Excerpts from Dancing with the Wheel
The Dance Begins
To enjoy dancing with the wheel you must first learn the steps to the dance. Like most earth-based ceremonies and tools, the Medicine Wheel appears to be simple. After all, it is merely a structure of thirty-six stones. Yet there are untold levels of meaning to this simple circle and the lines within the circle. Dancing with the Wheel is a step-by-step guide to these levels.
To understand the Medicine Wheel dance you must first know that the Medicine Wheel of this vision is similar to the 20,000 medicine wheels that existed on this continent before the European people immigrated here. These medicine wheels served many purposes for the Native people of the Americas. They were the ceremonial centers of culture, astronomical laboratories, and places people would come to mark the times and changes in their own lives as well as the life of the earth.
They were places to pray, meditate, contemplate, strengthen your connection with nature, and come to a higher degree of understanding of yourself and your relationship with all of creation. Medicine wheels were usually placed on areas where the energy of the earth could be strongly felt, and their use in ceremony made this energy get even stronger. Consequently, Medicine Wheel areas became what people now call vortexes: places of intense earth energy and healing. The new areas where medicine wheels have been built are serving the same function.
Forms of the Medicine Wheel exist all around the globe from the great stone circles of Europe to the mandalas of India. All of these are reminders of the past when the world was guided by the law of right relationship, and humans respected themselves and all their relations (mineral, plant, animal, spirit) on the Earth Mother. Learning about the Medicine Wheel can help you remember your connection with all these aspects of the universe. Each stone in the Medicine Wheel is a tool to help you understand your ties with the ancient past that molds both personal and planetary present and future. Each position in the Medicine Wheel will directly affect you at some point in your life.
Dancing with the Wheel guides you through all the levels and aspects of the Medicine Wheel: mineral, plant, animal and color. It is full of visualization and exercises to help you better understand yourself, the Medicine Wheel, and the universe.
© 1991, Sun Bear, Wabun Wind and Crysalis Mulligan. This material may not be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the authors.
