Walking The Sacred Wheel
THE THIRTEENTH MOON is a year-long distance learning Teaching provided by The Sacred Wisdom Circle Institute (SWCI). The program consists of weekly readings, homework activities (exercises, including mini-ceremonies) and regular (weekly to semi-weekly) call-ins. The call in is designed to allow you to hear the Medicine Person discussing the scheduled information provided in the literature for that weeks’ Teaching and to allow participants to ask questions. The calls are recorded and all participants in the Circle will have access to the recordings anytime and as often as they want for as long as they are registered in the program. As well, all of the literature provided by Sacred Wisdom Circle Institute (SWCI) will be available to all participants for as long as they are registered for the program. Of course, anything that you learn and take away from these Teachings will be a part of you for a lifetime and we hope you share what you learn with the world.
Stepping into the Center
The energy of the Thirteenth Moon is that of moving from the circumference of the wheel into the center. This is a very powerful step on the spiritual journey, and it has many ramifications. When we traverse, or explore the energy of, the outer directions and elements of the wheel, we are in a state of seeking to know that which is around us. We seek to fully understand and appreciate the landscape of our universe and are working with energies on the horizontal plane. It is necessary to fully appreciate this plane so that we have its support and guidance when we make the step into the center, and it is crucial that we know how and are able to call for support from the horizontal plane as we move into the next step on the Path: stepping into the center. With this step, we move into the energy of the center pillar, or world tree . The energy of the hollow bone is so powerful that if we make this move without the support of the outer realm, we become unbalanced and therefore fail.
Examples of exercises covered during your journey with The Thirteenth Moon (Weeks 1-4)
- Exercise 1 – Purification and Cleansing: Smudging and Sweeping
- Making a Smudge Fan and Spirit Feather and Feather Care
- A Word About Spirit Objects
- A Spirit Feather
- Exercises 2 through 7 – Observation and Journaling
- Exercise 8 – Centering
- Exercise 9 – Grounding
- Exercise 10 – Grounding and Centering
- Exercise 11 – Creating Altars
- Exercise 12 – Calling in and Releasing the Directions
- Exercise 13 – Expanding Your Senses Practice Journal
- Exercise 14 – The Sacred Circle:
- Entering a Sacred Circle
- Working Within It
- Leaving Spiritual Perspectives
Examples of seasonal Teachings completed during your journey with The Thirteenth Moon (weeks 5-52)
East Gate
- Introduction
- The Aspects of the East Gate: Illumination and Enlightenment,
- The Way of the Visionary
- A Note About Emotional Experience and Expression
- Deeper Levels of Truth: Exploring Edges
Discovering the Living Tree
Week 1
- Vernal Equinox
- Spiritual Duty
- Right Speech, Right Thought, Right Action, Right Relationship
- Birth Scripts
Exercise 1 – A Mayan Vernal Equinox Solar Ceremony
Week 2
- Unto the Seventh Generation and Creativity
- Change and Choice
- The Bowl of Your Creation
- Intention to Change
- Alignment for Change
- Surrender to Change
- First Steps for Change
Exercise 2 – Obtaining Alignment for Change
Exercise 3 – Making Prayer Ties, Sticks, and Flags
Week 3
- Vision Quest
- Intentionality: The Importance of Clarity of Intention
- Service
- Crying for a Vision
- Men’s Warrior Quest and Women’s Healing Quest
- A Special Note About Moon Times for Women
- Being Naked
Exercise 4 – A Medicine Walk
Week 4
- The Vision Quest Continues
- The Severance
- The Death Lodge
- The Liminal Time
- The Stage of Transformation
- The Incorporation
- The Emergence
- Medicine Name Reunion
- The Vision Quest as Metaphor
Exercise 5 – Vision Quest Metaphor
- Questions and Mentoring
Mending the Sacred Hoop
Week 1
- The Web of Power
Exercise 1 – The Web of Power: Working With Your Spirit Body and Recognizing Connections
Exercise 2 – Walking Meditation
Week 2
- Right Relationship
Exercise 3 – Right Relationship: Ending Hidden Agendas, Manipulations, and Abuse
Week 3
- Sacred Sight
- Personal Clarity and the Ability to “See”
Exercise 4 – A Light of Clarity Quest (Examining intentions)
Exercise 5 –Sacred Sight (Seeing beyond objects to the spaces between)
Exercise 6 –Sight (Sensing a 360-degree picture of what surrounds you)
Week 4
- The Elements and the Directions
- Fire
Exercise 7 – Being in Relationship to Fire
- Questions and Mentoring
Making Your Own Medicine
Week 1
- The Spiritual Quest Visioning
Exercise 1 – A Path Map: A Story Cloth Like a “Winter Count” of the Plains Indians
Week 2
- Nature Power and Spirit Helpers
- A Word About Meat and Eating Animals for Food
- Seeking Totems Bells and Tones
Exercise 2 – Journeying: Instructions and a Sample Journey
