.
Several years later, in 1959 and just into my 20's by about a year or so, the grandmother of a girl I was dating became seriously ill, so much so the girl's mother decided she best go see her, a trip that required a 1500 mile one way drive from Southern California to the small town of Miller in central South Dakota. The girl's mother asked her go along and she in turn, asked me to join them. At the last minute, just as we were leaving something came up that impacted the girl from going. She pleaded with me to accompany her mother on the road trip promising to join us later. Earlier I had phoned my uncle telling him I was going to South Dakota and since it was unusual for me to be there he made arrangements for me contact someone who could possibly set me up to see a few interesting to me (as he saw it) sights. The contact person was Howe who was teaching by then at the University of South Dakota. When Howe heard I was going to be in Miller, in response to my uncle's request he set me up with a man at the Crow Creek Indian Reservation.
In an amazing set of circumstances that included moon phases, timing on all of our parts and coincidences, it just so happened the man, a Native American spiritual elder, was in the process of setting up a visit to perform a ritual at an ancient site not that far from Miller, and because I had been highly recommended by Howe and my uncle, as well as having been introduced by my Navajo name given me at a young age, he was receptive to the idea of picking me up.
We went directly to a Native American rock ring, known as medicine wheels, located some ways west from the traditional eastern edge of the Great Plains. At the time I knew nothing about rock rings, their significance to the Native American culture or anybody else, but especially so the importance of the specific rock ring the spiritual elder took me to. Years passed before I became aware of such things and only then by study and research. Even in the depth of my ignorance and being a white man the elder showed no outside reluctance having me join him, nor did I have any feeling from him wishing I wasn't there. He proceeded with what ever he was doing and included me right along with him.
He told me we would be on the open prairie for several days and since it was the end of October going into November to wear warm clothes and bring a really good cold weather sleeping bag. He picked me up right at the end of the month when the waning crescent moon was nothing but a thin curved sliver of sliver in the east just before dawn staying at the rock ring a few nights until a slight thin curved sliver of crescent moon appeared just above the western horizon at sunset. In between those two crescent moon phases was the new moon and why we were there. Of all the new moons in a year, this specific new moon was chosen because of something known as the cross quarter alignment. Cross quarter alignments occur four times a year, marking the halfway point between the the solstices and equinoxes. Starting from the one between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, which is considered the start of new growth, they move on through the fourth and last, falling halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice, the time when plants and animals begin shutting down. So, to cut to the quick, the spiritual elder, for his ritual to be successful, required the use of the closest new moon phase that fell nearest the last cross quarter alingment only a few days away. That new moon phase just so happening to fall on the second of two new moons in the month of October 1959 on Halloween eve. Halfway in the passage of time between the last of the lunar month waning crescent moon as seen in the east just at dawn or shortly thereafter and first crescent as sighted in west just after sunset marks the point the moon reaches it's halfway point traveling through the underworld. The ritual the spiritual elder performed was to ensure the moon would exit the underworld unscathed and return to it's rightful place in the heavens.
The medicine wheel the spiritual elder took me to, besides marking the farthest east of the traditional land of the Lakotas, had for his and other tribal peoples of the plains as well, a deep spiritual connection associated to the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Two hundred and thirty miles west of the medicine wheel is a natural geologic formation called Bear Butte and two hundred and thirty miles west of that is another medicine wheel called Cloud Peak, with Bear Butte marking the halfway point in distance between the two. All three locations, over the entire 400 mile plus distance are located on the exact same geographic parallel line, the same parallel line as the equinoxes would be seen at the time of the rising sun over the eastern horizon, with the center of the far east ring, the one where I was, being off from being 100 percent perfect by less than the width of a person's thumb at arms length, from the center of the far west ring over the full length of the over 400 mile distance.
Around sunset on the evening of the night just before the cross quarter alignment, the tribal elder briefed me on what he was up to and how he was going to include me. The whole plan was to ensure that neither the sun nor the moon or both would get stuck in the underworld at that point in time by unknown sources or otherwise and not be able to emerge whole in their rightful places at sunrise just as they always have since time immemorial. Whatever he was going to do would solve the problem or alleviate it from happening. My role was to stay out of the way and not tip the balance, and as I found out he had a plan for that too. He explained briefly what he was going to do and what I was going to do and just follow his instructions to a tee, no more, no less.
