Pipestone's Sacred Story

On Aug. 25, 1937, the U.S. established Pipestone National Monument in Southwest Minnesota. The monument covers 301 acres and includes quarry pits and the prairie landscape surrounding them. Today indigenous people from across North America come to the site to work the pipestone at 56 active pits, offering up the soft red stone so famously used for ceremonial pipes and other items. A gentle slope marks the eastern edge of a long plateau that begins in the Dakotas and runs southeast to Iowa. In Pipestone County, the slope is broken by stone outcroppings that native peoples have quarried for centuries.
 

For Native Americans, this land is sacred. For the Oceti Sakowin, the people of the Seven Council Fires, which includes Dakota and Lakota speaking tribes, it’s a place of creation. Among the Oceti Sakowin, the Yankton Sioux of South Dakota are known as the protectors of the quarry. Though pipestone exists at many locations in North America, the quarries at Pipestone National Monument became the preferred source of pipestone among tribes living on the Great Plains because of the quality of the stone.

Pipestone is a relatively soft stone that’s well-suited to hand carving. However, it’s typically found sandwiched between extremely hard layers of Sioux quartzite, and extracting the stone can be hard work. Contemporary indigenous people maintain the tradition of hand-quarrying stone using only sledgehammers, chisels, pry bars and wedges. They’re taught to use all the quarried stone, if possible, or return it to Mother Earth. Over the years, skilled artisans have created many pipe designs, including long-stemmed pipes, elbow and disk forms and a T-shaped calumet. Carvers also have made elaborate animal and human effigies.
 

Oral traditions of the Oceti Sakowin tell how pipestone was created by the red blood of the ancestors, and of how smoke carries prayers to the Great Spirit, making the pipes created from the red rock highly sacred. Pipestone pipes have been, and are still, used in ceremonies, given as gifts and traded. Native Americans store pipe bowls, stems and tobacco with other sacred objects. They also bury pipes with the dead. Sacred pipes have inspired stories that have been passed down for generations.
 

According to Lakota legend, the first pipe was brought to Earth 19 generations ago by a divine messenger known as White Buffalo Calf Woman (known in the Lakota language as Pte-san Win-yan). The pipe was given to the people who would not forget--the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations. The Buffalo Calf Woman came to the tribes when there was a great famine and instructed them about living in balance with nature. She gifted the people with a sacred bundle containing the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, which still exists to this day and is kept by Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Other members of the tribes are also pipe carriers: stewards entrusted with the care of particular ceremonial and personal pipes.
 

White Buffalo Calf Woman taught them all the things they needed to know about making, handling and caring for the pipe, and about how to use it for praying. She explained to the people that the pipe was a symbol of everything in the world. She told them that the red stone bowl of the pipe represented the Earth Mother and the feminine aspects of the world. The buffalo calf carved in the stone represented all the four-legged animals which live upon the Mother. She told them that the wooden pipe stem represented the Sky Father, the plants and the masculine aspects of the world.
 

The Buffalo Calf Woman explained that when the stem and bowl were joined, they symbolized a union and a balance between the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. She told them that the smoking of the pipe linked the smoker to all things in the universe. The smoke from the pipe carried the prayers of the people directly to the Creator. When the pipe was used properly, the buffalo would return and the people would be able to eat well.
 

Over a period of four days, White Buffalo Calf Woman instructed the people in the Seven Sacred Rites: the seven traditional rituals that use the sacred pipe. When the teaching of the sacred rites was complete, she told the people that she must return to the spirit world. She asked them to honor the teachings of the pipe and to keep it in a sacred manner. Before leaving, the woman told them that within her were four ages, and that she would look upon the people in each age, returning at the end of the fourth age to restore harmony and balance to a troubled world. She said she would send a sign that her return was near in the form of an unusual buffalo, which would be born white.
 

The holy woman then took leave of the people. As she walked away, she stopped and rolled over four times, changing appearance each time. The first time, she turned into a black buffalo calf; the second time into a red one; the third time into a yellow buckskin one; and finally, the fourth time she rolled over, she turned into a white buffalo calf. These four colors then became associated with the powers of the four directions for the Lakota. The holy entity then disappeared over the horizon. It is said after that day the people honored their pipe, and the buffalo were plentiful.

The Huichol Mask

An excerpt from my soon-to-be released memoir, Riding Spirit Horse: A Journey into Shamanism. Copyright © 2021 by Michael Drake.
 

