What you will need: A fire-resistant container; a small amount of sand (a cup is plenty; sand bought from a store can be toxic, please read the label); matches; a charcoal disc (optional, although possibly necessary if you are working outside in the wind); dried sage or cedar; and a feather (optional)

For safety reasons, it is especially important to read through the instructions for this exercise several times before you begin. Also, make sure you are well away from any smoke detectors in your home. If you are unsure of how sensitive they are, you may choose to do this exercise outside until you see how much smoke is produced. Before you begin, pour some sand into the bottom of your container to help absorb the heat. It is better to have too much than too little.

Smudging Yourself

1. Face the West. If you are using a charcoal disc as an ignitor, lay it on the sand and light the disc first. If you are using loose herbs, mound a small quantity on top of the sand in your shell or dish (or on top of the charcoal disc, if you are using one). If you are working with bundled herbs, you may want to hold your smudge bundle above the container to make it easier to light and blow on. Begin by lighting only a small section of the smudge materials. Gently blow on them just enough to generate a comfortable amount of smoke. Too much smoke can quickly become overwhelming, so start small.

2. Offer the smoke first to the West, then to the North, East, and South in that order. Then hold it high to offer it to Grandfather Sky, and then set the bowl on the ground or on a table to offer it to Grandmother Earth.

3. Cleanse whatever you will smudge yourself with, your feathers or hands, in the smoke while offering the smudge to the Sacred Mystery that is at the heart center. All of this can be done silently, and it adds power if words of dedication are spoken out loud. There is no “right” thing to say; let your heart teach you the words. We all have our own prayers that were placed in our hearts at the time of our birth.

4. Pick up the bowl and hold it in front of you. You can use your feathers or hands to direct the smoke, or you can leave the burning herbs on the table or on the ground and draw the smoke over you. You first draw the smoke toward your heart and then up and over your head and down your body. This will help the energy go in a good direction. Make sure to also smudge the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Obviously, a more thorough job of smudging both your front and your back can be done if someone else smudges you, and smudging only the front of your body is just as effective. Remember: Use your INTENTION!!!

That’s it! You have cleansed both yourself and the area around you. It’s that simple. With the intention of your acts, you have created a sacred alignment.

Smudging in Groups

If you are in a group, the Medicine Person will choose someone to do the smudging. Sometimes, if the Medicine Person hasn’t already smudged, they will hold the bowl while the person smudges them. The facilitator of the smudging process smudges himself or herself first, or that person asks an experienced participant to smudge them. The facilitator holds the bowl as they smudge the next person. If you have another tradition that you have always followed, honor that unless Spirit tells you that it is time to do it differently.

It is also appropriate to smudge yourself and any place that gives you the sense an unpleasant or “negative” energy. Many people smudge their houses and workplaces daily so that their everyday lives are cleansed, blessed, and aligned and dedicated to Sacred Spirit. If you do this in a space you share with others, please be considerate of people who may have allergies or respiratory issues.

Our ancestors did not treat time as we do. They did not begrudge the minutes needed to make contact with sacred energies, nor did they get impatient with the time it takes to relight, blow on, or fan the smudge mixture; this was all seen as a part of the process of life, and they knew how to surrender to it and honor it. We can learn valuable lessons from this mindset in a world that is so clock driven, and we can learn how to see the Sacred in all we do.

Ceremonial Cleansing

Even your bath or shower can be turned into an act of purification if you do it with intention. The water washing over your body can sweep away unnecessary energies that put a barrier between yourself and the Divine. If you are doing a fire ceremony, you may offer herbs to the fire and then smudge yourself with the smoke from the fire. James Mooney teaches a water ceremony to be performed after the Sweat Lodge (Inipi), a cleansing in which you submerge yourself in water to the point where the water covers the crown of your head. You duck yourself once briefly to cleanse yourself, once to cleanse for your family, once to cleanse your tribal energy, and once to cleanse your relationship with Creator. You can also cleanse with sound by using a rattle, drum, didgeridoo, bells, and so on, beginning from the heart to the head and traveling down to the feet. Afterward, flick off any energy that may be clinging to the instrument, and ground this energy in the Earth.

