The Way of the Sacred Clown

Clown Kachina

Sacred clowns are found in ancient cultures throughout the world and represent a reversal of the normal order. The most famous of these are the Koyemsi (or Mudheads), the dancing clowns of the Zuni Indians. In the Zuni tradition, the clown frequently disrupts and lampoons some of the most sacred and fundamental rituals. The Cherokee had sacred clowns known as Boogers who performed "Booger dances" around a community fire. But perhaps the most unique type of sacred clown is the Lakota equivalent of Heyoka, a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them.

The sacred clown uses satire, folly, and misadventure to portray lessons on inappropriate behavior. The clown satirizes tribal life by acting out and exaggerating improper behavior. The sacred clown's obscene and sacrilegious actions infuse the most important religious ceremonies. Unbound by societal constraints, they help to define the accepted boundaries, rules, and societal guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. Their function can help defuse community tensions by providing their own comical interpretation of the tribe's popular culture, by reinforcing taboos, and by passing on traditions.

Principally, the clown functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, and forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, and beliefs. The main function of a sacred clown is to awaken people to innovative and better ways of doing things. The mischievous clown behaves in ways that are contrary to conventional norms in order to violate peoples' expectations. In such paradoxical states, people can assimilate new information quickly, without filtering. Sacred clown's lesson is to stop acting out of habit. We must be willing to plow old habits into the soil in order to cultivate new patterns that enhance our natural growth. Innovative change will revitalize our life and precipitate renewed growth and creativity.

Sometimes we unwittingly cut off the voice of our inner truth, or sense of what is correct; relying instead on old, soul-killing patterns of judgment, control, and distrust. Inner truth reflects, like a mirror, the higher, universal truth that exists in every situation. Yet even when our point of view is at its most positional, narrow and self-righteous, higher truth, often in the guise of the contrarian clown, is there to open the way back to balance and wholeness.

The Native American Flute

Next to the drum, the most important Native American instrument is the flute. The instrument evolved from traditional uses in courtship, treatment of the sick, ceremony, signaling, legends, and as work songs. During the late 1960s, the United States saw a roots revival of the flute, with a new wave of flutists and artisans. Today, Native American style flutes are being played and recognized by many different peoples and cultures around the world.

According to Ute-Tiwa shaman Joseph Rael, "The flute is an instrument connecting the two worlds, the non-physical with the physical. The breath of the flutist is the breath of God coming through a hollow reed; the sound is that of the invisible lover courting the visible lover, the metaphor of the lover and the beloved."

The flute opens a path of communication between the spiritual and earthly realms. The flute is related to the soul, which extends far beyond the physical body, connecting us to the symphony of the universe. Something transcendent happens when you begin to play a flute. You journey deep inside yourself and bring out the cosmic music of your soul. Nothing matters--audience, place, time--you just get lost in the music. You become the music--notes, rhythm, and melody.

The flute is akin to the breath, which is spirit. Its sound is like the wind, which is dispersive, changeable and unpredictable, yet it has the capacity to permeate anything. The flute is also akin to the birds and flight. Its chirp, warble, and bird-like notes make your heart soar. The flute is like the air; you cannot hold it or contain it, and yet you can never separate yourself from it. "Everything needs the air and so the flute represents the voice of the soul and the voice of the wind, and the voice of the birds--those things that are free, free to --move. So taken all together this trio, the flute, drum and rattle, represents the whole voice of Creation."

Zuni Shalako Drum

Shalako Kachina

I purchased this beautiful Zuni log drum depicting the Shalako ceremony from the artist in December of 1991. Elisia and I were traveling through New Mexico on a cross-country tour, promoting my newly released book, The Shamanic Drum. By chance we happened upon the annual Shalako festival, which is a series of dances and ceremonies conducted by the Zuni people near the winter solstice in which they celebrate the return of the sun and pray for rain, growth, and fertility. Shalako is named for its masked dancers who embody kachinas or ancestral spirits. Kachinas mediate between humanity and the gods of rain and prosperity in a sacred ritual performance that ensures the transformation of winter's death into spring's rebirth. Standing ten-feet tall and resembling birds, the colorful Shalako kachinas dance rhythmically, clacking their long beaks together. They come to the human realm to collect the people's prayers and take them back to the spirit realm.

"Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World"

Rumble is a feature documentary about the role of Native Americans in popular music history, a little-known story built around the incredible lives and careers of the some of the greatest music legends. With music icons like Charley Patton, Link Wray, Oscar Pettiford, Mildred Bailey, Peter Lafarge, Jimi Hendrix, Jessie Ed Davis, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Rita Coolidge, and Robbie Robertson, Rumble will show how these gifted Native musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives and, through their contributions, influenced and shaped American and international popular culture. Rumble tells the story of a profound, essential, and until now, missing chapter in the history of American popular music. To learn more, visit Rumble.

"My Seven Months of Living at Standing Rock"

Photo by Desiree Kane

Desiree Kane arrived at Standing Rock in the very last days of May, alongside some comrades, at the request of Wiyaka Eagleman, the first firekeeper at Camp of the Sacred Stones and a founding member of the Keystone XL campaign. He had put out a call to folks in Indian Country for support, and she answered. Over the months, Desiree worked on the security and media teams and always had her camera. Her photos show some of the defining moments of the past seven months--some that made it to mainstream media coverage and others unseen until now. At its peak, Oceti Sakowin Camp has supported as many as 11,000 people, all focused on standing in solidarity with the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people who lay claim to land through the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Both the pipeline and the camps are on these lands. Read more.

The Shaman's Rattle

The shaman's rattle is used to invoke the assistance of power animals and helping spirits. It is also possible to direct energy with rattles, much like a magician with a magic wand. Healing energy can be mentally transmitted through the rattle and out into the environment or into a patient's body. Prayer and intention can be broadcast to the spirit world. Moreover, you can create sacred space by describing a circle with the rattle while shaking it.

Among Iroquois medicine societies of present-day central and upstate New York, the gourd rattle is described as the sound of Creation. The creation stories tell of the first sound, a shimmering sound, which went out in all directions; this was the sound of "the Creator's thoughts." The seeds of the gourd rattle embody the voice of the Creator, since they are the source of newly created life. The seeds within the rattle scatter the illusions of the conscious mind, planting seeds of pure and clear mind.

In South America, the shaman's rattle is a most sacred instrument. The rattle is believed to embody the sacred forces of the cosmos through its sounds, structural features, contents, and connection to shamanic trance. The various parts of the rattle also symbolize the structures of the world. The handle is the vertical axis that ascends into the Celestial Realm. The Upper World is represented by the rattle's great head-gourd, which contains spirits. Joining the head of the rattle to the handle symbolizes the joining of masculine and feminine elements in the universe, an act of fertilization that bestows the sound of the instruments creative shamanic power. From a shamanic perspective, caretaking the rattle and playing it properly during ritual fulfills the destiny of the human spirit -- to sustain the order of existence.

Rattles and drums work well together. The repetitive sound of the rattle, like that of the drum, helps induce trance states. The shaking of rattles creates high-pitched frequencies that complement the low frequencies of drumbeats. The high tones of rattles resonate in the upper parts of the body and head. The low tones of drums act primarily on the abdomen, chest, and organs of balance, while stimulating an impulse toward movement. Rattles stimulate higher frequency nerve pathways in the cerebral cortex than do drums. This higher frequency input supplements the low frequency drumbeats, thereby boosting the total sonic effect. Try a rattle and drum shamanic journey.

Visions of Sound

The most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the musical instruments of Native people in Northeastern North America, Visions of Sound focuses on interpretations by elders and consultants from Iroquois, Wabanati, Innuat, and Anishnabek communities. The authors have listened carefully to what they have said and have had the respect and sensitivity to never lose sight of Native instruments as bi-directional conduits linking all spheres within a spiritually-centered world; a world from which instruments emerge and return conceptually, functionally and physically. What makes the book so very powerful is the sense that its authors have moved beyond documentation of this discovery to link scholarly engagement itself with such a world. Visions of Sound is an important book for all ethnomusicologists and students of Native American culture as well as general readers interested in Native mythology and spirituality.

