This version includes corrections and new materials that do not appear on the printed version
Excerpt from a letter received from the Sunray Meditation Society, Box 87, Huntington, Vermont 05462 (USA), dated May 20, 1983:
Thank you for your kind letter of 29 December.... The triangle is a basic concept and design element for the Native American people. The single triangle represents the building fires of Creation, and the double triangle represents a physical manifestation of those creative building energies which begin as an idea in the light or in the fire.... In our work, we understand the double triangle as expressing the wisdom: 'As it is above, so it is below'... the union of spirit and matter, Heaven and Earth. We experience this basic form as relating to a right relationship with Earth, devotion to the manifestation of an ideal form - knowing the abundance and harmony of the universe and choosing consciously to draw these qualities into the right manifestation in our lives on Earth. The double triangle also symbolizes the clan, the social form through which we know ourselves as a group working together for the good of all...
1 comment:
From my own past little inquiries:
Subject: number 7 in Cherokee culture.
I would be very interested in the importance that the number 7 plays in the Cherokee culture. (cosmology, cosmogony, ceremonies, tribes, etc).
Thank You.
Craciun Lucian, Arad, Romania.
-----*****-----
Dear Craciun Lucian,
In Cherokee culture for more than a thousand years, the number seven (gal gwo gi) was an important number.
1. The Cherokees recognized seven directions: east, north, west, south, above, below, and the center. The center also represents the spirit.
The directions all have associated colors and qualities; for example, east represents the direction of power and success symbolized by the color red.
2. Cherokee life and social structure was organized by seven clans.
Your clan membership was determined by your mother's clan. You could not marry someone in your own clan, so clans were responsible for preventing intermarriage with close relations. Clans were responsible for carrying out the oral laws governing homicide. If someone in your clan was killed, your clan could execute the killer. If the killer left, your clan could execute someone from his/her clan. People lived in extended family households organized around women's lineages. A man moved in with his wife, and if she divorced him, which Cherokee women could freely do, he moved back in with his mother or his sister, while the house, children, and fields remained with the woman.
3. Some of the peace pipes had seven stems around a bowl, made from stone or pottery.
4. The number seven is a recurring pattern in Cherokee myths and folktales. For example, in the story explaining the origin of the Pleaides constellation, there were seven dancing boys.
I hope this is helpful.
Sources: James Mooney, Cherokee Myths, Legends and Sacred Formulas
Plants and the Cherokee DVD, Museum of the Cherokee Indian
Best wishes,
Barbara Duncan, Ph.D.
Education Director
Museum of the Cherokee Indian
589 Tsali Blvd. P.O. Box 1599
Cherokee NC 28719
828 497-3481 phone
828 497-4985 fax
www.cherokeemuseum.org
www.cherokeeheritagetrails.org
Post a Comment