I made my first pilgrimage to the Maya pyramids and ceremonial centers of Mexico in March of 1995. It was an empowering, transformational journey of self-discovery--the culmination of a lifelong dream to explore the pyramidal temples found at Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Palenque and Tulum. I spent about a week in Playa del Carmen, a coastal resort town along the Yucatan Peninsula’s Riviera Maya strip of Caribbean shoreline. The Riviera Maya is known for its palm-lined beaches and one of the largest coral reefs in the world. The beaches of Playa del Carmen are famous for their white powdery sand and crystal clear turquoise waters.
 

One afternoon, I went shopping for some gifts and souvenirs to take back home with me. While walking along Quinta Avenida (5th Avenue), a pedestrian-only walkway through downtown Playa del Carmen, I discovered a colorfully dressed street vendor selling his beadwork. He was a Huichol indigenous artist from Guadalajara. The Huichol, or peyote people, are known for their yarn paintings and papier-mache masks covered in small, brightly colored beads. Yarn paintings consist of commercial yarn pressed into boards coated with wax and resin and are derived from a ceremonial tablet called a neirika.
 

The beaded art is a relatively new innovation and is crafted using glass, plastic or metal beads pressed onto a wooden or papier-mache form covered in beeswax. Common bead art forms include masks, bowls and figurines. Like all Huichol art, the bead work depicts the prominent patterns and symbols featured in Huichol shamanic traditions. The most common motifs are related to the three most important elements in Huichol religion, the deer, corn and peyote. The first two are important as primary sources of food, and the last is valued for its psychoactive properties. Eating the peyote cactus is at the heart of the tribe's spiritual knowledge and core to their existence, connecting them to their ancestors and guardian spirits through psychedelic visions.  

Huichol masks are akin to mirrors that reflect the patterns of face paintings worn during sacred ceremonies. The Huichol people understand themselves to be mirrors of the gods. The Huichol believe that you must look past the ego reflected in a mirror in order to enter the place they call the "original times," before the present separation occurred between matter and spirit, between life and death, between the natural and the supernatural, and between the sexes. They are a culture based on being at one with the Cosmos. The very purpose of life is to reach a state of unity and continuity between man, nature, society and the supernatural.
 

The shaman-artist had some small beaded masks displayed on his table. I asked him if he had any larger masks. He pulled a bundle out from under the table and unwrapped a beautiful life-size human mask. The intricate design featured a radiant sun on the forehead, a stalk of blue corn on each side of the head, a double-headed peyote eagle on each cheek, a prayer arrow on the ridge of the nose, and a deer on the chin. I asked him how much? He said 300 pesos, or about 50 dollars. We settled on the price, but the artisan needed to finish the beadwork. He asked if I could come back later in the day. I agreed to return later that evening to buy the mask and continued shopping other vendors.
 

With great anticipation, I returned in the evening to purchase the finished mask. As I carried the mask back to my hotel, it felt warmer and warmer until it was hot in my hands. When I got back to my room, I noticed a tepo or sacred drum (which is the voice of the gods for the Huichol) in the mouth of the mask. The symbolism was a metaphor for a "talking drum," the name I chose for my entrepreneurial publishing company. This meaningful synchronicity convinced me that the mask was meant for me. I later discovered that wearing the mask during meditation induces a blissful state of unity consciousness with the deities that the mask both represents and embodies. It’s a way of communing with the essence of these deities, channeling them to deepen shamanic trance, to honor them and more. To learn more, read my blog post, The Power of Masks.

Pilgrimage to the Crestone Ziggurat

Crestone, Colorado is a spiritual center that includes an astonishing array of sacred sites. Within walking distance of this small international village are ashrams, monasteries, zendos, temples, chapels, retreat centers, stupas, shrines, medicine wheels, labyrinths, a ziggurat and other sacred landmarks. Most of Crestone’s major religious centers are sheltered in the juniper and pine forests on the lower slopes of the mountains south of town. The Camino de Crestone is a 26 mile inter-faith pilgrimage that visits 15 of the spiritual centers.
 

Since moving to Crestone, my wife, Elisia, and I have made pilgrimages to many of the area’s sacred sites. Although pilgrimage may seem an antiquated religious ritual, it remains a vibrant activity in the modern world as pilgrims combine traditional motives—such as seeking a remedy for physical or spiritual problems—with contemporary searches for identity or interpersonal connection. That pilgrimage continues to exercise such a strong attraction is testimony to the power it continues to hold for those who undertake these sacred journeys. Pilgrimage has been an essential component of my spiritual practice for over 30 years.  
 