Free eBook: The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

This eBook is a reprint of the classic 1891 ethnographic study of Cherokee shamanic practice by the gifted anthropologist James Mooney. Based on several manuscripts written by Cherokee shamans, it includes the actual text of the rituals to treat various diseases, information on herbs used, love spells, hunting rituals, weather spells etc., and, in fact, embodying almost the whole of the sacred rites of Cherokee shamanism. The original manuscripts were written by the shamans of the tribe, for their own use, in the Cherokee characters invented by Sikwa'ya (Sequoyah) in 1821, and were obtained, with the explanations, either from the writers themselves or from their surviving relatives. 

 

Originally published as two separate volumes by the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees has enduring significance for both Native Americans and non-Indian people. The book contains the full texts of James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee (1900) and The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891), with an exclusive biographical introduction by George Ellison, James Mooney and the Eastern Cherokees. Mooney's exhaustive research preserved essential Cherokee history, lore, and rituals in a time when such knowledge was dying because younger Cherokees were accepting Western education, commerce, and medicine. The first section of this text covers Cherokee history from the time of DeSoto's search for gold in the 1600s to the late 1800s when the tribal consciousness nearly came to an end.

The second section reveals the rich Cherokee mythology, detailing how the earth was made, how all "people" (both two-and four-footed) came about, and how they could all converse with each other. The third section of the book provides 28 sacred formulas from a mass of over 600 prayers, formulas, and songs. These formulas are centered on such things as medicine, hunting, love, finding lost articles, and frightening away storms. Exclusive to this edition, George Ellison's biographical portrait of James Mooney emphasizes the ethnologist's timeliness and his empathy for the Cherokees and their rich heritage. Completing this book are photographs of many of the chiefs and shamans, a glossary of terms, an index, and an immense section on notes and parallels to the Cherokee myths. Download The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees.   

Drumming in the Great Kiva of Chaco Canyon

I have made pilgrimages to sacred sites throughout North America, but the Great Kiva Casa Rinconada in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico is the most powerful place I have ever drummed. A Great Kiva is a large, circular, usually subterranean structure that was designed and used by Anasazi peoples for ceremonial and communal gatherings. The two masonry box-like vaults found on the floor of most Great Kivas are believed to have been covered with planks and served as foot drums. I first drummed here in 1991 when the NPS still allowed entry into the kiva. The sonic phenomena within a kiva transcend the usual range of auditory experience. The walls of the stone structure reflect, amplify, and transform the sounds of the drum, resulting in some extraordinary harmonics. Drum sounds become distorted and seem to expand and move around the chamber due to an acoustic phenomenon known as standing waves. As sound waves reverberate between the walls, they either cancel or combine, causing certain resonant frequencies to either completely disappear or intensify, change in pitch, and develop vibrato. Within a kiva, it is possible to compose an entirely new auditory universe from the architecture of sound itself. Click here for a guide to Anasazi sites of the Southwest.

"In the Light of Reverence"

The award winning documentary, "In the Light of Reverence" explores three places considered sacred by American Indians: Devils Tower in Wyoming, the Colorado Plateau in the Southwest and Mount Shasta in California. The native peoples who traditionally care for these areas still struggle to co-exist with mainstream society. The film contrasts perspectives of Hopi, Wintu and Lakota elders on the spiritual meaning of place with views of non-Indians who have very different ideas about land, culture and what is sacred. The continuing degradation of sacred sites stems not only from colonial attitudes about the lands where native people live and worship, but also from prejudice and disrespect for native religions. Indian religious freedom is an environmental issue, and the destruction of sacred sites is the ultimate environmental racism. Watch the trailer or rent the DVD from Netflix.