SACRED HOOP
“And
while I stood there, I saw more than I can tell and understood more than I saw;
for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and
the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw
that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle,
wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering
tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that
it was holy.” –Lakota native American, Black
Elk Speaks
The
Medicine Wheel, sometimes known as the Sacred Hoop, has been used
by generations of various Native American tribes for health and healing. It
embodies the Four Directions, as well as Father Sky, Mother Earth, and Spirit
Tree.
“As I
looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each
creature with its four faces…each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting
a wheel...they would go in any one of the four directions…and all four rims were
full of eyes all around.” --Ezekiel
1:15-18
Black Elk was an Oglala
Lakota native Indian who lived around the turn of the twentieth century and had
the sad experience of watching his people’s way of life decimated in his lifetime
in exile. Ezekiel was a priest and prophet
to the Israelites in Babylonian exile around six hundred BC after the
Babylonians defeated Israel.
Both of these favored men experienced visions
of hope for divine intervention to unite all people. And it was communicated in the form of a
sacred hoop or medicine wheel.
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