Rituals of Native American Church offer comfort, sustenance
The light of a full moon through desert fog cast an ethereal glow around a spacious tepee as worshipers gathered in the foothills of Palomar Mountain last weekend for an all-night prayer meeting of the Native American Church of North America.
The Rev. John Nighthorse Tyler, a Northern Arapaho originally from Wyoming, beckoned 36 people to sit on blankets and pillows in a circle facing a carefully tended fire in the middle.
On Tuesday, October 19, 2010 while en route to leading traditional Ayahuasca ceremonies in Oregon, indigenous Colombian healer Juan Agreda Chindoy was detained in the Houston International Airport. He was formally arrested by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) for possession of his traditional medicine Ayahuasca. He is now being charged as a federal criminal and is facing up to 20 years in federal prison. Taita Juan is certified by his community and by the Colombian ministry of health as a traditional healer.
As dusk falls Sunday and hordes of Southwest Michigan kids in costume begin ringing doorbells for treats, many local practitioners of Earth-based spirituality will be gathering in sacred circles, lighting fires and participating in spiritual ceremonies to mark the ancient festival of Samhain (“SAH-wen”).
In Celtic tradition, Samhain (“summer’s end” in Gaelic) marks the beginning of a new year. It’s also the midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, considered in ancient cultures to be a powerful time for magic and communion with spirits.
Scientists are pretty smart, but give them a bucket of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, iron, nitrogen and a few other miscellaneous things and see how many tomatoes they can make from scratch.
Nature is smarter.
Australia's first people viewed comets as portents of doom, a new study of Aboriginal astronomy has found.
Writing on the pre-press website arXiv.org, Duane Hamacher from Sydney's Macquarie University who led the research, says Aboriginal people developed an extensive culture regarding the night sky with stories and detailed observations.