He was to sit in the center of the ring facing due east with his back toward the exact spot of the setting sun. I was to sit just in front of him outside the ring facing the same direction. He said I could sit in my sleeping bag and could lay down as long as my body position continued to maintain an east west axis with the bottom of my feet facing east. Then, in the now dark, he removed a lid off of a old one pound coffee can and told me to reach in a pick out two of what was inside telling me they were the fruit or seeds of a plant and like all seeds, each contains the end at the beginning. I pulled two round slightly smaller than walnut things out of the can. They had a texture and feel almost of cork, soft but sturdy but not hard shelled, squishy, or soft peel like. He told me when the time came he would tell me to put one in my mouth, then chew it up and ingest the whole of it, doing the same with the second one. The timing to do so he said had to do with the rise or setting of a star or constellation sometime after sunset. Otherwise I was to sit and wait, staying the full night in my sitting spot and not look back. I had just begun to watch the slow grind of the circumpolar stars churn their path around Polaris together with the rise and fall of the stars and various constellations edging just above the horizon when behind when the elder told to chew and fully ingest the two seeds.
At the time I didn't know what the stale tasting, pungent bitter things I ate were, only to learn much later. Since then I've been told it was a highly unusual act for a northern plains Indian. For me at the time I wouldn't have known one way or the other. Traveling with my uncle I was used to having been given weird things to ingest by Native Americans, one of the first being an incident that transpired at a scared Native American site called The Sun Dagger located in Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico. When I was at the Sun Dagger with my uncle I was just ten years old. By the time of my visit to the medicine wheel I was double that age.
Sometimes, when I'm asleep and fall into a dream state, like in real life I am the partcipant looking out from my own eyes in my owm head interacting with all the other people, places, and things. Other times in the same dream I switch to what I would call an observer, above and away from the dream activities, watching all that is going like a drone or survailence camera, neither participating or thinking the thoughts of the me below in the dream. Who or what that observer is isn't clear, but as the asleep dream-state manifestor I am still somehow able to see, understand, and know what's going on.
The observer portion from the above is how I would describe what happened to me after I ingested the two seed pods, except for the fact that the observation-state didn't originate from, stem from, or come from a typical or normal dream state, if it was a dream state at all. And I don't think it was.
No sooner had I ingested the two seed pods than I found myself in what was no longer the medicine wheel environment, but instead as an observer in a place that seemed almost mountain jungle like, similar to what one might imagine higher up the mountains of the upper Amazon River side of the Andes might be like. It was night and I could bearly see a man in the dim light near a tree on the otherside of a fire ring trying to slip a few beads on a string in the dark. When he finished he hung the small string of beads on a stick like branch of a tree with another string of beads already there, and although the two looked the same the one he was working on was more bracelet like while the one on the tree was more necklace like. The man turned facing me, walking toward the fire ring about halfway in distance between me as an observer and the tree where he hung the bracelet and sat down, his left side facing me. When the man initally turned from the tree and began walking towards me his facial features were veiled by the dark, but as he came closer to the fire's dim reflected light I could easily see from his facial features that the man I was looking at was me, perhaps somewhat older, but still me.
To the left diagonally across from me as an observer, but straight across the fire pit in the man's visual line of sight, what looked like an unseen by me up to that time hidden in the dark door to a hut opened. A man, illuminated by a dim interior backlight, stepped from the hut walking toward the fire sitting himself opposite of the other man. As he got closer to the fire I could clearly see the man was Black. The two began talking and dinking a hot liquid served by the Black man from a pot hanging over the fire, with the other man, the me-man, at the sametime showing the other man what looked like military dog tags. With that the Black man threw the contents of his cup on the fire and instantly a huge cloud size burst of steam engulfed the me-man he falling to the ground covering his eyes and face like Dracula might turn away from a cross. When the steam like cloud dissipated the me-man was gone and almost just as fast I found myself back at the medicine wheel.
