Building a Florida Medicine Wheel (part 1)

We will be using a template from the Sun Bear information to build our Medicine Wheel.  We will work collectively over the next 12 months, to convert this into a Florida Medicine Wheel.

If you plan to attend the Ceremony and help build the Medicine Wheel, this is what you need to do to prepare:

1.  Tomorrow or Monday:  This is really, really important.  This is your gift to the Medicine Wheel.  Look around where you live and select a TREE, and then gather off the ground under it, a couple of handfuls of dry,  natural objects but only one kind per tree.  For example, if you select a pine tree, you would gather pine cones, or pine needles, but not both.  We can use flower petals, oak tree scree (leaves and seed stuff) cedar tree leaves, bean pods, whatever you are attracted to.  Collect only one kind, but bring a lot, at least what will fit into a gallon zip lock bag, when it is dried.  Collect it in the next day or two  and put it somewhere where it will dry out before Saturday morning.  You will need to check it each day and make sure it is drying.   Please note what Tree you collected from.  You may want to take a picture of the tree you gathered it under.  DO NOT BRING SAGE.

Orchid Tree

Orchid Tree Blossoms -Drying

 2.  If you make coffee this week, save your old used filters with the grounds.  Put it in a separate container from the stuff you collect in Item #1.  We will use this to dump onto fire ants on the Tor.

 3.  Think about what you will bring for pot luck.

 4.  Make a note of your Birth Date and be prepared to think about Astrology in a different way.

 Saturday Morning,

 5.  Bring something Pot Luck-ish for us to eat.  This will be a lunch time meal, by the time we eat it.

 6.  Bring a gallon of water with you.  Some of it will be for you to drink during the Ceremony and Wheel Building, and some of it will be to help put out a fire.

 7.  Bring the following other items:  Sun hat, closed toed shoes, work gloves, drums and rattles (if you have them), folding chair, bug spray/sun block.

 Saturday, we will place all our objects in a holding spot on the Tor, in the North East corner.  We will identify the four directions.  We will conduct a Ceremony, involving songs and drumming and movement and chanting.  We will make a fire on the Tor. 

 Then we will begin building the Medicine Wheel.

 To make the Medicine Wheel, we will pick up and relocate 36 rocks.  They are different sizes. They will form the shape of the Medicine Wheel, which is a big circle with the four quadrants in it.  Each time we pick up a rock, we will say what its significance is, and offer it to the 4 directions plus Mother Earth/Father Sky.    This takes an hour or more.

 After we get the Medicine Wheel built, we will work with it a bit.  We will stand where we were born.  We will stand at February 22.  We will stand at East, South, West and North.

Then we will conclude the Wheel Building portion of the event.

 At that point, we will eat,  and then you are free to leave.

You may return to visit the Medicine Wheel any time you like.

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Out to the Beach — Sanibel in March

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to go out to Sanibel Island for the morning.  My Daughter, Agatha, had a school assignment out there and I went along for the ride.  It was sunny, but windy and cold!  I was also surprised at how foggy it was.  So of course, the first thing I look at when I am at the Beach, are the Waves in the Gulf of Mexico.(*)  And then, I look left and right.  Then, I look down at the Beach itself. 

I saw an “earth circle,” which is what I call a natural formation that makes a circle.  (A Medicine Wheel.)  This one is made of a spindy vine of some kind.  I saw a nice Pen Shell.  Note the air holes in the sand next to it.  Those may be from sand crabs.  The purple pointy object, is a small Sea Urchin.  It was smaller than a golf ball.  The last photo (with the snake looking object,) is a Welk Egg Case. 

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(*)  You must keep in mind that the Beach is on the Gulf of Mexico which is to the West.  I’ve been here in Southwest Florida for almost 30 years.  However, I spent my formative summers at the Shore, which faces EAST.  So, anytime I am orienting myself even to this day, I have to consciously think about where I am.