The Sweat Lodge Ceremony

In September of 1991, I began hosting a weekly teaching sweat lodge ceremony on four acres of secluded, unimproved forest land that my wife and I owned near Bend, Oregon. The ceremonies were conducted by Wasco elder Les Thomas and Oglala Lakota elder Don Fasthorse. Many people gathered to learn, and then left the group to teach others. The sweat lodge or inipi is as a spiritual purification ceremony of rebirth, rejuvenation, emotional release and awakening. The ceremony serves to cleanse the body, mind and spirit while opening a path of communication between the spiritual and earthly realms. The intense heat generated by steam created from pouring water onto heated rocks is meant to encourage a sweating out of toxins and negative energy that create imbalance in life. Sweat lodge ceremonies are traditionally held for a variety of reasons: before warriors go into battle, before and after major rituals like vision quests or for personal purification.

Sweat lodges are unique dome-shaped structures approximately four to five feet high at the center. They are constructed from supple willow branches and covered with rugs, furs and blankets. When a sweat lodge is built according to tradition, it looks like the body of a turtle. This is because the structure represents Turtle Island or Mother Earth. Entering the lodge symbolizes going back into the womb. It provides a safe and secure place to pray for self, others and all our relations. During the ceremony, spirits are invoked, drums are played and songs are sung. Spirits will enter and sing along with the participants and may even talk to them as well. If a person is not ready to hear the spirits, the spirits may not let that person hear them. Only those who are ready to hear the spirits may hear them because that is how compassionate the spirits are.

The Lakota term for sweat lodge is inipi, which translates to "Stone People Lodge." The Stone People, who are often referred to as the "grandfathers," come from the womb of our Mother Earth. The purpose of the inipi is to return to the womb of Maka (Earth) to be recreated. The Stone People become alive again when their spirits come into the Stone People Lodge. Then you can visit with them and tell them your problems. Then the power that pollutes our mind can be released. The fire from the womb of the Earth Mother will come in and destroy bad thoughts and words. Only good thoughts and words will remain. The spirits of the Stone People return our power to us. That's what Spirit does -- the Stone People, fire, water and green (the plants). The inipi is a place of healing, of purification and of prayer for all life.

A sweat lodge typically has four doors (or rounds) to the four directions (or winds), represented with colors, spirit guides and different elements. The number four has long been considered a sacred number in shamanism and Native American spirituality. All events and actions are based on this number because everything was created in fours. The Great Mystery reveals itself as the powers of the four directions, and these four powers provide the organizing principle for everything that exists in the world. There are four winds, four seasons, four elements, four phases of the moon, four stages to humanity's spiritual evolution, and so on.

The whole process is modeled after the Medicine Wheel, which is a universal symbol that can be found in many Indigenous cultures around the world. The Medicine Wheel represents the natural cycles of life and the basic way in which the natural world moves and evolves. The Medicine Wheel represents the archetypal journey each of us takes in life. This journey has four stages or rounds, each associated with a cardinal direction. Four rounds signify fullness, wholeness or completion.

The Riddle of the Saxony-Anhalt Shaman

The 9000-year-old grave of a shaman in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany has so far posed many mysteries. Now a team of experts has gained new insights into this. "The shaman's grave is a key find that provides deep insights into the beginnings of spirituality and religion and shows the central role women played in prehistory," says state archaeologist Harald Meller, who coordinates the project. "Thanks to the detective work of many scientists, we can reconstruct the fate and appearance of a unique woman."
 

He presents the results in the book "The Riddle of the Shaman: A Journey to Our Archaeological Beginnings", written together with the historian Kai Michel. The grave in Bad Durrenberg (Saalekreis) was accidentally discovered in 1934 during sewer works. The woman was around 30 to 35 years old. In her arms she held an infant. A headdress made of deer antlers and numerous animal teeth is interpreted as part of a shamanic costume. 

