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A Powerful Healing Ritual by Sariah Mikaels
I would like to share with you all a powerful ceremony that took place not long ago, as I believe it has significance for us all in the spirit of collective consciousness and all one ness.... It was at our beloved Yuba River by a waterfall I was participating in ceremony with a friend of mine as she begins the next leg of her journey coming home to herself. So before I speak of what transpired this day I need to tell a bit of this woman's journey that brought her to this ritual. Ten years ago as a single mother of three, two sons 4 years and 16 months old and one daughter, 8 years old she was continuing her new life post divorce... The children went to stay with their father overnight for the first time. That night, there was an explosion in the trailer (intentionally caused by the father)they were sleeping in. The daughter ran from the home in flames calling her 4 year old brother to follow her....he made it to the door which is where his body was found....the younger brother and father also died. The young girl, in flames, was met by a woman who put out the fire....she was burned very badly and subsequently has spent years in surgery. She is now 18 years old with a boyfriend and a new independent life...a beautiful young woman whose scared body she does not hide... Mom, now launching herself also...mother and daughter having survived and journeyed through a horrendous experience and initiation much like what is often described as the Shaman's initiatory journey. As my friend was packing up her belongings in readiness to move back East she found the police reports of the fire...the detailed description of the incident, the bodies, etc....bringing her back to the past. In keeping with this courageous woman's walk in life and how she is staying present with healing the deep wounds of the past she wanted to create a ritual to release this past and step forward for herself and her daughter to the future celebrating life and strength. Their story is the story of the feminine rising from the ashes much like the myth of the phoenix and what unfolded in the ceremony today spoke of so much more. The present moments journey unfolded like this: She and I hiked down to a special part of the river where there is a beautiful waterfall, in a canyon surrounded by rocks and trees. This particular place has been a sacred place for my friend and we have shared moments there in the past together laughing, toning, singing and gathering with other women. We began by calling in the four directions and four elements, Mother Earth/Father Sky, Grandfather Sun/Grandmother Moon....offering our welcome, gratitude and prayers for support and guidance. I brought beautiful yellow/pink rose petals representing my friend and her daughter along with an orange stemmed rose and a red stemmed rose representing her two sons, a lupine for their father and two sprigs of lavender for peace and healing...all from the garden on this Maidu land I live on where many Native American fire circles have been held as well as Mayan fire ceremonies. My friend identified the red rose as her 4 year old son and the orange rose as her 16 month old son. We laid the flowers in the center of the circle on a stony sandbar in the river...we said individual prayers with tobacco over our hearts to begin...prayers of gratitude and release and gave the tobacco to the river(along with the lupine rep.her ex husband)...next, we created a small firepit in the dirt and my friend began deeper prayers of release outloud gathering page by page of this police report with each prayer, making each piece of paper into a funnel...when the prayers were complete she laid these funneled pieces of paper in the firepit and laid the remaining papers on top of them...she lit the fire as she sat in the East, the papers began to burn ...they burned in a spiral following the direction of a medicine circle..first the east, then south, west and north....periodically the wind would blow in out of the blue and spiral the ashes into the water or flame the fire, the smoke spiraling at times like little mini tornadoes....the process would slow down and my friend would add a stone to the ashes or stir them a bit and the wind would come again assisting a new layer of burning, a new release...on and on it went until the original stone holding the pile of papers down was surrounded by a circle of ashes held together by the last remaining bits of charred paper.....we then began to dig a channel from the firepit to the river....the water flowing in to meet the fire and then to carry the ashes away....the visual was that of a charred womb giving birth to the ashes as they flowed down the birth canal into the river and carried over the falls.....the wind blew some of the rose petals into the water and my friend dropped in more and more as we watched their journey of rebirth down the river...there was a large rock in the middle of the river before two outlets that went over the falls....the petal representing mother and daughter went to the left (feminine) of the rock and over the left falls....next the lavender rep. the healing was released which flowed to the right(masc) of the rock and over the same falls....next the roses for the two boys were given to the river...both of which followed a different path and went over the right falls...(mind you, all the same current that logically would have taken everything the same direction)first the orange for the youngest son, easily and merrily over the falls it went....the red rose for her oldest son kept circling back...coming back to a lone rose petal, that of his sister's...circling back, circling back...I closed my eyes and realized there were more prayers of forgiveness to say...forgiveness of the masculine...on a personal level and then on a collective level for all the victimization of the feminine by the masculine throughout human history...9 million women annihilated in the inquisition, burned at the stake by the puritans, millions in these times in Africa, and all the wars of our generation...wars traditionally instigated and fought by men...a masculine concept...the battle played out in the wars of relationship over and over between men and women...victim/perpetrator....all of course an outside manifestation of an inner battle within each one of us on our journey to sacred union...the balance of the masculine and feminine....I drop more tobacco in the water and look to the river....the red rose now heading for the falls once again with the tobacco following...over the falls they go.....along with the single yellow rose petal...the journey complete. We close the directions and stand in the pool facing the other waterfall that was to our back throughout this ceremony...we look at the rocks in this waterfall and there in front of us is the distinct face of an ancient grandmother, white hair streaming on either side of her in the form of the water falling…she is smiling, left eye wide open, right eye appearing to be winking at us....as we watch all sorts of faces appear in the rocks...We then climb the rocks to overlook the waterfall that carried the flowers, etc down to a large pool below and there we can see the orange flower floating serenely in the center with lots of the yellow petals while over to the right is the red rose and the single yellow rose petal...brother and sister together...such a deep healing represented here as the young woman's deepest wound through this journey has been that she didn't save her brother that was right behind her...the truth of course is had she gone back she would have died herself either from the rest of the explosion or from her own body that was already in flames....her destiny was to survive and thrive... There were so many signs during this ritual besides what I have described...dragonflies, butterflies, vultures....so much teaching medicine from native traditional understandings that gifted us through this process....too many to go into detail with at this time. Suffice it to say we were joined and blessed by many this day...prayers were heard...healing was given....gratitude abounded...yes, for two women, mother and daughter...for this woman, a grandmother...for all women and all men, a healing.....a reunion of the masculine and feminine that is there for all of us to claim, to nurture, to respect and give life to in every moment of our lives, in all our relationships and to all our relations be they human, stone, bird, tree, whale or water, air, fire and earth....we are one family...we are one!!!! May our lives in every moment reflect this truth…each one of us can contribute to the healing of the planet when we choose to heal ourselves...to release the pain and anger and wounds of the past and embrace with an open heart the concepts of compassion, equality, respect, acceptance and love....we can be the collective force that heals, stops the violence and suffering, reclaims dignity and integrity, and restores peace, balance and harmony. ONE PERSON AT A TIME, ONE MOMENT AT A TIME, ONE BREATH AT A TIME....and so it is! |