Sacred Objects

Earth-centered cultures do not view possessions in the same way that the modern Western World does, and it is sometimes difficult to understand these attitudes. In Earth-entered cultures, possessions are often given away with no thought of thanks, and all their sacred objects are handmade very slowly and carefully, with sincere intention, without measuring the time taken to create it, and without placing a monetary value on the object itself. It does not matter what amount of time it takes to make the object well; the pressures of clock time are not an issue, and their spiritual life permeates all aspects of their daily life so much that they view all acts and objects as sacred.

To construct objects that will be useful in your study of Wheel work, it is necessary that you learn to slow down and be in deep relationship with the object. Smudge your materials before beginning the construction, and consecrate (smudge and dedicate) the finished object to the good of all with a heartfelt prayer. Know that every moment of the construction is an opportunity for learning about sacred relationships and that the process will teach you many things about yourself, your attitudes, and how you process life itself. Take time to make your sacred objects carefully and with good attention and intention, and journal about what you learn from the experience.

The intention for our meditation and journaling exercises is to do four things:

1. To suggest practices and exercises that you can learn to better observe and hear everything around you in the present moment and how it shifts and changes in every right now; this is a critical skill that must be mastered to become a medicine person.

2. To support our observations and to stand in witness of what we are observing and hearing and how the observation is affecting us and influencing us, learning about how the natural world works by engaging our hearts, spirits, and minds through the stories we tell ourselves and others (e.g., How do I relate to the myths and the journeys I take while doing ceremony?)

3. To support ourselves and others to speak, to create nature-based rituals, and to communicate back to all the living beings around us

4. To support us to act, to know what solutions exist, to be willing to explore practical ways that we may transform our way of living to be more in harmony with the Earth, and to have a sound basis for action in defense of the Earth and all beings

It is important to honor the four ways of seeing that support our path as we deepen our ability to observe, meditate, pray, and journal (contemplation). These four ways of seeing are 1) intuition, 2) perception, 3) insight, and 4) vision. Many indigenous cultures recognize that intuition is the source that sparks external seeing (perception), internal viewing (insight), and holistic seeing (vision). For Medicine People, paying attention to these modes of seeing is away to honor the sacred. We extend respect to our own visionary processes when we give voice to what we see or sense. When we are in touch with the visionary archetype, we are impelled to bring our voice and creativity into the world.

A journal is a tool that you can use to keep your balance, to look at where you are, and to see where you’ve been and where you’re going. Through the journal you can become aware of the interrelatedness of life, and in it you will keep a record of your journey.

You can include in your journal descriptions of things seen, heard, experienced, and dreamed. Other things you can put in your growth diary are favorite poems, prose, and sayings that inspire you, words that strike you as significant, things that make you feel something, personal and clipped artwork and other creative pieces, a record of meaningful dreams, lists of music or plays or films you’ve seen or want to see, books you have read or that you want to read, new words or new descriptions of old words, things that ring true for you, things that wake you and make you want to do something, and words that strike you as funny, mysterious, or strange to speak. You can also include factual descriptions of subjects of interest in reference books that give new shades of meaning to the familiar and make surprising connections. Also include in your journal the exercises you will be given to do, like the exercises below, and most importantly, meaningful remembrances and lessons learned throughout this year. Your walk through the Wheel of the Year may be recorded here.

Keep journaling your growth as part of your power hour, and make the exercise below an everyday practice to create the greatest value. As you record in your journal, you will discover that your journal entries become more focused and have greater clarity as you mindfully observe yourself and all you observe and learn from nature. As you take the time to record your observations, your entries will support the lessons you learned; future actions become more clear to you, and over the years, those observations may prove to be an invaluable record as you step up and become the teacher, facilitator, or Medicine Person.

