Deep Dive at the Seaside with Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha

 

 

Imagine spending five nights on a quiet North Carolina beach in the deep of summer, sitting around a camp fire with a group of spiritual seekers who are on “silence” (not talking).  They're quite well occupied contemplating a single passage from an ancient text. Here, Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha is our Elder and coach as we take a deep dive into discovering who and what we truly are.  Or, to say it another way, to “know thyself” is our quest’s goal.  Quite an adventure!

  

Let me share the story as best as I can recall.  Imagine, perhaps, that you are there too, in the dark, feeding the fire. Staring into the flames. Sheltered on one side by grand dunes and soothed by the sound of the surf only yards away. We won't go back to our tents until dawn. We will spend the whole night in contemplation.

 

In the mornings, after a welcomed sleep of several hours, we rise to Grandmother's call to come to sit at a picnic table with our notebooks and share our thoughts and experiences. She will share her oh-so-loving Wisdom with us.  Then, maybe you’ll share a small meal she makes for you in her RV kitchen?

     

As the sun sinks, you and the seven others prepare for another night of contemplation by the fire, gathering firewood, notebooks, and Medicine blankets. You climb over the dune.  No talking. Seeking—What?  Understanding? An Awakening? Illumination? Peace of Mind? Empowerment? All of these and more, indeed! You look at a piece of paper Grandmother has given you and read quietly by the fire’s light:

 I AM, that is the natural life-giving force of all things, FE/MALE of all the elements, the initial progeny of Worlds.  Chief of the Divine Powers, Queen of All that are in Hell, the Principal of them that Dwell in Heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the powers of the Principals.

 

At my will, the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the sea, and the lamentable silences of hell be disposed; my name, my Divinity is adorned throughout the Worlds, in diverse manners, in variable customs and by the many names.

Quite a mouthful! Quite a claim! Who is this mysterious being?

 

The font alone gives the quote an arcane air; as if it comes from some forgotten ancient document or tale of Gods and Goddesses? You have lots of questions!

    

Who is this bold speaker who appears to claim full Power over the universe itself? Where did Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha get this quotation? Or did she write it herself? Why had she chosen this particular quote for us to ponder?

 

Your forehead figuratively furrows in your brain and your eyes roll.  It’s a Mystery! A puzzle. The air is cooling down. We feed the fire and it rises up hot and delicious.

      

Grandmother has instructed us to take walks on the beach whenever we are moved to do so. She has set some boundaries so we do not wander too far.  But we are free to wade into the waves and stare out to sea, study the surf and the stars; walk back and forth from surf to fire as we please. We do not speak to strangers or each other.

 

We seekers know each other reasonably well.  We have traveled to other shores with Grandmother and are building a place called Friendship Village in Ohio, a ceremonial home, retreat and conference center.  We are family.

 

Sitting by the fire comes naturally to us so there is a silent camaraderie that blesses our shared excursion into inner space.

 

The message, the text, is obviously about Divinity. This is not an unfamiliar theme to any of us.

 

You start studying each and every word, starting with “I Am that is…!

           

You, personally know from your own previous studies how very significant the ability to say “I AM” is.  It demonstrates the power of the human consciousness to self-reflect and to KNOW THYSELF as an individual, self-contained living entity that has a memory and ability to imagine the future. A self-conscious human being can recognize their own existence over the passage of Time.  This is the tell-tale sign of being a human. We each are fundamentally “I Ams”.

 

In the Ten Commandments story in the Bible, Moses asks God who he should say spoke to him on the mountain and God says “I AM that I AM!” God gives no real name!

  

So, this ability to say, “I AM” is also a fundamental characteristic of Divinity as well as of Humanity! Self-consciousness, self-reflection and awareness of existence over Time are things that humanity has in common with the Gods and Goddesses of ancient worlds and cosmic realms. 

 

So, the quotation you are studying begins with “I AM that Is” … and goes from there. What a list! What a proclamation! This Entity that speaks is…

 

1—The natural life-giving force of all things

2- FE/MALE of all the elements

3- The initial progeny of Worlds. 

4-Chief of the Divine Powers.

5-Queen of All that are in Hell.

6- The Principal of them that Dwell in Heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the powers of the Principals.

  

And she sums it up by saying “At My will, the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the sea, and the lamentable silences of hell are disposed.

My name, my Divinity is adorned throughout the Worlds, in diverse manners, in variable customs and by the many names.

 

What a proclamation!  Worth repeating. Worth contemplating. This is likely a Goddess speaking and she seems to believe she is the Creator/Source and perhaps the Destroyer as well. In any case, this is Divinity speaking.