"The term 'Once in a Blue Moon' refers to the time when two full moons occur during one monthly period. The opposite of that, and unnamed to me, is when two new moons occur in a one month period. To most people neither occurrence means much, but to the occult, voodoo and such types it can carry some significance. It means POWER in the hands to those who can so channel it, COSMIC POWER. Any event perpetrated during such a narrow band or limited time period carries a destiny with it that similar events at another time won't or can't. During the year 1978 a two new moon occurrence transpired and it just so happened to occur in October, the second of the new moons on, of all things, Halloween night, October 31st, a major convergence of conditions and coincidences."
During the last, or second of the two new moon phases of the two new moon occurrence as written about in the above quote, that is, the same day, date, time, and year, midnight Halloween Night, October 31st, 1978, found me absconded over a mile high above the Caribbean Sea in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. Incredibly, the medicine wheel incident also happened on the second of a two new moon night during October on Halloween night, only a full nineteen years earlier than the Jamaica incident, happening instead on October 31st, 1959 rather than in 1978. The mind-suggestion vision that manifested itself to me at the medicine wheel in 1959 after ingesting the two seed pods was in fact of the exact same physical occurrence that happeded to me in real life in Jamaica in 1978.
In 1978 I was about six months into age 40 and living in Jamaica having been deployed there after joining the Peace Corps. One day a young girl from a small village not far from where I lived was hit by a car, the driver and vehicle taking off leaving her unconscious and unresponsive face down in a goat dung reeking muddy ditch beside the road. The girl's parents, like most of the locals, were poor, and not being able to afford regular medical care, opted for a less expensive, local solution. That solution included me and another village member making a sling hammock suspended between two poles and carrying her high into the mountains in search of a nearly hermit man of spells, a root doctor said by many to practice the dark arts, called an Obeahman.
Even though I helped carry the injured girl up perilous trails high into the mountains, because I was a white man, the Obeah would not let me enter his hut...and at first refused to have anything to do with me. I sat outside in the dark basically just poking the fire with a stick and watching the light flicker amongst the trees.
Before the Obeah took the young girl into his hut he removed a string and bead necklace from around her neck as well as untying a string and bead bracelet from her wrist, hanging both on a small stick-like branch on a nearby tree about man-height above the ground. In doing so, although the necklace hung well I noticed the untied bracelet did not do so, with some of the beads coming loose and dropping into the bushes and onto the ground some distance below the branch. Taking into consideration that the necklace and bracelet might have some importance to the young girl, as much as I could see in the dark I scrounged around for as many beads as I could find, putting them back on the string as best as I could. In that the string ends were frayed, it was dark, and the bead openings were small, it was a difficult task, so much so in the end I simply left two beads of the ones I found off and put them in my pocket. No sooner had I returned to my place by the fire as though nothing had happened than the Obeah slowly backed out of his hut turning toward me. Reaching for a small pot hanging from a spit above the fire the following happened:
"The Obeah poured a warm tea-like broth into two small bowl-shaped cups without handles. He took one and gave me the other, gulping down the liquid while motioning me to do the same.
"He asked me what I liked about Jamaica. I told him things like the weather and the people. Then he asked again what I liked about Jamaica. But now I wasn't able to answer. It was like my mind had grown so huge that trying to focus on something as minuscule as a few words to string together into a sentence had become an impossible hardship. As I struggled to form something at least semi-comprehensible the Obeah asked, 'What about the old man in a far away place a long time ago that constructed bird-like contraptions in order to fly even as you did as a child?' Da Vinci was the answer, but I couldn't form the words. Finally I told him about my Totem Animal, the huge wingspan condor-like vultures the Jamaicans call John Crows, that glide and soar for hours, riding the thermals and never flapping their wings.
"That the Obeah seemed to like. Soon a cool breeze fell across my face even though it came from a direction from across the fire. The Obeahman took a vessel of water and tossed it onto the flames. A huge cloud of steam burst forth followed by a thick cloud of smoke. I jumped back and turned away, stumbling to the ground while covering my face and eyes. Then it got cold, very cold. The breeze began to blow harder and I could no longer feel the ground underneath me. It felt as though I was moving very fast, yet as far as I knew I was still on the ground by the fire."
