A Fire Tender’s Lesson, Part 5 – Power Used, and Abused

As each yr went by, and the loved ones grew to become a little bit much more splintered, I witnessed considerably decline of tradition.

At my to start with Sundance all of the loved ones associates worked in unison–as I had witnessed in the Yuwipi Ceremonies–to get the particulars down as they had been passed on to them. Every single successive Sundance–as Godfrey was not able to be current and took Unci with him, and then Phillip was killed in a auto crash–seemed to have dropped so lots of of the information that I experienced as soon as thought were being vital. With out several voices to tutorial me in the component that I was identified as on to enjoy, I found myself mastering to emphasis my intent on other people, open up my heart, and beckon the Spirit of Woptura to be current, even if I failed to have the phrases and had misplaced lots of of the information of the Sundance by itself.

Spirit never ever ceased to look at Sundance. It in no way ceased to have an impact on the individuals. Regardless of the traditions and subtleties shed. The miracles never ever stopped. 1 person arrived to dance with infected abscesses on his toes. His foot was turning black, above-the-borderline gangrenous. I lobbied lengthy and challenging for him to go to the medical center in Swift Town. He disregarded me. He prayed challenging and was equipped to stroll by Tree Day, and then went on to finish the Dance, for the duration of which time his foot completely healed. I am chatting no scars!

There was a little something heading on there that appeared to go beyond the words and phrases, the songs, the nuts and bolts of the rituals as if just understanding the essence of the Spirit he was calling in was more than enough. It was not that distinct Sundance that cured him, it was his intent to dance “so that the people may possibly stay,” strengthened by the intent of the some others all-around him for the very same matter.

Not also extended just after my past Sundance on Pine Ridge, and soon immediately after Unci blessed my Cannunpa — a pipe I experienced taken a year to make myself as I was instructed — I started off doing prayer circles. I was total of myself. Amazed by my possess knowledge, there was an element that I quickly had to arrive to terms with that was residing inside of me.

I needed individuals people today included with me to know and knowledge how adept I was with what I was taught by the family. I came to figure out that my intent was geared toward building me glance superior. I began by using some prayers in Lakota that I had learned in the Yuwipi Ceremony. In a person of them, I termed on Inktomi (Ick-tomi), the Spider. Huge miscalculation!

What followed was four days of what some would call psycho-kinetic phenomena: objects all around me would spontaneously split, I seasoned raindrops in sealed rooms, fireplace alarms would go off close to me for no reason, even a personal computer began to spew out messages on its display that have been totally hauntingly certain to the individuals I was with imply-spirited, isolated sentences dredged out from some deeply buried memory banking institutions that supposedly had been erased by the prior operator. And people ended up just the outer phenomena!

At the identical time, I was fully drunk with a feeling of power. But the charge was astronomical. I felt an not comfortable existence about me, sometimes seeking to get in me and remain. I basically felt hounded by the Spirits, as if the thoughts of precise personalities would pass as a result of me. I would quickly discover myself collapsing in abject concern, hilarious laughter, or hopeless tears, figuring out comprehensive properly, it experienced practically nothing to do with what I, myself, was going through in the second.

I experienced crossed over into a lineage of spirits I actually knew very little about. My planet experienced absent berserk. Absolutely nothing I had ever experienced in my lifetime remotely resembled this. To be sincere, I didn’t even feel that these items happened.

I contacted the loved ones, now back again at Pine Ridge, and was advised that Inktomi was only to be called upon by an professional Wicasa Wakan (wi-cha-sha wa-con), Holy Guy, for its medicine is so powerful and unruly that only a person so skilled and pure could tackle it. It is Inktomi that is named on throughout Yuwipi Ceremonies. I was in way more than my head.

My only recourse was to return to the Cannunpa, even though I was scared to death of it. I prayed with it for enable to undo what I had accomplished. I did so much more humbly than I experienced approached nearly anything in my everyday living. Extra than anything at all else, I was in dread that the individuals with whom I had carried out ceremony experienced been harmed. I experienced no strategy what I had unleashed and on whom.

In the final evaluation, I experienced taken the outstanding presents I was presented by the family casually. For every single motion there is a reaction, and this white guy had taken what was not his out of the context of its caretakers and experimented with to do with it what they do with it. No, it basically would not operate that way, and the stability is struck within the context of the traditions that are violated, NOT in terms or activities that make feeling to the interloper.

After four times of parayer, the phenomena ceased. I arrived to comprehend that even separate from what I knew, different from what I comprehended there was a distinct Spirit that I known as on that manifested in techniques I could by no means have imagined. I had performed matters in a selected way and selected factors had occurred!

What I experienced also accomplished was misuse my intent in the context of a Sacred Ceremony. I laid down my Cannunpa for several years, and only picked it up yet again when I was ready to stake all I am and all I personal on use of it for many others, not myself.

For far more information and facts pertaining to sacred ceremony, refer to Yuwipi by William K. Powers, College of Nebraska Press, 1982.