This year marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the great multicultural pilgrimage from the Atlantic to the Pacific in 1995 under guidance of traditional native wisdom keepers. The journey was — and is — the Odyssey of the 8th Fire.
As the meme below attests, I’m moved this year to continue letting people know about the epic saga I authored back in 2007 to tell the tale. As time passes the story becomes increasingly relevant.
The year 2015 marks the 20th Anniversary of a great journey that took place over the course of 8 months as a band of pilgrims guided by traditional elders of North America walked from the Atlantic to the Pacific under the sky sign of the Whirling Rainbow.
To help commemorate that walk, I am creating a series of memes letting people know where they can learn the whole of of the true, epic saga Odyssey of the 8th Fire. Here’s is yet another sample meme that I plan send out on it’s own digital odyssey:
I invite you also to begin the journey. Explore what the odyssey of the 8th fire is about, and consider making an 8-month spiritual-literary journey, reading one journal entry each day from the start of the odyssey onward.
With respect, SM
A legendary elder of ancient Greece, the man named Diogenes gained renown by walking through the streets of ancient Athens in broad daylight carrying a lighted lamp. When people would ask him why his lamp was lit in the day, he would reply not that he was looking for an honest man, as is so often reported, but rather that he was “looking for a Human Being.”
Diogenes – was born in Sinope, Turkey (4th Century BCE) but moved to Athens and became the leader of a faction known as The Cynics. Diogenes modeled himself on the example of Hercules, believing that virtue is revealed in action and deeds, not in theory or talk. He lived on the streets and by his wits, without luxuries. Photo of Diogenes statue in Sinope courtesy of Creative Commons.
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Diogenes’ quest for Human Beings struck home with me. His search in classical Greece parallels one of the core ethical considerations in classic Native American wisdom ways. For me, someone who has walked hundreds of miles on Native pathways but only a few steps on the marbled hallways of classical Greece, this point of reckoning seems eminently worthy of consideration.
The various cultures that have come to North America over the last 500 years have not yet completed the process of grafting healthfully with the root native culture that has been on the land for many thousands of years. There is a great need for this interweaving to proceed, and here is a foundational point of union.
Understanding of what it means to be a Human Being — in any era of time and any place in the world — is a fundamental wisdom question contemplated in the Americas for millennia.
Native orators have often given eloquent expression to the idea. Among the well- spoken tradition keepers, I include the late Leon Shenandoah (1915– 1996), an elder and a statesman for the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people of The Great Turtle Island (North America).
In the pages of To Become a Human Being, Grandfather Shenandoah says that becoming a Human Being means attaining the highest level in this life, rising above instincts or base emotions to reach a place of equanimity and integrity, recognizing that we are all spiritual beings. A spark of spirit dwells in all life, and a Human Being knows that and acts in the world with that reality held mindfully.
“To become a Human Being is to rise to an expanded level of consciousness by living in physical and spiritual communion with the Earth and the various creatures who share life with us on the land,” Grandfather Shenandoah observed.
Grandfather Shenandoah encouraged everyone to “be the firekeepers that we all are, so that we’re able to instill small fires in each human being and give them hope so that they’ll begin to do good for other human beings.”
My intent as author of the ebook, Classical Considerations, was to strike such sparks by passing on the teachings of some faithful firekeepers, in particular the late Harvard Master and Classicist, John H. Finley, Jr.
“The doctrine of Horatio Alger, of getting ahead in life, continues to be important,” Finley told me during one of our interviews. “Yet the purpose of mind is not chiefly for you to get some place in society. Our gift is mind; we can see things. That’s what it’s all about. It really is.
“In your brief span, to make sense of all the interesting people you’ve known, all the interesting books you’ve read. This panorama…is increasingly your reward in life.
“After all, the self is both the hero and the villain in life. It is the villain insofar as it reduces the great and beautiful world to the idiotic closet of one’s identity. It is the hero insofar as it tries to go to the window, look out, and see how big the world is and how many people there are and how beautiful the sunlight is.
“It seems to me that waking is far more desirable than dreaming.
November 24, 1995 – A band of pilgrims gathered at First Encounter Beach on Cape Cod Massachsetts with Grandfather William Commanda and Frank Decontie of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, and Jose’ Lucero of the Santa Clara Pueblo.
In a circle around the roaring ceremonial fire on the beach, the pilgrims vowed to begin a prayer walk in June of 1995 from the Eastern Door at the Atlantic Ocean to the Western Gate at the Pacific.
“Moses made pilgrimages to the mountain, and Jesus spent forty days in the desert. All throughout history, people have made sacred journeys.” – don Jose’ Matsuwa
The rest of the story… http://www.8thfire.net/Day_0.html
Walking under the sign of the Whirling Rainbow
Nineteen years ago today – June 23, 1995 – a small band of pilgrims set out walking from the Atlantic to the Pacific on an epic journey that I have come to regard, and to write about, as the Odyssey of the 8th Fire.
The saga of their journey is well worth knowing, for it remains critically relevant to the journey all of us are making now through an era of profound change upon our Earth.