Exercise 3 – Making Your Spirit Bag
Week 3
- Releasing and Transforming Magnetization
Exercise 4 – The Inner Fire: Probing for Deeper Levels of Self-Truth
Exercise 5 – The Cleansing Flame: A Clearing Process
Exercise 6 – Mirror Practice: Using a Mirror to Effect Change
Exercise 7 – Planting Seed as a Give-Away: Replanting Endangered Indigenous Plant Species
Week 4
- Making Your Own Medicine
Exercise 8 – The Sacred Flow That Supports Us: Recognizing Our Connections to All There Is
- Questions and Mentoring
South Gate
- Introduction
- Exploring the Physical Realm: What It Means to Be an Embodied Spirit
- Embodiment
- The Heyoka, Divine Fools, Contraries, Tricksters, and Clowns
- A Word about Heyoka and the Lakota Tradition
- Honoring the Earth’s Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony
- Holy Days of the Wheel of the Year Chart
Owning the Web of Creation
Week 1
- The Summer Solstice
- The Gayatri
- A Hollow Bone
- Becoming a Hollow Bone (Emptying your vessel)
Week 2
- Balance and Control Receiving
- Balancing the Body
Exercise 2 – Physical Practice in Balance of the Physical Body
Exercise 3 – Balance Walk: More Physical Practice in Balance
Exercise 4 – Balance Through Journeying Using a Guided Journey
Week 3
- Sacred Cycles: Being Present
Exercise 5 – Practice in Being Present
Week 4
- Developing Neutrality
- Meditation and a Method of Going into Silence
- Guided Meditations
Exercise 6 – Sun Meditation: A Guided Meditation to Attune to the Inner Being of the Sun
- Questions and Mentoring
Speaking from the Heart
Week 1
- Sacred Path Calendar
- The Four Fire Festivals
Exercise 1 – Creating a Celebration of Lammas, August 1
Exercise 2 –More Work with the Sacred Path Calendar
Week 2
- First and Second Attention
- Environmental Sabbaths and Earth-Honoring Services
Exercise 3 – Earth Sabbath Service
Week 3
- Seven Wheels of Power (The chakras)
Exercise 4 – Toning the Chakras
Week 4
- Nature Altars and Ceremonial Spaces
Exercise 5a – Visit to a Sacred Site or Power Center and Creating a Nature Altar
Exercise 5b – Find a Natural Power Center in Your Own Area
- Questions and Mentoring
Weaving the Community Web
Week 1
- Earth-Honoring Spirituality and Right Relationship with Nature: The Community Web
Exercise 1 – Earth Community (Reflecting on the idea of Community in your life)
Exercise 2 – Earth Communion (Maintaining Sacred Relationship with the Natural World)
Week 2
- Stone People, the Sacred Medicine Wheel, and Other Stone Circles of the Mineral World
- Constructing a Personal Wheel
Exercise 3 – Construction of a Personal Wheel
Exercise 4 – Making a Sticks and Stones Balance Bundle
Week 3
- Ways of Working with Wheels
Exercise 5 – Continued Work with Your Personal Wheel
Week 4
- The Drum
- Coyote, Trickster, Heyoka, and the Sacred Clown: Animals of the South
Exercise 6 – Journey to Find a Helper Animal
- Questions and Mentoring
West Gate
- Introduction
- Transformation and the Way of the Spiritual Teacher
- Fall Equinox
Navigating the Web of Chaos
Week 1
- Transformation
Exercise 1 – Standing Meditation
Exercise 2 – State of Transformation: Exploring States of Transformation Through Sleep
Week 2
- Mirrors
- Shadows
Exercise 3 – Shadows and Silence: Being Aware of Space Around Objects and Sound
Exercise 4 – Mirror Work: Watching our Mirror Talk
Week 3
- Enemies and Evil
- Releasing Negative Beings
- Appropriate Destruction
Exercise 5 – Transformation Through Changing Patterns: Consciously Changing a Habit or Pattern
Exercise 6 – Releasing Beliefs That No Longer Serve
Exercise 7 – A Ceremony for Releasing Negative Beings
Week 4
- Attunement
- Shape Changing
- Salmon Boy: A Teaching Story
Exercise 8 – Death as a Teacher: Exploring What Death Has to Teach Us
Exercise 9 – Attunement: Meditation by Turning Outward
- Questions and Mentoring
Traveling the Symbolic Landscape
Week 1
- Doorway to the Divine
- Sacred
Exercise 1 – Finding Your Wotai Stone
Exercise 2 – Ceremony with the Moon: Connecting with the Great Sacred Feminine
Week 2
- The Sacred Marriage
- The Outer Marriage
- The Bowl of Relationship
Exercise 3 – Making a Medicine Bundle
Exercise 4 – Making a Snake Bundle: To Move Away
Week 3
- Names: A Spirit or Medicine Name
- Being with Bear
Exercise 5 – Calling to Yourself: Finding Your Real Name
Exercise 6 – A Ceremony for Taking a New Name
Exercise 7 – Numerology
Week 4
- Fasting
- Sacred Dreaming
Exercise 8 – Fasting
Exercise 9 – Keeping a Dream Log
Exercise 10 – Calling Your Dream Spirits: Asking Dream Allies for Help
- Questions and Mentoring
Journey of the Wheel
Week 1
- Story
- Beliefs Change
- Mindsets and the Spirit of Open Inquiry
Exercise 1 – Your Story Doll: The Truth Teller
Exercise 2 – The Ceremony to Find Truth: Connecting with the Key Principles of your Sacred Story
Week 2
- The Waters of Forgiveness
Exercise 3 – A Forgiveness Ritual
Week 3
- The Element of Water in Spiritual Practice
- Other Liquids and Misunderstanding of Their Use
