Medicine Wheel

Do you ever have one of those aha moments that is so very closely followed by a d'oh moment? Well I did today.

I finally got something that probably most people will look at me and either go, oh yes! or gaze at me blankly with a look of pity, wondering how I didn't get it before....

A lot of special ways of looking at things come back to the Sacred Circle. In order to understand the universe and categorize things we often divide the circle up in various ways. This is the heart of the Medicine Wheel system.... and the heart of many, many systems the world over.

Lisa told me this yesterday but I didn't quite get it until I read a Medicine Wheel book I got in the post today. I shan't say too much about the book except that I have already read it and while there are some useful things in it, I am not sure I shall need to keep hold of it very long. But it did make it blatantly clear that the sacred circle is the basis of the Medicine Wheel and that other circle traditions are all related... (although, as I said, you would think Lisa having told me would have been enough....)

So take astrology - a large and complex wheel where each of the planets has it's own position and relations. Maybe each planet has it's own circle even. But each planet has things associated with it - elements, colours, masculine / feminine, stones, plants, so many, many things and they all have their place on the medicine wheel of western astrology.

Witches have their wheel of the year with the story of the Goddess and God and all the things associated with the different times of the year. Mandalas and stone circles and celtic knots and spirals all use the sacred circle. And all of a sudden I can see how every place and time could have it's own circle. Sort of like ecology...

In an environment you have different organisms occupying different niches. In similar environments in different places, you will always have organisms doing similar roles but they may be very different. I know I should give an example....

So the things relevant to me, in my circle right here, in this land are different to those relevant to someone living in the desert. They would not have badgers and foxes, or granite and serpentine but they might well have scorpions and camels, or sandstone and er... sand. But just because my circle here is different doesn't mean someone else's circle does not hold relevance to me. I know what a lion is and I know what the grand canyon looks like, even though I have little direct experience.

But it is the position these things hold on the wheel that is important and their relationships to each other, so it does not really matter if I decided to include the moon in various positions on my wheel, what I would call each of those moons, the name does not make the moon. And the four elements are the four elements wherever you are. And so my animals might be a little different but they would live in the same niches, have the same symbolism.

But I guess what I really like about the Medicine Wheel is that the process of direct revelation in shamanism has allowed some shaman to explore the wheel to a very deep level and it is this that makes the North American medicine wheel so very interesting to me. It doesn't matter what names you give things exactly but how you work with it and how it helps you improve your life. So it may not be of my land, but that does not matter. Not one bit.

Maybe one day I might make a Cornish version of the Medicine Wheel, but it will still use the principles I am currently learning. And I suspect my teachers would find it just as intriguing as I would, as I find their wheel. After all badgers are lovely creatures. And moles, what's not to love?

everything has it's place somewhere on the wheel.