As well as the tale of the pilgrims’ travels on foot across Turtle Island (North America), Odyssey of the 8th Fire is the essential story of their meetings with dozens of traditional, learned elders of North America. They gifted the pilgrims with messages to deliver to all the people.
Reading Odyssey of the 8th Fire online is a demanding quest. The story is exceedingly long. Because of this, and because many of the elders who are part of the story noted that their teachings take both time and attention to understand, I recommend this literary pilgrimage be undertaken step by step, over a span of eight months or so.
Odyssey consists of a lengthy Prologue, and then 225 accounts, one for each day of travel. Those journal entries are ordered chronologically.
By engaging this online account of the epic walk one day at a time, a reader can make a steady eight-month literary and spiritual pilgrimage from East to West across Turtle Island (North America). The journey proceeds place to place, elder to elder, teaching to teaching.
“I ask you to listen not just with your minds. I ask you to listen with your hearts, because that is the only way you can receive what it is — what we are giving. These are the teachings of our hearts.
“This walk is going to take eight or nine months. There are lots of elders out there across Turtle Island, and they have many beautiful teachings, many teachings that all the people need now. It is our hope, it is our prayer that they will come forward now that the Eastern Door is open
“It is our prayer that they will meet us as we walk; that they will teach and share what they understand from their hearts. Be patient. Listen to the elders. You need patience to receive these teachings. It doesn’t all come at once. You need patience.”
– Frank Decontie, Algonquin – June 23, 1995 – First Encounter Beach, Massachusetts
On Sunday, January 19, Valera Yangurazov, a passenger on a Moscow train, videotaped a dramatically vivid Whirling Rainbow (Sundog, or Sunbow) illuminating the sky in Russia. You can watch the short video on this page.
Beholding the natural beauty of the Sunbow as I watched the video, I immediately recalled how that vivid sky sign played a key role in the Odyssey of the 8th Fire,
The Sundog is the rainbow gone Full Circle around the Sun. This natural phenomenon — said to be especially relevant to our era — is also known as the Sunbow or Whirling Rainbow.
Odyssey of the 8th Fire tells the true story of how the Sunbow served as a central motivating image for a band of pilgrims who walked across America. I had the honor of being with them and of keeping an online, nonfiction journal about that epic walk and the teachings that became available through the many steps we took.
Day 7 of the 230-day online journal reports on some of the relevant science and lore associated with the SunDog, or Sunbow, or Whirling Rainbow, and it explores the natural phenomenon’s relevance to our era. If you follow this link, and scroll about halfway down the page below the picture of the Sunbow, you will find the teachings.
Grandfather Leon Secatero
The late Navajo elder Leon Secatero once told me that he saw the Wind Walkers take corn pollen in their mouths to bless their words before they spoke to him.
“The elders talked about positive things, focusing on the positive to make things happen, to bring in good energy so that life will continue. They said to use song, prayer, dance to focus on positive thought, and to help us go forward on the path to the future in a good way, in a sacred way.”
“What I was shown,” Grandfather Leon told me, “was the way we should be, how we must be to influence the future, and also to influence all the plants, the animals, the waters, the air and the fire.
“It’s important. I came to a knowing that the only way you can have the power, is through the color and the light of positive thought and energy. Put all your concentration on this, not other things.
“Put your concentration on the positive. That’s how it’s done.”
– Excerpt from a forthcoming Soul*Sparks book
by author Steven McFadden
“Our ancestors made this great agreement on our behalf 400 years ago. Now is the time for us to think about the people living in the next 400 years.” – Hickory Edwards (Onondaga Nation)
Long ago when the colonial peoples were seizing possession of the land they would come to call North America, they entered into sworn agreements with the human beings who already occupied the land. The Two Row Treaty, the first of those solemn agreements, is as of 2013 now 400 years old.
To serve as a permanent record of the treaty, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people wove a belt of beads made from wampum sea shells, their traditional way of recording sacred agreements, a means more elegant and enduring than the fragile sheets of paper marked with ink that the colonial settlers used.
Commemoration of that treaty is reaching a crescendo late this summer with an elaborate series of lectures, concerts, celebrations, historic enactments, and collaborations planned by The Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign.
The intention is to polish this centuries-old covenant chain of friendship, to protect our shared environmental inheritance, and to build support for resolution of various land rights actions.
The call to honor the treaty comes in the context of perfect faithlessness. The USA has broken or violated every single one of the nearly 500 legally binding treaties it has entered into with various Native nations.
Thus, the Two Row Wampum campaign has resounding karmic implications for peace, friendship, environmental responsibility and justice.
In recent years, Native peoples have increasingly emphasized that ecological stewardship is a fundamental necessity for this continuing friendship, for a more just peace between peoples, and for a sustainable, shared future in parallel on the land we inhabit together.
Musical Invocation: Odyssey of the 8th Fire
My Marvelous Meme Museum Makes Memories
Podcast book review of Deep Agroecology (5 minutes)
Half a Century Later: My Odyssey in Journalism