Rosicrucian Beacon Magazine - 2012-09 - AMORC

magicians trick to begin with, but it could equally havebeen a supreme ability to manipulate reality, and by sodoing to cause miraculous cures to manifest. The patient’sbelief that the trouble was something tangible, alteredthe perceived reality for good and removed the affliction.The Medicine Man’s unusual powers were also directed atsuch practical duties as directing his tribe to the locationof game and warning them of the approach of an enemyparty. Custer’s Last Stand is perhaps a prime exampleof the latter phenomenal practice. Story has it that thefamous Sitting Bull, who was a Medicine Man, had a visionof the approach of General Custer and his men prior totheir historic battle.As the premier holy man of the tribe, the MedicineMan fostered and guided the tribe’s cosmology andapproaches to life’s mysteries. Pueblos, Navahos andother tribes recognised the sun as the most powerful ofcreative forces; the primal source of life. In Taos, everyspring, the members of each kiva or temple ‘worked forthe sun.’ For six weeks they were confined to the kiva ina state of withdrawal from the outside world and rarelyspoke during this period. With pale cheeks and gazesturned inwards, in the darkness of the kiva the initiateswere oriented to the infinitely expanding radiance of theSun, the imbuer of all things with life. Towards the end ofthis immense endurance rite, they were wholly enraptured,and ‘initiated into the sun.’In western literature similar extended ecstatic stateshave been described by Honoré de Balzac in Louis Lambertand by Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke in his classic bookCosmic Consciousness. Not understanding these states,society has too frequently regarded them as periods ofmental instability. But such episodes, when done in a trueSun worship: The Sun was regarded as the visible means through whichthe Great Spirit revealed himself. Inset shows an 1886 engraving of CreeIndians performing a Sun Dance. (Source: http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/photos/native/lemoyne/lemoyne8/lemoy804.htm)initiatic manner have inevitably been followed by deeprenewal and long periods of creative productivity on thepart of the participants.James Hobbs, in his book Life in the Far West,throws some interesting light on 19 th century Comanchebeliefs. There is little doubt that they had a firm beliefin, and commitment to a future existence beyond life onearth. Their afterlife began beyond the setting sun in thewest. They believed in a Great Spirit from which theycame, and considered the Sun as the visible means throughwhich the Great Spirit was revealed.In fact the Comanches found it difficult to separatethe two, and humbly reverenced the Great Spirit throughtheir worship of the Sun. It was a dominant feature oftheir beliefs, and they revered it as the source of all livingthings. The Sun was the primordial principle of all life,the source of all things. The Earth was worshipped as a‘Mother,’ as it was the producer of all that sustained life.In death, the Comanches returned to the ‘Father,’ partookof the joys of a veritable ‘happy hunting ground,’ and aftera time, returned to mother Earth to be reborn in order tokeep up the population and power of the tribe.Of course the abilities and teachings of the MedicineMen varied with each tribe, and one of the greatest assetsof any tribe was to have a Medicine Man of high calibre.Over the past century, as western minds have slowly cometo understand the central role of the Medicine Man inNative American culture, there has been a growing senseof respect and even reverence for the central role playedby such individuals. One of the deepest, most mystical andmoving descriptions of the crucial role of the MedicineMan in Native American societies of the past (both Northand South America), emerged in a series of books writtenby the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda between the late1960s and 1980s.The ancient Native American view of life on earth,and the links that bind all living things to each other, issomething every western educated person would do wellto research, come to understand and live by. There is abeauty and respect for nature that is so desperately neededin today’s world. With the failure of various treaties onclimate change now threatening the long-term existenceof life on earth, every person would do well to delve intothe higher aspects of the ancestral American view of theso-called ‘Great Hoop of Life’, a sphere of reality withinwhich all animate and inanimate things exist and interactwith each other in equitable ways in accordance withnatural justice and what in other parts of the world iscalled the ‘law of karma’. Adherence to the laws governingthe Great Hoop and its contents, was and remains themost important mission of every Medicine Man, pastand present.The Rosicrucian Beacon -- September 201229