Nomenclature
The Medicine Wheel in Bighorn
National Forest, Wyoming
The Royal Alberta Museum (2005) holds that the term "medicine
wheel" was first applied to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming,
the southernmost archeological wheel still extant. [1] The term
"medicine" was not applied because of any healing that was associated
with the medicine wheel, but denotes that the sacred site and rock
formations were of central importance and attributed with religious,
hallowed, and spiritual significance.[1]
”
Exegesis
”
Locality, siting and proxemics
Medicine wheels are also found in Ojibwa territory, the common theory
is that they were built by the prehistoric ancestors of the Assiniboine
people.
From the air, Medicine wheels often look like a wagon wheel lying on its
side. The wheels can be large, reaching diameters of 75 feet.
The most common variation between different wheels are the spokes.
There is no set number of spokes for a medicine wheel to have. The
spokes within each wheel are rarely evenly spaced, or even all the
same length. Some medicine wheels will have one particular spoke that
is significantly longer than the rest. The spokes may start from the
center cairn and go out only to the outer ring, others go past the outer
ring, and some spokes start at the outer ring and go out from there.
Stone medicine wheels have been built and used for ceremonies for
millennia, and each one has enough unique characteristics and
qualities that archaeologists have encountered significant challenges
in determining with precision what each one was for; similarly, gauging
their commonality of function and meaning has also been problematic.
One of the older wheels has been dated to over 4,500 years old. Like
Stonehenge, it had been built up by successive generations who would
add new features to the circle. Due to the long existence of such a
basic structure, archaeologists suspect that the function and meaning
of the medicine wheel changed over time.
Astronomer John Eddy put forth the theory that some of the wheels
had astronomical significance, where spokes on a wheel could be
pointing to certain stars, as well as sunrise or sunset, at a certain time
of the year, suggesting that the wheels were a way to mark certain
days of the year.[3] Other scientists have shown that some of the
wheels mark the longest day of the year.
New Age writers tend to center the idea of the medicine wheel as an
individualistic tool of personal development. This redefinition is in stark
contrast to the Indigenous view of ceremony and sacred sites being
rooted in the community rather than the individual. [5][6]
Alice Kehoe writes that Native Medicine Wheel rites, along with other
indigenous observance of the cyclical patterns in Nature and life, are
one of the reasons non-Natives "other" indigenous peoples as
supposedly more spiritual than non-Natives.[7]
See also
Archaeoastronomy
Canada's Stonehenge
Inukshuk
Petroforms
Rock art
Sandpainting
Temenos
References
5. ^ Aldred, Lisa, "Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age
Commercialization of Native American Spirituality" in: The American
Indian Quarterly issn.24.3 (2000) pp.329-352. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.
Further reading
Books
John A. Eddy. "Medicine Wheels and Plains Indian Astronomy", in
Native American Astronomy. ed. Anthony F. Aveni (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 1977) p. 147-169.
Jamie Jobb, The Night Sky Book (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1977)
p. 70-71.
Ray F. Williamson, Living the Sky. The Cosmos of the American Indian,
(Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984) p. 191-217.
Articles
Anthony F. Aveni, "Native American Astronomy". Physics Today Issue
37 (June 1984) p. 24-32.
External links