Post by artanaro on Apr 21, 2006 7:05:45 GMT -5
members.aol.com/palewolf/mdcnwhl.htm (Medicine Wheel beliefs and an explanation of Wakan Tanka )
Lakota Creation
Space, Time, and the Creation of the Lakota Universe
"How the world was made is Wakan Tanka. How men used to talk to animals is Wakan Tanka." Good Seat
From 1896 until 1914, James R. Walker, an agency physician on the Pine Ridge reservation, dedicated himself to talking with the Lakota, gathering their stories, and collecting material on almost every aspect of traditional Lakota life. Although Dr.Walker was unfamilier with Lakota life when he arrived in 1896, through his work as a physician and his interest in the philosophies of traditional Lakota thinking he became a trusted friend. His collected manuscripts are respected for being "as complete and poetic a description of Lakota cosmology and cosmography as can be found anywhere." (DeMallie 1987: 45-46)
Walker's interest in traditional Lakota ways led him on a quest to find the authoritative story that portrayed Lakota spiritual and philosophical understanding. He was looking for something like the beginning chapters of Genesis which are central to Christian theology. In his search he recorded various parts and different versions of a creation story, but was never told a complete story of Lakota creation. Since the Lakotas had no systematized theology or orthodox set of beliefs, a feature of an oral tradition, Walker set out to produce his own synthesis from the various versions of stories he wrote down. Although Walker responsibly warns his reader that the form of the Lakota creation he published was never told to him at Pine Ridge, his narrative is helpful for an understanding of some of the fundamentals of Lakota beliefs.
Walker's Lakota creation story begins with the primal substance represented as stone and the primal impetus represented as a desire to share:
Inyan (Rock) had no beginning for he was when there was no other. His spirit was Wakan Tanka (The Great Mystery), and he was the first of the superior gods. Then he was soft and shapeless like a cloud, but he had all the powers and was everywhere...
Inyan longed to exercise his powers, but could not do so for there was no other that he might use his powers upon. If there were to be another, he must create it of that which he must take from himself, and he must give to it a spirit and a portion of his blood. As much of his blood as would go from him, so much of his powers would go with it, for his powers were in his blood and his blood was blue. He decided to create another as a part of himself so that he might keep control of all the powers.
To do this, he took from himself that which he spread around about himself in the shape of a great disk whose edge is where there can be no beyond. This disk he named Maka (Earth). He gave to Maka a spirit that is Maka-akan (Earth Goddess). She is the second of the superior Gods, but she is part of Inyan.
To createMaka, Inyan took so much from himself that he opened his veins, and all his blood flowed from him so that he shrank and became hard and powerless. As his blood flowed from him, it became blue waters which are the waters upon the earth. But the powers cannot abide in waters; and when the blood of Inyan became the waters, the powers separated themselves from it and assumed another shape. This other being took the form of a great blue dome whose edge is at, but not upon, the edge ofMaka.
Inyan, Maka, and the waters are material or that which can be held together; and they are the world; the blue dome above the world, which is Tanka (the Sky), is not material but spirit. Nagi Tanka (Supreme God or Sky god) is the Great Spirit who is all powerful and the source of all power, and his name isSkan (Walker 1991: 70)
Walker's narrative illustrates the importance of rock in understanding the Lakota notion of wakan tanka, the great incomprehensibility. The Rock principle is represented by Inyan, creator of the universe.Inyan, as amorphous rock, is the pure potentiality of everything in creation. Walker's friend, Thomas Tyon, explains this in the following account translated from Lakota by R.J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner:
When a man is sick, they make a sweat lodge for him. They do it in this way. Ten or twelve saplings are completely bent over and they use a tent of even a rove to cover it completely, leaving no holes. And in the very center, the earth is dug out in an exact circle. Next, they fill the fireplace with rocks that are lowing bright red all over. then the sick man also goes inside. Inside the sweat lodge ... everything is done with reverence. So it is..., and then the holy men speak (woklakapelo). They speak in the spirit language (the hanploklakapieciyapelo). These are the things they say.
"Sweat lodge stones (tonkan yatapika), pity me! Sun, pity me! Moon, pity me! Darkness of night (Hanokpaza kin), pity me! Water, standing in a wakan manner (mni wakanta najin kin) pity me! Grass, standing in the morning (pejihinyanpa nahin kin) pity me!...."
