I ran across something called the Medicine Wheel recently. I had heard the term before, but I didn’t really know what it meant.
So, you know me. I went looking.
I found that the Medicine Wheel is a sacred symbol and teaching tool found in the traditions of some Indigenous peoples of North America, particularly among certain Plains cultures.
There isn’t one single meaning or version of it. Different nations and communities have their own traditions and interpretations.
But the basic idea is pretty interesting.
A Medicine Wheel is generally represented by a circle. And that circle is often divided into four sections representing the four directions. North. South. East. West.
From there, the meanings can vary.
Depending upon the particular tradition, the four sections might represent the four seasons, stages of life, the elements of nature, or different parts of ourselves, such as the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
At the center of it all is balance.
The circle itself can represent the interconnectedness of life. Everything is part of something else. It all depends on the meaning of the wheel. Things like people, animals, plants, the Earth, the seasons, and the passage of time are not necessarily separate things, but pieces of one larger whole. It all touches.
I truly believe this premise that everything is connected. All of us to everything. All the time.
And the word “medicine” doesn’t simply mean medicine the way we normally use the word. In this context, it has a much broader meaning involving healing, wisdom, sacred power, and living in harmony with the world.
There are also actual Medicine Wheels made from stones. I love this too.
One of the best-known is high in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel consists of stones arranged in a large circle with lines extending from the center like spokes on a wheel. Indigenous peoples have used the area for generations, and it remains a sacred site today.
Some stone Medicine Wheels elsewhere in North America may be hundreds or even thousands of years old. We don’t know everything about their original purposes, which makes them even more intriguing to me.
I want to know more. But I guess we can’t understand every mystery in this Universe. We can look and see, but we will never know it all.
The main thing, I think, is the representation of the circle. The thought that everything in life is connected. Everything somehow touching everything else.
If we could only remember this when we act and speak. What we do and who we are has a reaching effect. I hope I can always try to make it for the good.
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“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” — John Muir
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“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” — John Donne
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“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James
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