Table of Contents
1 Select a location for your medicine wheel. Select a location for your medicine wheel. 2 Gather the objects. Gather the objects you wish to use for your wheel. 3 Find the center. 4 Remove the stick. 5 Apply colors to your medicine wheel. 6 Use a red object for the east. 7 Use a yellow object. 8 Place a black object.
What are the four principles of the Medicine Wheel?
The Medicine Wheel reminds us that we need to balance all four aspects of our being – the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental aspects. When we become out of balance, we experience disease.
What is the Medicine Wheel made of?
The Medicine Wheel is a circular alignment of limestone boulders about 80 feet in diameter with 28 rock “spokes” radiating from a prominent central cairn. Five smaller stone enclosures are connected to the outer circumference of the wheel.
What is a Medicine Wheel and how does it work?
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—all of which symbolize dimensions of health and the cycles of life.
How many stones are in a Medicine Wheel?
It has seven stones. The first three stones give life and vision to the Creation for us: Father Sun, Earth Mother, and Grandmother Moon.
What are the 4 sacred medicines?
Tobacco is the first plant that the Creator gave to First Nations Peoples. It is the main activator of all the plant spirits. Three other plants, sage, cedar and sweetgrass, follow tobacco, and together they are referred to as the Four Sacred Medicines.
What does the medicine wheel symbolize?
The medicine wheel (also called the Sun Dance Circle or Sacred Hoop) is an ancient and sacred symbol used by many Tribes. It signifies Earth’s boundary and all the knowledge of the universe.
What is the Ojibwe medicine wheel?
The Anishnaabek often referred to the medicine wheel as the CIRCLE OF LIFE symbolizing the natural cycles of birth, growth, death, and regeneration. The FOUR CIRCLES are viewed in a clockwise direction. In native culture we start in the east and rotate to the south and west, arriving at the north circle on top.
What are the 4 directions?
North, east, south, and west are the four cardinal directions, often marked by the initials N, E, S, and W. East and west are at right angles to north and south. East is in the clockwise direction of rotation from north. West is directly opposite east.
What do the four directions mean?
A cardinal direction can also be referred to by first using the word “due”. For example, the cardinal direction of north can also be referred to as due north. On a compass rose, which is a symbol found on maps that shows directions, there will be four points indicating north, south, east, and west.
What is the Medicine Wheel teaching?
The Medicine Wheel can be used to express the four different parts of self: Mental, Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual. Yet these different parts of self are all interconnected together in a circle, creating no beginning and no end. Each part requires balance from the other parts in order to achieve optimal health.
How was the Bighorn Medicine Wheel made?
Lying at an altitude of 9462 feet near the summit of Medicine Mountain in the Bighorn National Forest of north-central Wyoming is the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. The Pre Columbian structure is made of local white limestone laid upon a bedrock of slightly sloping limestone.
Who built the medicine wheels?
The wheel was constructed by Plains Indians between 300-800 years ago, and has been used and maintained by various groups since then. The central cairn is the oldest part, with excavations showing it extends below the wheel and has been buried by wind-blown dust. It may have supported a central pole.
Why are medicine wheels different?
The most common variation between different wheels are the spokes. There is no set number of spokes for a medicine wheel to have although there are usually 28, the same number of days in a lunar cycle. The spokes within each wheel are rarely evenly spaced, or even all the same length.
What cultures use the Medicine Wheel?
The Medicine Wheel (sometimes called a Sacred Hoop) is an important Indigenous symbol used by Anishinaabe, Cree, and other Native North American tribes to represent the core of our world views.
What is the Medicine Wheel kids?
The Medicine Wheel emphasizes a holistic approach to maintain balance and equilibrium in life. The Medicine Wheel is a circular symbol representing the wholeness of traditional indigenous life. It is a perfectly balanced shape without a top or bottom, length or width. It represents constant movement and change.
Do the Inuit use the medicine wheel?
Four Sacred Medicines In Nations that use the medicine wheel as a teaching tool, each medicine has a place on the wheel. Note that the Métis and the Inuit have different medicines that are specific to their cultures and teachings.
What are the four sacred colors?
Color has many symbolic meanings in Navajo culture; in fact, a single color can mean several different things depending on the context in which it is used. Four colors in particular black, white, blue, and yellow have important connections to Navajo cultural and spiritual beliefs.
What did First Nations use for medicine?
10 The most common sacred medicines used by First Nations in Alberta for ceremonies are tobacco, cedar, sage, sweetgrass and diamond willow fungus. These sacred plants thrive in natural outlying areas such as wetland marshes, along the edges of lakes and rivers, and in uncultivated meadows and pastures.
What does Sweet Grass symbolize?
Therefore, sweetgrass represents positivity, strength, connection to the Creator and all our relations. it represents the Mother, our mother, Mother Earth. In the Cree-Ojibway culture, for example, the three braids of the sweetgrass can represent love, peace and harmony or mind, body and spirit.
What is sweet grass burned for?
When burned for healing or ritual purposes, the smoke from the braided sweetgrass is thought to attract good spirits and positive energies. It is used as a smudging tool to purify peoples auras, cleanse objects, and clear ceremonial areas or healing spaces of negative energy.