Now a water bucket is passed inside and also a bowl. So now the holy man takes the bowl and the water an pours it on the rocks. Then it becomes very hot and steaming. The men sitting inside all sing loudly and some cry out... humbling themselves (unxi icicar) they cry out.... The men cover the rocks well with water because they want everything they pray for to come to pass. The breath of the rocks is very wakan...
Well, this much of the wakan rocks is told. There is also much more... (Walker 1991: 154-55).
This conception of stone as potentiality is reflected in the very word for stone itself, tunkan.(Powers 1986: 212) This word is a combination of two different concepts:tun and kan. William K. Powers defines tun in this way: "the potential to transform visible energy into invisible energy, and the reverse, is called tun. The tun of every invisible aspect is its visible aspect. (Powers 1977: 52) In its simplest translation, tun can be understood as "potential." The concept kan is explained by George Sword, a Lakota who collaborated with Walker, as follows:
Kan means anything that is old or that has existed for a long time or that should be accepted because it has been so in former times, or it may mean a strange or wonderful thing that which cannot be comprehended, or that which should not be questioned or it may mean a sacred or supernatural thing (Walker 1991: 96).
A tunkan can be understood, then, as "ancient sacred potential," qualities present in Inyan, the first being. Inyan existed in a state of potentiality and the world was created out of this potential by making manifest these two qualities withinInyan, -- materiality and spirituality. This differentiation of tunkan into the material and spiritual during creation illustrates the importance of complementary opposites to Lakota philosophy. Walker describes this as a transformation from an amorphous and ambigous state to a state of differentiation between the earth and the sky; between female and male. Earth, Maka, embodies the female principle and the Sky, Skan, embodies the male principle. The word, Skan, is an abbreviated form of the word Takuskanskan. Powers explains that Takuskanskan is "something that moves; a force that approximate the notion of a creative life force, the energy behind things that move. In Lakota cosmology, a god who directs the creation of the earth and makes the wind blow." (Powers :55) Translated literally, Takuskanskan means "that which moves moves" or more appropriately, the active principle in creation. Skan is the potential for all life, it is change and movement. It is Skan who invests his tun in Maka in order to bring forth life and the generation of all beings and things that grow. Furthermore, Skan invests his tun in the wind, Tate, who is the basis for the progression of seasons and the yearly cycle and therefore of time.
After the creation of Skan and Maka, Inyan is no longer primary in the process of creation. He invested his active potential in Skan. It becomes the responsibility of Skan to further the process of creation which begins to center around the creation and regulation of space and time. Skan creates the sun and moon and establishes their regularity of succession in the sky. Furthermore Skan creates the phases of the moon, thereby establishing the months. The creation of space and time is completed with the establishment of the four cardinal directions. This process is accomplished through Tate, Wind, who was created by Skan to be his companion and an expression of himself.
Tate has five sons. Four of the sons are directed to find homes at the edge of the world. George Sword relates Tate's instructions these four sons as follows:
The trail around the edge of the world is long and you will be many moons upon it. There are now but three times, the day, the night, and the moon. But when you return to my lodge, you will have made the fourth time. For four days you will prepare for your journey and then go and remember that time depends on your going and you doing.
The four different winds establish the four cardinal directions of the world and thereby create the yearly cycle. Tate's lodge can be understood to represent the world, and only one of his sons can visit him at a time, thereby separating the seasons such that the east comes to represent spring, the south summer, the west fall, and the north winter. By visiting their father's lodge, the four winds bring the seasons with them, and after all have made their visit, the year is established. This, then, establishes the number four as the number of completion, as four directions complete the construction of space as well as time.