What you will need: Your journal, drawing paper, a pen

For this exercise, find a spot that will be your “home base,” a safe place where you can practice the disciplines of observation. Is there a park, a community garden, or a vacant lot full of weeds near your workplace where you can eat your lunch regularly? Is there an untended hillside you walk by when you take your child to the playground or your dog for her daily walk? Do you have a deck where you can drink your morning coffee and look out at the garden?

Once you have your spot, spend time there. Do the awareness exercises listed here every day to begin to observe things you have never noticed before. Listen, notice the slightest changes, and enjoy every moment in this mindful process. Write notes with questions or “I wonder” statements in your journal, along with your observations.

1. Wonder

In your ceremonial grounds or in your home base, observe and be a witness to what is around you, and say to yourself, “I wonder.” Don’t worry about answering your questions, just notice what questions you are generating.

2. Observe Energy

Ask yourself, “How is energy coming into this system? How is the energy being exchanged? There are many different sorts of energy you might observe: sunlight, heat, energy generated by motion of air or some form of water or food, even psychic energy. Can you sketch what you are seeing? Don’t worry about your lack of skills to make the sketch perfect; instead, focus on the patterns of light and shadows and the space between things.

3. Observe Flow

Observe flow of all kinds. How does water flow through this system? Use your own body to ask this question about and not what you observe. Is there anything you might want to change based on your observations? Make observations about all kinds of systems. For example, how do the wind and airflow affect your garden? What intercepts the flows that you see? What marks do they leave of their passage? What is the source of these flows? How is the source replenished?

4. Observe Communities

Whether tribal, family, societal, or religious, communities seem to gather according to ideologies and values. How does human behavior affect our surroundings? What do you observe growing with what in the area where you are? Do you discern patterns among things? Which trees grow with which bushes, and which groundcover grows with each of these? Do you live in a desert, near the seashore, or by a forest or a glen, and what things in your area are different from those at your normal home base? Are the ferns in your yard different from the sword ferns under the redwood? Do you know how to remove the spines from a cactus from your skin or clothes? What is different at the seashore? What insects, birds, and animals seem to be connected with the plants you see? Do different plants play different roles in the community? What is a weed? How do you know? Are some plants serving as “nurses” for the young of others? Do some plants seem to stay distant from each other? Are some plants always found together? Note that some questions can only be answered when observations occur over time. Expand on the concept of community in all you observe. Observe a tree. How much information can you gain from your observations? Does a tree have feelings? What energy patterns do you notice? Does a twig grow into a branch? How long does it take?

5. Observe Patterns

What patterns can you see in each area that you observe? How does human behavior disturb patterns in textures and patterns of growth or lack of growth? What patterns are repeated, and on what scale? Can you find spirals? Pentacles? Branching patterns? Why are certain patterns repeated over and over again in nature? Again, it might be helpful to sketch the patterns or forms you observe. Let sketch be a meditation to sharpen your ability to see and focus. Does what you see today change over time? Does the change take a day? A week? A month? A year?

6. Observe Edges

Where does one system meet another in your home base? What edges exist in different places, such as the ocean or desert? Away from your home base, where is your favorite place, and what system prevents you from being there? How do you define your system? As we saw earlier, edges—places where forest meets meadow or ocean meets shore—are often the most diverse and fertile parts of an ecosystem. Is that true where you are? How does the edge differ from the center?

7. Observe Limits

What limits the things that grow around your home base? Shade? Lack of water? Clay soil? Sandy soil? What other facts can you identify? How do these limiting factors make themselves evident? What seems held back? How have the plants and animals adapted to these limitations? What characteristics do the successful adapters have in common?

8. Observe from Stillness

Sit still in your favorite spot for at least fifteen minutes; longer is better. Notice what you can see, and observe how that changes over time.

9. Observe Past and Future

What can you observe in your home base that can tell you about the past and how this place might have changed over time? What can you observe that can tell you something about the future of this place?

Practicing these skills of observation and taking the time to ground and listen, we begin to be able to hear sounds that we have blocked out in the past. When we clear away some of our inner obstacles so that we can open up to the outside world, we allow ourselves to be present, and we can be fed and informed and delighted by the richness of life around us.