 

Now…a still small voice inside you suggests, since the Speaker goddess is an ‘I AM’ and you are also an “I AM” being, then you are Divine too!  HHmmmmm. No small thought. Of course, because you are a Seeker, you are familiar with this assertion.  That each human is, in essence, an off-shoot of “the Divine One” that is in all Things.

   

But though you can grasp the notion that you are Divine intellectually, it is difficult to feel divine, or to accept that you have creative powers equal to a God’s. But at least you are on the right track.

 

As the nights pass, you consider each word and phrase of the quotation. For instance, you ponder what “FE/MALE” could actually mean. It is oddly written.  The speaker says she is a Queen.  You contemplate “FE” by itself and it occurs to you that that is the chemical symbol for Iron. And iron makes our blood red. Red is often associated with the primal force of life. So “FE, you can conclude, is a good prefix that expresses the life-giving character of a Mother goddess.

 

You find that you take particular pleasure in the phrase, “the many names.”  Go figure! Much later you learn of more of her names.

 

The weather has been beautiful until one night, Yunsai comes in.  You were prepared somewhat as Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha’ had said something earlier about a new weather front coming in.  And sure enough, that night the wind picks up…

 

Out on the beach, looking far North you see approaching a huge, dark cloud bank roiling like you have never seen before! The wind picks up slowly at first, then more fiercely. Thrilling it is! 


 

When it is almost directly above, you’re awe-struck! The cloud bank is so very sharp and clearly defined as it towers directly above you. Then the clouds burst and the rain pours. You are soaked by rain, refreshed and cleaned!  You feel so so close to the natural world.

 

Yunsai, the North Wind, the powerful Gatekeeper of our Mother Lodge, the White Buffalo, has visited us and blessed us.  We are electrified and re-generated!

 

Eventually, when we return to our tents, we find them flattened. But we are troopers and have a good laugh over it all.

 

Eventually the days on the beach come to an end.  We sit with Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha in circle and share our thoughts. One person named Minnie speaks up and tells us in a hesitant tone that she had seen a younger version of Grandmother on the beach!  We looking questioningly at each other. Grandmother nods and says “Yes.” She had visited each of us as a younger form of herself! But Minnie was the only one that saw her in that form!  We look at each other and are sad that we had not seen her!

 

It was a wonderful week but of course, it comes to an end. You truly had arrived at many conclusions!

 

Several years after this North Carolina vision quest (another name for what we were doing), I found a paragraph in a book by Joseph Campbell titled The Power of Myth in a chapter titled The Gift of the Goddess. He cites a source for the origin of the quotation that we had contemplated! I was so excited!!!

 

It comes from a second century A.D. novel (one of the first novels ever written) called The Golden Ass by Apuleius.  The speaker is the Goddess Isis.  The original is Latin so the translation is different from what I had become familiar with. But there is no mistaking it.  Isis speaks:

 

….I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are.  My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea-breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below.  Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me.  The primeval Phrygians call me Pessinuntica, Mother of the gods; the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropian Artemis; for the islanders of Cyprus, I am Paphian Aphrodite; for the archers of Crete, I am Dictynna; for the trilingual Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; and for the Elusinians, their ancient Mother of the Corn.

 

Some know me as Juno, some as Bellona of the Battles; others as Hecate, others again as Rhamnubia, but both races of Aethiopians, whose lands the morning sun first shines upon, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship me with ceremonies proper to my godhead, call me by my true name, namely Queen Isis.  

 

Ah!  So many names!  Yet paradoxically, we are ALL the “I Am” —the One that is in All Things! And each of us have our feminine/Mothering aspects as well as the powers and characteristics often associated with the masculine.

 

As I sit now in my home, re-reading and re-living by sharing this story, I am eternally grateful to the One called Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha who once took me for a Deep Dive into an ocean of Contemplation, so that I might better Know Myself.  As the Cherokee say:  "Wado! I appreciate"!

 

-Dusty (Elizabeth Richie)

Is the Universe A Medicine Wheel?

 

At first, Grandmother Pa'Ris'Ha's ideas and teachings regarding the Medicine Wheel seemed rather strange to me. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, I embraced the wisdom and power of these ideas. I loved and respected my teacher, Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha. Indeed, I had asked her to teach me!  Intuitively I felt that much would be gained by remaining open and curious—on the Medicine Wheel and on so much else!  

 

Here I would like to explain how I personally arrived at an understanding of what and why the UNIVERSE can be seen as a veritable Medicine Wheel! Or to use a mathematical formula called an “identity” to describe my thesis, UNIVERSE=Medicine Wheel.