Through the rest of the creation process, sixteen (4 x 4) different aspects of Wakan Tanka are created and find their place in the cosmos. What can be distilled from the preliminary acts of creation are the concepts of potential, transformation, process, completion, and return. These concepts are the primary ordering functions in Lakota thought and ritual and are the foundations for understanding Lakota theory and philosophy. These concepts represent a traditional Lakota understanding of life and existence as an ongoing movement through different stages in a continuous cycle. Within traditional Lakota understandings, there is no final creation. All things are involved in processes, and all processes are made manifest through the transformation of potential into form. Skan, as the primary mover, is still actively involved with all change and movement in the Lakota universe. Thiss means that every act of change and every initiation of process is a movement from the potentiality of Skan to a realization of manifested power and form.
from id-archserve.ucsb.edu/natlink/old_natlink/NATraditions/Lakota/HTML/4Creation.html
Lakota Creation
Space, Time, and the Creation of the Lakota Universe
"How the world was made is Wakan Tanka. How men used to talk to animals is Wakan Tanka." Good Seat
From 1896 until 1914, James R. Walker, an agency physician on the Pine Ridge reservation, dedicated himself to talking with the Lakota, gathering their stories, and collecting material on almost every aspect of traditional Lakota life. Although Dr.Walker was unfamilier with Lakota life when he arrived in 1896, through his work as a physician and his interest in the philosophies of traditional Lakota thinking he became a trusted friend. His collected manuscripts are respected for being "as complete and poetic a description of Lakota cosmology and cosmography as can be found anywhere." (DeMallie 1987: 45-46)
Walker's interest in traditional Lakota ways led him on a quest to find the authoritative story that portrayed Lakota spiritual and philosophical understanding. He was looking for something like the beginning chapters of Genesis which are central to Christian theology. In his search he recorded various parts and different versions of a creation story, but was never told a complete story of Lakota creation. Since the Lakotas had no systematized theology or orthodox set of beliefs, a feature of an oral tradition, Walker set out to produce his own synthesis from the various versions of stories he wrote down. Although Walker responsibly warns his reader that the form of the Lakota creation he published was never told to him at Pine Ridge, his narrative is helpful for an understanding of some of the fundamentals of Lakota beliefs.
Walker's Lakota creation story begins with the primal substance represented as stone and the primal impetus represented as a desire to share:
Inyan (Rock) had no beginning for he was when there was no other. His spirit was Wakan Tanka (The Great Mystery), and he was the first of the superior gods. Then he was soft and shapeless like a cloud, but he had all the powers and was everywhere...
Inyan longed to exercise his powers, but could not do so for there was no other that he might use his powers upon. If there were to be another, he must create it of that which he must take from himself, and he must give to it a spirit and a portion of his blood. As much of his blood as would go from him, so much of his powers would go with it, for his powers were in his blood and his blood was blue. He decided to create another as a part of himself so that he might keep control of all the powers.
To do this, he took from himself that which he spread around about himself in the shape of a great disk whose edge is where there can be no beyond. This disk he named Maka (Earth). He gave to Maka a spirit that is Maka-akan (Earth Goddess). She is the second of the superior Gods, but she is part of Inyan.
To createMaka, Inyan took so much from himself that he opened his veins, and all his blood flowed from him so that he shrank and became hard and powerless. As his blood flowed from him, it became blue waters which are the waters upon the earth. But the powers cannot abide in waters; and when the blood of Inyan became the waters, the powers separated themselves from it and assumed another shape. This other being took the form of a great blue dome whose edge is at, but not upon, the edge ofMaka.
Inyan, Maka, and the waters are material or that which can be held together; and they are the world; the blue dome above the world, which is Tanka (the Sky), is not material but spirit. Nagi Tanka (Supreme God or Sky god) is the Great Spirit who is all powerful and the source of all power, and his name isSkan (Walker 1991: 70)
Walker's narrative illustrates the importance of rock in understanding the Lakota notion of wakan tanka, the great incomprehensibility. The Rock principle is represented by Inyan, creator of the universe.Inyan, as amorphous rock, is the pure potentiality of everything in creation. Walker's friend, Thomas Tyon, explains this in the following account translated from Lakota by R.J. DeMallie and Elaine A. Jahner:
When a man is sick, they make a sweat lodge for him. They do it in this way. Ten or twelve saplings are completely bent over and they use a tent of even a rove to cover it completely, leaving no holes. And in the very center, the earth is dug out in an exact circle. Next, they fill the fireplace with rocks that are lowing bright red all over. then the sick man also goes inside. Inside the sweat lodge ... everything is done with reverence. So it is..., and then the holy men speak (woklakapelo). They speak in the spirit language (the hanploklakapieciyapelo). These are the things they say.
