Sweatlodge
Sweat-lodge Ceremony
The Cherokee are a Matriarchal society. To honor the Sacred Feminine is foremost among the visions of our ancestors. To remember our ancestral origins and our place amongst the Star People and the role we have in revealing the Great Mystery of Life.
The Sacred Sweat-lodge symbolizes the womb of Mother Earth. The place in which all life is conceived and birthed. In this ceremony we return to the womb to be cleansed, reborn, and to remember the ancient language of silence. Nature’s language of water flowing, wind blowing, and the grass growing. The chatter of smaller animals living their lives and birds singing the songs and stories shared with them by nature.. Bee People pollinating the beautiful and sometimes, impossible, colors of life and imagination.
This is the language of the silence of my childhood
In the still darkness we journey back to the beginnings of our memories from being held so lovingly by our mother. The first vibrational tones shared with us as mother and father spoke of their dreams, visions, and hope. Ancient memories ready to be birthed into new dreams and
Ideas that will guide us on our sacred journey through this lifetime. Energetic thermal flows of high vibration that will lift us up so that we may soar and further the vision of our dreams and realities.
WE co-create the moment when growth and destiny meet to bring us physically into this world.
The lodge itself is built with 16 lodge poles that represent the ribs that protect the womb and the child. Prayers of tobacco, sage, cedar, and water, are offered during the building of the lodge. Tobacco to represent an agreement made long ago among all living things to always, Love, Honor, and Respect, one another. Sage is offered for the Purity of Spirit, Cedar is for the ever present awareness, like the evergreen trees. Water is given so the Great Mystery may continue to flow effortlessly in our Hearts, Minds, and Spirits.
The preparations for the building of the wooden cradle that will host the ancient Stone People is prepared hours before actual entry into the lodge itself. Fire-tenders and the lodge leader arrive hours before all others to set the energetic container for all to come and be part of our prayers and offerings to Great Spirit/Mystery.
The Tree People are honored with offerings and prayers of gratitude and love. Recognition of the age old agreement. Offerings of tobacco, sage, cedar, and water, are given to the earth where the fire is to be built. All elements of life as we know them brought together to ignite the energy for the upcoming ritual of prayer and celebration of life. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, spirits combined to recreate the first sacred breath of life.
The fire is then lit with reverence and awareness of how it will be the beacon in which the ancestor spirits invited will be led by. Fire is the element that helps to shed light and warmth upon the seeds we become. The Sun Fire Star calls us to reach ever higher to the places that only Wind, Sun, Love, and Hope, know to go. And beyond.