 

I’ll start by asking: What is the UNIVERSE??? Many would likely agree, if asked— that “UNIVERSE” is the best word for describing the BIGGEST place that exists and it contains everything! For the sake of discussion, I am going to just say that The UNIVERSE is that which contains ALL things, and inside this HUGE UNIVERSE there are wild cosmic phenomena such as stars and Quasars, and Black Holes…and galaxies, and solar systems and little planets, and smaller oceans, and molecules and atoms, matter and anti-matter, energy, life and death, cats, humans, ET’s and so on. Let us say that the word, “UNIVERSE”, —the thing I am talking about here—also contains (if such things exist at all) such tricky, weird phenomena as parallel universes, Heaven and/or Hell, and/or the Bardo or the Woo. In other words, for the sake of discussion—here on this little computer—I am going to say that the UNIVERSE is EVERYTHING that exists—the Whole Kit and Caboodle, in other words. And that’s why the first part of the word, UNIVERSE, is “UNI”, meaning “ONE”. When taken as a unified whole, there is only ONE of “All That Is.”

 

Now surprisingly enough, I know that whoever is reading this is likely a human being who has the enormous, wonderful capability of Imagining inside their brain, just what I have described. You can see, with little effort, in your mind’s eye, THE UNIVERSE. Maybe you have to sort of scan back and forth to see it all. Or you may have to conjure a spiral galaxy and let that disappear into blackness and then look at a blazing star next. But you have probably seen enough pictures of astronomical phenomena to, in a manner of speaking, “see” the UNIVERSE in all its glory with one magnificent sweeping effort of your imagination. 

 

Just as a reminder, let me say that although I spent years using a Medicine Wheel for doing prayers and ceremonies and heard many teachings about the Medicine Wheel from Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha, —Living is Learning! I make no promise that my grasp of the Medicine Wheel is perfect! And in this small space, I’ll really just be giving very basic, “basics.” I hope you will find wisdom and joy in my words!  As I heard a lecturer say once: “Don’t say ‘no’—just say “‘Oh!’”

 

Can you imagine now, what is at the base of all the swirling galaxies and nebulae and suns? Of what is all that “out there” composed? Why does it appear to be filled with darkness and empty space while we are told by scientists that energies of immense magnitude truly rule both this empty space and the objects that populate it? Electro-magnetism, plasma, gravity, quantum fields, frequencies, etc. We humans are dwarfed by the mysterious energies and forces at play in our UNIVERSE…and many humans pay little attention to this Great Mystery that unfolds endlessly before us during our lifetimes. 

 

Once upon a Time…there was an entity that was believed to be a Living Force, a Divine Creator, hidden behind all the darkness and behind and within the light as well. Cultures world-wide proclaimed and celebrated this entity (or entities) this Sacred Being or (or Beings.) The general English word we use today for such a Creative Force is “God.” Many still believe!

 

But there are so many distractions! Wars and rumors of wars. Lockdowns. Pandemics. Financial crises. NFL Sports! Children to care for. Parents to care for. Injustice. PTSD. Sexual identity. And on and on and on. Who has time to contemplate the gods?

 

Oh…I‘m just kidding around with you. Instead of priests and churches, here in America, self-help coaches and yoga teachers are a dime a dozen these days. And of course, scientists are also easily found too. They all have answers. 

 

One of the very popular wisdoms of the day that I’ve embraced is that “We create our own reality.” It seems pretty obvious to me that our material reality is (to say it in very simple terms) created out of condensed energies. Matter is composed of energetic phenomena such as electrons, protons, neutrons that in turn are shaped by waves or frequencies that do not appear to physical/materialistic observation but which organize sub-atomic particles prior to physical manifestation. Thus, our reality is brought into physical existence through a process sometimes called “Downward causation.” 

 

 But how does all this relate to the Medicine Wheel?   

 

Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha taught from her own native heritage, the Cherokee, and so it is the Cherokee Medicine Wheel that I am familiar with. 

 

Let me very briefly describe it. I am in no way an authority in this matter but one need not be an authority to make the points I wish to make, which is that symbolically speaking, the Medicine Wheel paints a symbolic picture of the UNIVERSE. Or it represents a kind of “As above, so Below” context where one can create one’s own reality. That is, interacting with the Wheel creates a mini-UNIVERSE where-in one can activate one’s own personal influence in the UNIVERSE at large. 

 

Imagine a flat piece of land where rocks have been laid out in a circle in the manner of a clock. Let us say it has a diameter of 20 to 30 feet. Rocks (roughly the size of a basketball, more or less) are placed on the circumference particularly in the place of “the Four Directions”, North, South, East and West. This placement creates four quadrants.  The stones at the Four Directions represent the “Gates” that are kept by Four Gatekeepers. In this Cherokee Wheel, Yunsai, White Buffalo, is in the North; Waya (the Wolf) is the Gatekeeper in the South; Awahili, the Eagle, is the Gatekeeper of the East.

