I've been working on a whole new ritual structure, that is unfamiliar for the most part, and has required more study time to put together than pretty much all of the Wicca/Feri/Hindu/Tantra/ random stuff I've ever gone into. COMBINED.
While of course there are connections, there are also some just brain beating contradictions that are taking time to assimilate.
The Medicine Wheel/Shields is something that is turning out to be quite the undertaking. I'm working with primarily Plains tribes, because the tribes in the East Coast systems that I'm intested in integrated hundreds of years ago, not leaving much in the ways of spirituality behind. (Wampanog, Pokanoket)
While I spent my childhood on the east coast, I've spent the last 15 years give or take some loose change on the west side of the country. The recent (2yrs almost) move to Texas seems to have cemented the "here I am" in all of this. So plains tribes it seems to be. With some integration of the East Coast tribes.
In the Hopi systems, They work with quarters the same way Wicca does, but compared to the 'classic' pagan ritual structure, they are just flat out wonky in some ways.
South for example, is still fire/summer/ but it is red, green and black, and also has an earth aspect, the green comes in looking at the germinating aspects as being life, and thus part of fire as well as earth.
The other thing that's getting me is that they don't have a solid demarcation of four directions and four elements. North can sometimes be earth, sometimes water. Dependant. Cross quarters also have a whole set of aspects that are breaking my brain trying to put together.
Sometimes it seems to cross top to bottom, with north facing top, but sometimes the opposites seem to be next to each other rather than across from each other. The sticker in this being that when working with shadow and reflection selves, the qualities that are directly across from your home space, are the shadow and reflection. The places that need work.
Each direction then has a receptive, and an assertive set of qualities; and then each of these qualities is split again into constructive and destructive qualities with crossover for dual qualities that can both help and harm in different situations.
My head is exploding. I've come to that *stuck* point where I'm going crimeny, if I could just push on through one more book, one more page of diagramming, focus just a little longer then it would all fall into place, but CRIMENY!
Anybody done anything with the medicine wheel/shields? Any help is appreciated.
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