Kindling the Native Spirit: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life - Denise Linn 2015
The Call of the Elements
The Call: Remembering Who You Are
In native traditions the world is often thought to be divided into four elements—air, water, fire, and earth—which are thought to be each imbued with a spirit that can be accessed for balance and wholeness. In other words, the four elements are not just inanimate aspects of nature. They are actually alive—as alive as a friend or family member.
Almost all indigenous people honor and acknowledge the elements. However, in our modern culture, it’s often difficult to feel our intimate connection to these living elemental forces, because most of us only identify with our bodies. We draw a kind of boundary that stops with our skin. Sometimes we identify with our possessions or even our family members, but it’s a limited experience of “self.” Our true self is so much larger, more majestic, and far-reaching than this. To answer the call of the Spirits of the Elements—sky, lake, lightning, and mountain—is to allow your personal identification to expand so that you begin to recognize yourself in the universe and the elements around you. In other words, your identity grows beyond the confines of your physical body and becomes part of the collective whole. Additionally, when you connect with the innate energy of the elements, there is a profound, positive effect on every aspect of your life. Answering the call of the elements is simply a matter of taking time to be aware of them . . . and now the journey begins.
THE SPIRIT OF WATER IS CALLING YOU
In tribal traditions of the past, water was lifeblood. Watering holes formed the central axis for the tribe or clan. It was there where the women did their washing and collected water for cooking. These were the places where people would convene to discuss the weather, share news, and talk about the latest hunt or crop. When those in an earth-based culture called upon the Spirit of Water in a ceremony, they weren’t just saying words. There was the understanding that there was an actual, real spirit that they were addressing. They believed that the Water Spirit was healing and renewing; likely, the Christian tradition of using water as a baptismal way of being born anew has its source in much older, native cultures.
To answer the call of the Spirit of Water, simply be aware of the water that is within you and around you from rain, fog, and snow. Also take note of the water you drink, bathe in, and ingest when eating fruits and vegetables. The water you just sipped may have at one time been frozen high on a snowcapped peak, or maybe it cascaded down a mountain stream or came from deep within the earth. It’s believed that the water inside of you carries all these memories; it has an energy echo of having been in a cloud above the earth, falling as soft, gentle rain on a high plateau, and flowing as a current at the bottom of the sea. In the deepest sense, the water inside of you is not separate from all water on our planet . . . and it remembers.
From soft mists to rain, fog, streams, rivers, waterfalls, lakes, oceans . . . even from the water in the blood that surges through your veins . . . the Spirit of Water is calling you. It’s calling you to understand that you are not separate from the waters of our beautiful planet. There are many ways to do this. For example, before drinking a glass of water, my Hawaiian kahuna teacher would place her hand over the top of the glass and give thanks to the Water Spirit for its blessings. She said this awakened the Water Spirit and that water that was blessed and energized had life force in it. Answering the call of the Spirit of Water activates flow in your life and brings emotional balance, as well as cleansing and healing energies.
THE SPIRIT OF AIR IS CALLING YOU
When you answer the call of the Spirit of Air, you know that the air you breathe is connected to all the air on the planet. In a purely physical way, the oxygen in the breath you just took contained argon atoms that were inhaled by your most distant ancestors . . . and will be inhaled by your descendants. It has been in every nook and cranny of our planet. The air in that breath also contained at least 400,000 of the same argon atoms that were inhaled by a shaman on a high mound in ancient Mongolia, an aesthetic in the Himalayas, and a native storyteller in the Amazon.
The life force in the air around us is the common element that we share with all living creatures and plants on the planet. Native people looked to the skies to connect with the Creator and thought that the winds and the birds were spirit messengers. They believed that though you cannot see it, the Spirit of Air was real nevertheless. As a suggestion, whenever you’re aware of a breeze or the wind, turn to face it and be still. It’s not uncommon for a message to emerge for you when you do this.
The Spirit of Air exists in the inhalation and exhalation of your breath, soft breezes, warm autumn winds, rippling grasses, delicate seedpods lofted into the air by a gust, an eagle soaring on warm air thermals, and aspen leaves quaking in the wind. Even hurricanes and tornadoes carry the Spirit of Air. A simple way to connect with the air is to raise your arms high and inhale deeply, with awareness of that breath. Answering the call of the Spirit of Air activates freedom, perception, communication, and seeing life from a higher perspective.