What archaeogenetics can achieve today 

Bones were found during the 2019 excavations, which made it possible to determine the identity of the child. "Thanks to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, we now know it was a boy," says Meller. "But he wasn't her son." The case is an impressive example of what archaeogenetics can do today. "Their founder, Svante Pääbo, rightly received the Nobel Prize for medicine," says the state archaeologist.
 

The shaman comes from a time when dense primeval forests covered Europe after the Ice Age. "The living environment, which was radically changed by the climate, presented people with enormous challenges," explains Michel. "The shaman was a spiritual specialist who used the spirits to help people and heal others." She was so successful that people made pilgrimages to her from far and wide.
 

She was buried in an octagonal tomb. "It's extraordinary. In general, it's the richest grave of its time," says the state archaeologist. "We can show that it was visited centuries later."

The Power and Symbolism of the Double-Headed Drum

In the shaman's world, the drum is a most sacred instrument. The double-headed drum 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 drum also symbolize the structures of the world. Cosmologically, the drum depicts a microcosm of the universe with its three cosmic zones--the Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds. The two drumheads symbolize the Upper and Lower Worlds.
 

Since the hides covering the two sides of the drum are never able to be strung to precisely the same tautness, one side will always have a slightly higher pitch than the other side. The higher-pitched head of the drum tends to affect higher levels of consciousness. Typically, shamans associate this drumhead with the Upper World, sky and masculine yang energy. It is linked to the mythic Spirit Eagle who perches atop the World Tree. Eagle Brother will carry the shaman’s prayers to the Upper World, or the shaman may transform into Spirit Eagle and soar into the celestial realm. The shaman and the eagle are both intercessors between the celestial and human realms.
 

The opposite or lower-pitched head of the drum affects deeper levels of consciousness. It is commonly associated with the Lower World, feminine yin energy and the archetypal Horse of mythology. The repetitive, droning rhythm of shamanic drumming is suggestive of a horse on a journey. Throughout Mongolia, shamans describe it as the exalted, buoyant state that one mounts and rides from plane to plane. Mongolian shamans ride omisi murin, their name for Spirit Horse, into the Lower World on healing journeys or direct Spirit Horse to carry the power and healing to the intended destination.
 

The rim of the drum symbolizes the Middle World and is connected to the World Tree (Tree of Life) through the wood of the frame and its association through all trees back to the First Tree. Like the World Tree, which links the upper and lower realms of existence, the rim links the two sides of the drum--the yin and the yang. A double-headed drum integrates the feminine and masculine aspects of the Universe within itself. It restores the balance of these polar, yet co-creative elements.
 

The two drumheads also symbolize the two states of existence--unmanifest and manifest. When a double-headed drum is vibrated, it produces dissimilar sounds which are fused together by resonance to create one sound. The drumbeat is the tuner sound, the sound that fuses the unmanifest and manifest aspects of vibration into one resonance. The sound thus produced symbolizes Nada, the cosmic sound of AUM, which can be heard during deep meditation.
 

Unlike a single-headed drum, which has no space in its design to store energy, a double-headed drum is able to hold power, which is utilized in certain shamanic work. When playing a two-headed drum, you can feel the energy you generate move from the head being struck to the opposite head, resonate it, then bounce back and out. You should feel an echo, a rebound of sound within the drum’s shell. That way the energy circulates, comes back, and you can use it again. You know that you are playing the drum correctly when you feel that subtle recoil in your hands or on the drumstick and hear the drum shell ringing. The whole drum needs to sing.
 

From a shamanic perspective, caretaking the drum and playing it properly during ritual fulfills the destiny of the human spirit--to sustain the order of existence. In the rapture of ritual drumming, the shaman brings the Tree of Life into existence, opening a path of communication with the world above and the world below. Materialized in the drum, the trunk of the tree goes through the Middle World; its roots plunge to the nadir in the Lower World, and its branches soar to the zenith in the highest layer of the Upper World. The drum becomes the axis mundi or central axis through which the shaman maintains the world's equilibrium. To learn more look inside my book The Shamanic Drum.