"Sweat lodge stones (tonkan yatapika), pity me! Sun, pity me! Moon, pity me! Darkness of night (Hanokpaza kin), pity me! Water, standing in a wakan manner (mni wakanta najin kin) pity me! Grass, standing in the morning (pejihinyanpa nahin kin) pity me!...."
Now a water bucket is passed inside and also a bowl. So now the holy man takes the bowl and the water an pours it on the rocks. Then it becomes very hot and steaming. The men sitting inside all sing loudly and some cry out... humbling themselves (unxi icicar) they cry out.... The men cover the rocks well with water because they want everything they pray for to come to pass. The breath of the rocks is very wakan...
Well, this much of the wakan rocks is told. There is also much more... (Walker 1991: 154-55).
This conception of stone as potentiality is reflected in the very word for stone itself, tunkan.(Powers 1986: 212) This word is a combination of two different concepts:tun and kan. William K. Powers defines tun in this way: "the potential to transform visible energy into invisible energy, and the reverse, is called tun. The tun of every invisible aspect is its visible aspect. (Powers 1977: 52) In its simplest translation, tun can be understood as "potential." The concept kan is explained by George Sword, a Lakota who collaborated with Walker, as follows:
Kan means anything that is old or that has existed for a long time or that should be accepted because it has been so in former times, or it may mean a strange or wonderful thing that which cannot be comprehended, or that which should not be questioned or it may mean a sacred or supernatural thing (Walker 1991: 96).
A tunkan can be understood, then, as "ancient sacred potential," qualities present in Inyan, the first being. Inyan existed in a state of potentiality and the world was created out of this potential by making manifest these two qualities withinInyan, -- materiality and spirituality. This differentiation of tunkan into the material and spiritual during creation illustrates the importance of complementary opposites to Lakota philosophy. Walker describes this as a transformation from an amorphous and ambigous state to a state of differentiation between the earth and the sky; between female and male. Earth, Maka, embodies the female principle and the Sky, Skan, embodies the male principle. The word, Skan, is an abbreviated form of the word Takuskanskan. Powers explains that Takuskanskan is "something that moves; a force that approximate
After the creation of Skan and Maka, Inyan is no longer primary in the process of creation. He invested his active potential in Skan. It becomes the responsibility of Skan to further the process of creation which begins to center around the creation and regulation of space and time. Skan creates the sun and moon and establishes their regularity of succession in the sky. Furthermore Skan creates the phases of the moon, thereby establishing the months. The creation of space and time is completed with the establishment of the four cardinal directions. This process is accomplished through Tate, Wind, who was created by Skan to be his companion and an expression of himself.
Tate has five sons. Four of the sons are directed to find homes at the edge of the world. George Sword relates Tate's instructions these four sons as follows:
The trail around the edge of the world is long and you will be many moons upon it. There are now but three times, the day, the night, and the moon. But when you return to my lodge, you will have made the fourth time. For four days you will prepare for your journey and then go and remember that time depends on your going and you doing.
The four different winds establish the four cardinal directions of the world and thereby create the yearly cycle. Tate's lodge can be understood to represent the world, and only one of his sons can visit him at a time, thereby separating the seasons such that the east comes to represent spring, the south summer, the west fall, and the north winter. By visiting their father's lodge, the four winds bring the seasons with them, and after all have made their visit, the year is established. This, then, establishes the number four as the number of completion, as four directions complete the construction of space as well as time.
Through the rest of the creation process, sixteen (4 x 4) different aspects of Wakan Tanka are created and find their place in the cosmos. What can be distilled from the preliminary acts of creation are the concepts of potential, transformation, process, completion, and return. These concepts are the primary ordering functions in Lakota thought and ritual and are the foundations for understanding Lakota theory and philosophy. These concepts represent a traditional Lakota understanding of life and existence as an ongoing movement through different stages in a continuous cycle. Within traditional Lakota understandings, there is no final creation. All things are involved in processes, and all processes are made manifest through the transformation of potential into form. Skan, as the primary mover, is still actively involved with all change and movement in the Lakota universe. Thiss means that every act of change and every initiation of process is a movement from the potentiality of Skan to a realization of manifested power and form.
from id-archserve.ucsb.edu/natlink/old_natlink/NATraditions/Lakota/HTML/4Creation.html