The next morning a couple of Jamaican kids found me unconscious in a ravine quite some distance below and down the mountain from the Obeah's hut, all scratched up and in the bushes, as though I had crashed through the trees or something. I never learned what happened with or to the girl specifically relative to the Obeah or otherwise, but a couple of weeks later she was seen playing with other kids in the village as though nothing had ever happened. No marks, scars, scraches, casts or anything that would indicate she had been hit by a car.
In 1959 I was only six months into age 21 when the spiritual elder and I met at the medicine wheel and I participated in the ritual with him. We had many alone hours together and even more if we count travel time. During that period we got to know each other and a trust developed, him telling and explaining to me a lot of intricacies of his culture, what we were doing, and why. A lot of it had to do with the clash between the superimposed western European viewpoint of time that the majority of the world has adopted and the ancient long held traditional approach of many indigenous cultures, including his own. For as long as he or his people could remember, as they walked north-south or east-west across the lands, since they had neither roads, wheeled vehicles or beasts of burden, the amount of distance traveled day-to-day was never so much that when the sun crossed directly overhead, or the local meridian as it is called, on any given day, that it wasn't noon wherever they were. Not so with the western European cultures with their ships, stagecoaches, trains, and telegraphs crossing vast distances and more and more quickly. One person's noon could be totally differently than another person's noon. The world was devided into multible time zones each having their own times. There were seconds, minutes, and hours that formed days and enough days together became weeks, months and years. Years became decades and decades centuries, and in doing so millions and millions all around the globe adhered to them, or if the didn't they were left behind. Where previously knowing when the Spring Equinox was to occur was important for planting of crops and such, they were difficult for the lay person to determine, but now no more is required than a calendar.
The spiritual elder told me that the primary or most important night we were at the medicine wheel was on the second of two new moons in October and that it occurred on All Hallow's Eve, Halloween. But that such occurrence didn't mean anything in his culture when it came to such things relative to what we were attempting to accomplish. Why? Because, although there are such things as new moons and cross quarter alignments, there are really no Octobers nor All Hallow's Eves. They are manmade conceptual constructs. He said the next real most important new moon cross quarter alignment wasn't going to happen until the calendar date November 9, 1961, about two years away, saying it would still happen whether it had the calendar date November 9th or not. So I asked, why the importance of this one? He explained it only happened because of the calendar dates. The evening of All Hallow's Day is Halloween, with All Hallow's Day falling before the Christian holiday of All Saints Day, November 1st. For reasons not specificaly known, Pope Gregory III, during his reign 731-741 AD, chose November 1st as All Saints Day when he dedicated a chapel in Rome's St. Peter's Basilica in honor of all saints.
For lots of cultures and millions of people all over the world moon phases have power, with different powers attributed to different phases by different clutures. The full moon's power is, but not always so, usually seen as positive while new moon's power is, if not always, usually falls into the negative or dark side. When two new moons occur in a one month period, especially when one falls on All Hallow's Eve, Halloween night, it can carry a major significance. It means power in the hands to those who can channel it, Cosmic Power. Any event perpetrated during such a narrow band or limited time period carries a destiny with it that similar events at another time won't or can't. What the spiritual elder was trying to point out, in essence, was the differnce between the reality and actuality of the two events. Although similar in outcomes, their power was derived from different sources, albeit equally significant. The November 9, 1961 occurrence was a totally natural phenomenon while the earlier October 31st occurrence, while being a nearly as close in execution physical phenomenon, supplemented it's difference in power from the millions and millions of adherents who during a finite point around the globe focused their will power and faith into a single narrow band in time. The spiritual elder told me a similar occurrence exactly like the October 31st one I just attended would not happen again for approximately 20 years, followed then, same as this one two years later, by the totally natural phenomenon, only much, much stronger. He said it wasn't likely he would make either of the two, nor was he sure if anybody would since no one like himself was being groomed or trained for such a task. He did however, ask me join him for the two year hence one on November 9, 1961.
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If I were to live to be 100 years old, starting from the very day I was born to the very day I died, the same above two new moon months with the second of the new moons falling on Halloween night October 31st would happen only four times, two of which being the 1959 and 1978 occurrences already cited and the last one not until October 31st, 2035 AD, three years short of me being 100.
TIME TRAVEL, THE CURANDERO, AND MEETING QUATU-ZACA
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