What you will need: Your journal, drawing paper, a pen

When you get past making labels for things, it is possible to combine elements and transform them into new things. Look at things in your surroundings until their import, identity, name, use, and description have all dissolved. When we give names to things, we often assume that everything that goes by that name is alike. In the same way, we may miss similarities in things that we thought were not alike at all.

For this exercise, consider two similar things that you find in Nature: this can be two of the same kind of flower, two leaves from the same tree, two oranges, and so on. List how these two similar items are different from each other. After a week of doing some of the other exercises, recall the pair you choose in your mind’s eye and make another list. What new insight are you gleaning from making these lists?

What you will need: Your journal, drawing paper, and a pen

We are accustomed to looking at objects. We need to become accustomed to seeing spaces between and around objects as if they, too, were solid. Seeing spaces can free us from deadly assumptions. Spaces can also help us understand where connections are made.

For this exercise, choose a dining room chair, bookcase, or some other piece of furniture and draw with elaborate detail the space you see around and through the item you’ve chosen. Do not draw the legs or the rungs of the chair back; draw the shape of the space between the rungs or the shape of the space between the books and the shelf above them.

“Love life… everything—pale lights, markets, medley of green lettuce, red cherries, golden grapes and purple eggplants—all so extraordinary! Incredible! You get excited, you talk to people and people talk to you, you touch and they touch you. All this is magical like some endless celebration.” —Eugene Lonesco

The Call

Deep within each of us is a knowing, a remembering. A part of each of us knows how to dance the sacred rhythms and knows the healing lore from the times when the voices of the plants, animals, and minerals could be heard. We have not lost our connection to these primal mysteries. Our society has simply not nurtured their remembrance, and yet the pattern is still there deep within us as an archive of memory from a time when the sacred was approached with awe and reverence. You know this is true because of the heart’s longing within you.

You have experienced the Call of the Soul or you would not have signed up for these lessons. You now embark on this Sacred Journey that will allow you to hear the voice of your own Ancestors from a time before time was kept. You will reclaim your legacy as a Keeper of a sacred dimension, and you will bring it back into harmonic relationship with the Earth.

Modern so-called civilization has brutalized both Nature and the natural part of ourselves because modern society is out of balance with Sacred Laws. Collectively we are faced with the challenge of renewing culture and building a sustainable society. Culture is the vehicle through which we can reenchant society and stop the cycles of destruction that civilization has brought.

Humanity has a spiritual relationship to the Earth, and the destruction of our world represents spiritual blindness. The Earth is not just a repository of natural resources to be used for economic gain. We are totally dependent on the air, water, and food-producing capacity of our ecosystem. It seems ridiculous to say such words, for it should be so obvious, yet collective denial is rampant, and we continue to take without replenishing. One reason this happening is because of our concept of linear history and time; in our current society, we lack the feedback loops so necessary to a sustainable system. Another is our preoccupation with physical aspects and exclusion of the metaphysical (intuition, heartfelt wisdom, relationship with the sacred, etc.). A third is Western culture’s dependence on rationalism ever since the Age of Reason became the dominant worldview. What these ways of being cause is a forgetting of balance.

Healthy systems are in a state of dynamic balance. When change occurs in one part of the system, the other parts adjust themselves to the change so that the overall equilibrium is restored. Operating in cyclical, regenerative time—as opposed to linear time—gives us the feedback necessary to know when equilibrium is disturbed. Because of the energies inherent in a circle, the ceremonial circle of the Sacred Wheel is an effective form for reconnecting with the web of interrelatedness of all life and thereby reclaiming the World Soul and the spirit of human culture in balance. Each time someone moves from fragmentation and isolation into unity, an aspect of the sacred World Soul is reclaimed, and that is an initiation as rigorous as any preindustrial shamanic ordeal.

We gratefully acknowledge those who have contributed to this material, especially Starhawk, from The Earth Path; Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms; Steve Thomas; Mattie and David Wolf; Lore and Gary Acevedo; James and Linda Mooney; Cam Mosier; and Elaine Payne.