Our first local pilgrimage was to the Crestone Ziggurat, a nearby landmark built by Najeeb Halaby, father of Queen Noor of Jordan, for prayer and meditation. Halaby, an American of Syrian Christian descent, built the Ziggurat in 1978 as a representation of the Zoroastrian gateway to heaven. Ziggurat comes from an ancient Assyrian word ziffurantu, meaning light pinnacle. A ziggurat, by definition, is a temple tower with an outside staircase that leads to a shrine at the top. The first of these temple structures were built in ancient Mesopotamia, or what is now Iraq. The purpose of a ziggurat is to get closer to heaven, the home of the gods; in fact the people of Mesopotamia believed a ziggurat connected Heaven and Earth. Essentially, a ziggurat represents a stairway to Heaven where one can commune with the divine.
 

Elisia and I walked to the ziggurat, which rises from a hill on the easternmost edge of the San Luis Valley less than two miles from our house. The wind began to gust as we made our way up the switchback trail to the castle-like observatory, which had been stuccoed a golden ochre color. The ascent up the rail-less ramp was treacherous due to the gusting winds. I hugged the inside wall of the structure as I made my way up the 40-foot tall tower. I stood on the summit and took in the stunning views of the San Luis Valley, one of the highest and largest alpine valleys in the world, encompassing an area of 8,000 square miles. The flat, expansive valley is ringed by the San Juan Mountains of the Continental Divide on the west side and the Sangre de Cristos on the east side. It is a truly inspiring place for prayer and meditation.

The Lindisfarne Chapel

Crestone, Colorado is a spiritual center that includes an astonishing array of sacred sites. Within walking distance of this small international village are ashrams, monasteries, zendos, temples, chapels, retreat centers, stupas, shrines, medicine wheels, labyrinths, a ziggurat and other sacred landmarks. Most of Crestone’s major religious centers are sheltered in the juniper and pine forests on the lower slopes of the mountains south of town. The Camino de Crestone is a 26 mile inter-faith pilgrimage that visits 15 of the spiritual centers.
 

One of the most remarkable structures in Crestone is the Lindisfarne Chapel. With its sacred geometry, stunning interior and remarkable acoustics, the 2,800 square foot dome serves as the main practice and retreat space at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center. The Lindisfarne Chapel was conceived and designed as an interfaith sanctuary by cultural historian William Irwin Thompson, founder of the Lindisfarne Association. The Lindisfarne Association (1972–2012) was a nonprofit fellowship of artists, scientists, and religious contemplatives devoted to the study and realization of a new planetary culture. The group placed a special emphasis on sacred geometry. The exemplar of these ideas is the Lindisfarne Chapel, which is built to reflect numerous basic geometrical relationships. The world’s premier performer of the Native American flute, R. Carlos Nakai, recorded his iconic 1987 album "Sundance Season" in the Lindisfarne Chapel.

Riding Windhorse

Mongolian shamanism is concerned with personal power and bringing good fortune into one’s life. Personal psychic power is called hii (wind), or hiimori (windhorse). According to Mongolian shamanism, windhorse, or hiimori, can be increased through smudging, drumming, and other forms of shamanic practice in order to accomplish significant aims. Shamans raise their windhorse, and then ride on that life energy. This force resides in the chest; it is the fundamental energy of the heart, or basic goodness. If you live a life in balance, doing good for others, your windhorse will be strong. Windhorse is often portrayed as a winged horse and is an allegory for the human soul. You can ride on the energy of your soul. 
 

The concept of windhorse is also found in Tibetan Buddhism and has essentially the same meaning. Lung-ta, which translates as windhorse, is the name given to a particular kind of prayer flag seen flying on mountain tops, on high passes, along rivers, across bridges, on people’s homes and around holy sites. The flags normally have a horse in the middle and one of the majestic mythical animals in each of the four corners, the snow lion, garuda (golden-winged bird), dragon and tiger, which represent heavenly qualities. When the wind catches the flags, the prayers printed on them are carried on the breeze and distributed for the benefit of all living things. The purpose of Lung-ta prayer flags is to entreat the Windhorse to intercede on our behalf, by petitioning Buddhist deities and protectors, to give us good fortune and to remove obstacles from our way. The Windhorse carries prayers to the heavens and bring blessings back from the heavens. 
 

To the Tibetans, the horse represents a very sacred animal and symbolizes well-being or good fortune. The horse is thought to be a spiritual communicator, messenger and carrier. The horse represents stamina, endurance, beauty, elegance and freedom and will bring these things to you. Where it was tamed and especially where used not only as a steed but also as a draft animal, the horse symbolizes force that can be controlled to benefit society. The horse symbolizes energy, and the energetic pursuit of the objectives of Buddha’s teachings. The horse will assist you in staying free of troubles and avoiding pitfalls and danger. Horses are known to have great speed, thus creating a quickening within the mind and soul. This allows one to evolve spiritually and mentally at a much faster or quickened rate. The Windhorse will assist in setting the mind free so that it may soar. You can then ride on the energy of your life.