THE SPIRIT OF FIRE IS CALLING YOU
Since the first cave dwellers discovered how to ignite flames to dispel darkness and disperse coldness, fire has been considered sacred. The constant interplay of light and shadow affects every part of life. Native people were inspired and fascinated by the power of fire that ranged from the radiance of the sun to the warmth of an evening campfire; in some tribes the sun was even honored as a god. The Cherokees had a sacred fire burning constantly, which was rekindled once a year during the Corn Festival. It was thought that the ceremony held the spirit of the tribe together. The sacred fire provided a sense of connection to the ancestors, the stars, and the Creator. The oldest Mayan ruins from 1,000 B.C.E. suggest ancient solar rituals and fire ceremonies. Ancient native people believed that the Spirit of Fire was a living and breathing organism essential for life.
The Spirit of Fire exists in the single flame of a candle in a cave, the warmth of a campfire, the stars above, the red flaming sunset, the dappled golden sunlight in a summer meadow, and the radiant sun above. As a suggestion, simply light a candle and look deep into the base of the flame with the sense that you are not separate from the deeper energies of fire. When you answer the call of the Spirit of Fire, vitality, purification, transformation, and life-force energies are activated within you.
THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH IS CALLING YOU
Of the four elements, none has been as revered as the earth. Our connection to the earth goes back to the beginnings of our history. Myths in native cultures abound with stories of human beings emerging from its fold. The earliest native and ancient cultures honored Grandmother Earth as a conscious being who oversaw life in all of its phases. She was considered a fecund provider and nurturer for all her inhabitants. The ancient sensibility was one of living with the earth, instead of merely on it.
In native traditions, there is profound love of the earth. People sit or lie on the earth with the feeling that they are being mothered and healed. Here is one example from Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bear:
It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest upon the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing.
That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him [Land of the Spotted Eagle. Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1933].
The idea that we are a part of the earth isn’t uncommon. When I invited an Aboriginal elder from Australia to visit us in the United States, he replied that he couldn’t be separated for that long from his spirit, for his spirit lived in his homeland. He said he would potentially weaken and even die if he did. I’ve heard, over and over, a similar belief throughout my time in native cultures. There is the belief that part of our soul is embedded in the earth, and that we can be diminished when we travel if we don’t take our spirit with us. Perhaps this is part of the reason why travel can be so challenging for some people. Here’s one family’s cultural practice, as told by Wilma Spear Chief of the Blood (Kainai) Tribe, we can adopt that can help with this:
I am from Alberta, Canada—I’m a Blackfoot woman, as well as a member of the Blood Tribe. Our people were not afraid to travel because of a practice we had. When we were children, my mother use to call out our names whenever we would go somewhere. It could be to a nearby town or just to visit relatives in another part of the community. We would always respond, and she would say, “No, I am calling your spirits so they can come with us and not linger.”
The belief is that if you didn’t call your spirit, a part of you would feel lonely for the place you left behind . . . and not fully be present in your new surrounding. To this day I continue this practice and have taught my children to do the same thing, as they travel often. Perhaps because we were a nomadic tribe—our people were hunters and followed the Buffalo—we needed to develop ways to keep our spirit with us.
Our belief in a sentient Earth has almost disappeared in modern society. The dismay at the waning of this long-held understanding was passionately expressed at the end of the 19th century by Smohalia, an Oglala Lakota Sioux holy man:
You ask me to dig in the earth? Am I to take a knife and plunge it into the breast of my mother? But then when I die she will not gather me again into her bosom. . . . Then I can never enter her body and be born again. You ask me to cut the grass and the corn and sell them to get rich like the white men. But how dare I crop the hair of my mother?
Since we have lost our sense of connection to a living earth, in many ways we’ve lost our place in the cosmos. But perhaps buried deep in the psyche within each of us dwells the idea that human life springs forth from the earth, because more people are beginning to gravitate toward this ancient outlook.
From her majestic mountains, resplendent forests, open savannas, vast deserts, fertile valleys, and sweet meadows, the Spirit of Earth is calling you. As a suggestion, go outside and put your hands into the dirt. No gloves, no shovel. Simply reach your bare hands into the soil. Inhale the earth’s loamy scent. Imagine that your hands have roots that are rapidly growing and traveling beneath the surface to far mountains, to valleys under the sea, and all throughout our planet. When you answer the call of the Spirit of Earth, stability, grounding, healing, ancient wisdom, and power are activated in your life.