 

(Three other stones are placed in the Center of the Wheel, representing the Above, the Below and the Center.) 

 

The Medicine Wheel is, among other things, a Way to see the UNIVERSE. If you stand in a field, raise your arm and point to the horizon, and turn in a circle, the universe extends out from you as if a giant circle! As the words in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music go:  “Every star and every whirling planet, And every constellation in the sky, revolves around the Center of the Universe, that lovely thing called ‘I’.”  You are uniquely the center of YOUR Universe! 

 

Each of the Gates and Gatekeepers are characterized by attributes.  Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha shared with us a long list of attributes held by the Buffalo, Eagle, Black Bear and Wolf.

 

The attributes of the White Buffalo, for instance, are the following: Will, Wisdom, Water, Freezing Winds, Creative Force, Intuition, Death, Life, Star-Seeds, Allowing, Potential, Path of Success, Power, Action, Control, Priorities, Goals, Accomplishments, Results, Recognition, Effective Action through Thought, Testing, Tempering for Defeat of imbalanced and destructive thought forms, Give-A-Way, Renew, Freedom Creation. From the Frozen Waters comes the promise of the Future. Color is Pale Blue or Blue. 

 

It took years for me to come into a relationship with the Medicine Wheel as a representation of the entire Universe. But today I feel confident that with that wonderful gift of the imagination, I can stand and look to the North and imagine and “see” in my mind’s eye, the attributes of the North flowing toward me, empowering me, gifting me, blessing me, teaching me. But I do not just imagine these things.  I can FEEL them as well.  I can activate my heart with love, appreciation and caring for the Gifts. I can smile and celebrate these Gifts! I can influence by creating a frequency of Appreciation within my Being, within my heart, my soul, my Spirit and mind…. thus, I set up the proper conditions for the manifestation of all good Gifts right here on the planet Earth in my life. If I choose, I can chant and dance in celebration of the Attributes which is a very powerful way to draw something into manifestation.

 

To put it another way, I could imagine the UNIVERSE NOT as just an endless, empty darkness with no rhyme or reason— as a mindless, infinite field of matter, frequency and energy but still out of my reach. But understanding the dynamics of manifestation of reality, I now choose to see the UNIVERSE as a multi-dimensional Medicine Wheel that can enable me to assist in the transformation and healing of my planet. 

 

For your edification, here are the attributes of the other three gatekeepers that I have come to know.

 

South—Waya—Wolf—Regeneration, Action, Adolescence, Earth, Wet Winds, Path of Duty, Innocence, Reason, Logic, Information, Design, Pathfinders, Teachers, Responsibility, Stewardship, Appropriate, Thoroughness, Precision, Principles, The Plan, Activity, Abundance, Fire Keeper, Future, DOING. Color is White.

 

West—Yona—Black Bear—Introspection, Integration, Assimilation, Wind, Blazing Winds, PATH of Service, Manifestations, Balancing of Experience, Birthing the New, Friends, Team Work, Sensitivity, harmony, Watchful, All Seeing, Listening, Attention, Consensus, Merging with Spiritual consciousness, Death of Ego, Old Age, Trusting, Nurturing, Oneness, Being. Color is Black.

 

East—Awahili—Eagle or Red Tail Hawk—Illumination, Integration, Fire, Gentle Winds, Path of Pleasure, Personal excitement, Fame, Talking, Inspiring, Motion, Coming and going, Stimulation, Ideas, Intent, Understanding, Having, Leadership, Hearty, BEGINNINGS, PHYSICAL, VISION, INTUITION.  Color is Red. 

 

Where, you might ask, does God fit into this portrayal of the UNIVERSE?  

 

Well, when I dance or pray in the Medicine Wheel, (or even as I walk down the street gazing at all the beauty around me) -- I suggest that I am acting in harmony and co-ordination with a Divine Creator--the ONE THAT IS IN ALL THINGS--a malleable Great Mystery whose body IS the veritable, infinite UNIVERSE. This Godly Being gives of itself and manifests from thoughts and feelings and beliefs that I send out to it! My consciousness counts!

 

The universe, in my view, is a Holy and Sacred multiplicity of phenomena that if view as a tool for Creation. Wisely viewed, it cooperates very handily with the human being. Each and every human is simply and profoundly the Co-Creator if one makes the decision to be so. It’s our decision. And if we master these sorts of Teachings, we can do "Medicine" and heal the Earth and her Peoples!

 

Now, I give much appreciation to Grandmother Pa’Ris’Ha and her Cherokee tradition for her generous conveyance of wisdom!

 

-BDW