To help with an interpretation of Black Elk’s account, the author invoked the insight of Joseph Campbell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on mythology: the stories and legends told by human beings through the ages to explain the universe and their place in it. He devoted himself to bringing the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness. Campbell credits such German scholars as Heinrich Zimmer, and Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who influenced his interpretations during his career.
Joseph Campbell was very familiar with the story of Black Elk, and noted his special gift of insight. Generations after the time of Black Elk, Joseph Campbell found himself working the same metaphors and symbols. The “cube” was now in his hands so to speak and, remarkably, in the twisting and turning of the cube he emerged with curiously similar truths pointing us to the same ancient path. Through his insights of symbol and metaphor Campbell was able to examine the metaphorical footprints and provide us with a twenty-first century “spin” that a simple man generations before could only imagine.
Black Elk left a legacy not only to his own people, but to anyone who is willing to pick up the symbols and metaphors and follow the ancient path. In his dream and great vision as well as his life journey he left the lessons to attain peace and wholeness within oneself as well as within an entire society.
Now the “cube” is in our hands and since our lives are often more off-balance than not, we know even without looking that the cube is “all mixed up.” This book offers a new look at Black Elk’s footprints and together with the insight of Joseph Campbell, presents a path with the twists and turns to help click our lives into balance.
As we walk in Black Elk’s footprints, it is important that we come to know more about him and his life. Throughout the journey, there are Meditative Readings, his actual words from the 1931 Interviews with John Neihardt, that provide insight into events of his life and his reflections regarding them. The Talking Points that follow, connect the event of his life journey with the metaphorical footprint.
We begin with the first step…
The Journey begins… Oyanke Wakan
Find your Sacred Place…
Find your Sacred Place
To live a full life one must appreciate the mysterious forces that not only surround us but run through us. Call it what you will: spirit, energy, power, consciousness, Chi, the idea is the same: this “life force” is in every living thing, animal and plant. One key to a full and balanced life is understanding how to manage and maximize this force. A person need not recognize the FULL nature of such a life source, indeed many people live their entire lives on a “hit and miss” approach, not really knowing or grasping its full potential.
To connect to such a force it would seem of primary importance that a person consciously put himself in a setting conducive to apprehending the experience.
Joseph Campbell felt it was absolutely necessary that a person make time and take time to be completely alone, separated from the daily grind of endless demands, and enter a sacred place. A sacred place, according to Joseph Campbell, is an absolute necessity for anybody today. He uses this term to describe a special place, a certain time of day that you can visit to remove yourself from the world around you. When you are there, you don’t know what’s in the newspapers, you don’t concern yourself with your finances or the other thoughts that can invade your peacefulness. This is a place of creative incubation, he states, a place where you can experience and bring forth what you are or what you might be.
It can be as simple as listening to your favorite music, reading the book you’ve always wanted, or even closing your eyes and shutting out the noise of the world. At first nothing happens, but he assures us, if you have a sacred place and learn to use it, something will happen. You will begin to get the “thou” feeling of life.
The first step on our journey of inner exploration is to provide ourselves with a setting, an actual location from which we can begin. If we follow Black Elk’s footprints, we will see that he often would travel out into the Plains, alone, to think and be at one with himself. His whole world was free and peaceful, with little or no distractions. How different from our world.
Set the alarm, get ready for work, do the shopping, balance the check book, the demands of our lives go on and on. There is ALWAYS something required of us to do. More often we get so involved in our everyday activities that we hardly know where we are. The claims of the environment can be so great, most of our actions are economically or socially determined and so very demanding. These things do not come out of our life, they penetrate into it.
Selection of one’s sacred place varies from person to person. In general it’s best if it is outdoors, close to a natural setting. Nature provides subliminal triggers, ancient triggers, firing energy into memory cells gone dormant. These “sparks” will ignite a nostalgic mood, familiar yet unfamiliar, imprinted wiring that will lend itself to deeper thought or insight.
The individual begins his meditation with a certain state of mind, a level of awareness which will eventually lead itself to its own “energy” source. Joseph Campbell referred to this as a level of consciousness, something beyond awareness. It is a connection to a greater consciousness beyond that of one’s own and shared by all. It will be as strong and as deep as you allow yourself to move into it. Everyone has the capacity to move from their everyday happenings into this other place, a place where your mind and body want to go. No one can tell you where your serenity is, everyone must learn to recognize it on their own. But when you even have a small recognition of where it lies, “grab it” says Campbell, and you will put yourself on a track that has been there waiting for you all the time.
Meditation can serve the same function. It places individual awareness on a higher platform allowing one to “listen to the body’s own spirituality and heart life.” This life song is inside each of us. “The world is full of people,” Campbell goes on, “who have stopped listening to themselves.” They go with society’s demands and live a life that their inner voice is not interested in at all.
And so the journey along the ancient path begins: finding a sacred place and igniting the first beacon. The following Meditative Reading introduces Black Elk as he talks about the experiences of his early years living in his “sacred place” on the Great Plains.
Meditative Reading
The Thunder-Beings Speak A Message of Fire and Ice
Black Elk recalls his life as a young boy. He tells of his early visions, the voices calling to him, and at age nine, receiving the Great Vision.
My name is Black Elk, I am 67 years old. I was born on Little Powder River in 1863, the Winter When the Four Crows Were Killed on the Tongue River. To begin with, I am the fourth of the name Black Elk. My father was a medicine man and was brother to several other medicine men. My father was cousin to Crazy Horse’s father.
When I was four years old, I played a little here and there and while playing I would hear a voice singing now and then, but I did not catch it very well then. The first time I rode a horse I was five years old and my father made me some bows and arrows. This was in the spring. I was out in the woods trying to get a bird and just as I was going into the woods there was a thunderstorm coming and I heard a voice over there. This was not a dream, it actually happened. I saw two men coming out of a cloud with spears. As I was looking up to that, there was a kingbird sitting there and these two men were coming toward me singing