Exercise 4 – Reality Shifts Through Changing Habitual Patterns: More Practice
Exercise 5 – Your Medicine Blanket
Week 4
- The Spiritual Warrior
Exercise 6 – Walking the Wheel of Relatedness: Exploring Relatedness with Other Sentient Beings
- Questions and Mentoring
North Gate
- Introduction
- The North Gate: Taking Responsibility
- Animals of the North
- Winter Solstice
Claiming the Shield of Power
Week 1
- The Staff of Power
- North Shadows
- Entitlement and Control Issues
Exercise 1 – Sitting in the Dark: Honoring the Dark Before Calling in the Light
Exercise 2 – Your Medicine Staff
Exercise 3 – Teacher/Leader Shadow Inventory: Explore the Shadow Aspects
Week 2
- The Stars and Beyond Force and Form
Exercise 4 – Walking the Spiral: An Ancient Initiatory Practice
Week 3
- The Sacred Pipe
Exercise 5 – The Ceremony of Wisdom
Week 4
- Finding Your Place on the Sacred Wheel
- Air and Breath
Exercise 6 – Sitting in Your Hoop of Power: Exploring Sacred Space and Your Center of Power
- Questions and Mentoring
Navigating the Path of Service
Week 1
- The Random Bell
- Sacred Service: Acts of Beauty on a Blessing Way
- Some Ways to Measure True Service
- Some Benefits of Spiritual Service
- How to Know When You Are Out of Balance with Service
Exercise 1 – Sacred Service
Week 2
- Imbolc or Candlemas: Calling to Your Wholeness
Exercise 2 – Imbolc
Week 3 – Crystal Medicine
- Rattles: Callers of Sky Beings
- A Word About Sacred Tools and Medicine Objects
- A Word About Traditional Spirit Objects
- A Final Word
Exercise 3 – Your Medicine Rattle
Exercise 4 – Blessing, Dedicating, and Infusing: Feeding Your Spirit Objects
Exercise 5 – Meditation with Your Rattle
Week 4
- The Realm of the Ancestors
Exercise 6 – Finding Your Ancestral Teachers
- Questions and Mentoring
Telling the Sacred Story
Week 1
- Sacred Story and Receiving the Teachings of Impeccability
- Personal Power and Empowerment
- Impeccability
- Wisdom with Impeccability
Exercise 1 – A Survey of Our Energy Expenditures
Week 2
- The Internal Monologue and Sacred Story
- How the Internal Monologue Developed
- The Neutral Observer
- Contact: The First Four Minutes
- The Unconscious Monologue
- The Ego as the Owner of the Monologue
Exercise 2 – The Neutral Observer
Exercise 3 – The Story That Must Be Told
Week 3
- The Sound of the Sacred Story
- Sounds, Intentions, Harmonies, and Your Authentic Voice
Exercise 4 – Blessing
Week 4
- Freeing Your Natural Voice and Praying Out Loud
- Power Songs and Singing in Ceremony
- Leaving the North
Exercise 5 – Your Natural Voice
Exercise 6 – Your Sacred Song
The cost to register for THE THIRTEENTH MOON is $25 for the introductory lessons (1-4) and then $50/month for 12 more months (48 lessons grouped 4 per Moon) or a single payment of $550 for the entire year. *Save $75 on the normal annual cost of registration.
Please ask us about our Scholarship Program is you are on a fixed (or have had no) income for the past year.
Invocation Blessing Song
Behold Great Mystery, Creative Force, Spirit That Moves Through All. We call to the Seven Directions of the Sacred Wheel.
We turn to the Keepers of the East, direction of the new beginnings, of inspirations, illumination and creativity, of the dawn and Spring, new births, and childhood. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We call to the Keepers of the South, direction of vitality, of high noon and hot sun, of Summer and the vigorous growth of youth and passion. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We invite the Keepers of the West, direction of introspection, of the evening, of autumn and maturity, deepening and ripening. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We respectfully summon the Keepers of the North, direction of night, of Winter, of Wisdom and transformation, of dropping inessentials to reveal the core. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We look up to the sky and call to the beings of the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars, and the endless blue, and we ask that you bring your spaciousness and mystery to this work. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We put our hands on the ground and ask that the great substance of the earth give grounding to the work and that the Earth’s beauties give it beauty. That the entire world—the animals and plants and rocks; mountains, rivers, and seas; the elemental forces of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—and all the human beings: elders, children, and teachers; red, yellow, black, and white. Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We call to the Sweet Mystery that is the Sacred Center to hold us and cradle us in your divine protection . Be with us, teach us, show us your ways.
We claim this work to serve, to bless, and to share knowledge for wisdom building and for bringing wholeness to our hearts and to our world.
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