The Healing Power of Peyote - Blogjacked by Ginger

Note:  If you're confused, then you can thank me.  I retired Lyn Horner from the blog in error, and added Krista Ames in her place.  When the mistake was brought to my attention by Lyn, she wasn't up to blogging because of the same symptoms I'm feeling.  Krista now is going to be blogging on the third Wednesdays of each month, I have taken Sharla Rae's spot until she returns, and Lyn Horner will be back in her regular second Monday slot starting next month.  Sorry, for the confusion, but so glad that McKenna Gebhard allowed me to be a thief of her interesting post.  So, without further ado, I'll stop babbling and post the blog I had scheduled  Please help me promote it.  

Because I'm sick with bronchial asthma and my brain is fried from all the meds I'm taking, I asked permission from McKenna Gebhard to use a post she wrote for Stilettoes at High Noon.  She graciously agreed to let me use it. 

 I had hoped to broach the same topic since I had planned to post more from Lakota Woman, and her experiences with her husband, Leonard Crow Dog, who happened to be the peyote priest who introduced Mary to the "medicine". 

 I noticed Mckenna's warning at the beginning of her post, and I might be one of those who isn't in total agreement with the use of Peyote as I'm seeing in Lakota Woman, the ingestion of the plant provides a mental escape from reality by inducing hallucinations, very much UNLIKE Christian Communion where we delight in partaking simply because it's a celebration of our belief. The taste of what we are offered does not cause visions nor does it taste bitter or invoke vomiting. Of course, McKenna has offered a very viable comparison, but even other Indians criticize those who participated in Crow Dog's peyote ceremonies. In the peyote priest's words..."Grandfather Peyote,he has no mouth, but he speaks; no eyes, but he sees; no ears but he hears and he makes you listen."

 

Next month, I'm hoping to continue on the topic from her point of view. In the meantime, thank you Mckenna for allowing me to share your blog to introduce our readers to the healing power of Peyote.

Warning, the below presented views may be offensive to some and are not necessarily the shared views of the readers and or authors of this website.

So, picture this, you are in a church and it is time to take communion. You wait patiently in line, hands folded, praying you will be worth of such a heavenly gift. It’s your turn, you step up to the priest, he is flanked by two altar boys. You look up into his eyes, he says “This is the body of Christ” and you reply ‘Amen.” He places a thin wafer upon your tongue, you close your mouth step to the side, make the sign of the cross and go back to your seat.  Once you arrive back in the wooden pew you take the serene moment to kneel before God, thanking him for his blessing and asking for his grace. 

Now take this entire scenario, but replace the wafer with a button of cactus or a sip of tea.  I can hear all of the gasps of horror and the shock of what I propose, however the two instances are remarkably similar despite their cultural gaps. To the Christian, the wafer is a gift from God, the body of Christ. According to the Christian Sacrament, ‘When Our Lord said, "This is My body," the entire substance of the bread was changed into His body; and when He said, "This is My blood," the entire substance of the wine was changed into His blood.

Peyote is also regarded as a gift from God. “To us it is a portion of the body of Christ, even as the communion bread is believed to be a portion of Christ's body by other Christian denominations. Christ spoke of a Comforter who was to come. It never came to Indians until it was sent by God in the form of this Holy Medicine." - Albert Hensley, a Winnebago.

Peyote is not eaten to induce visions, it heals and teaches righteousness. It is eaten, or consumed as a tea, according to a formal ritual and offers the opportunity for self-understanding through self-examination. This experience can lead an individual to new understandings about their situation in life and the repercussions of their actions. Road men (Road Man, or Road Chief, is a title given to the leader of the peyote ceremony in the Native American Church) encourage participants to ‘ask the medicine’ or ‘listen to what the medicine tells you’ about a certain problem. They point out how the ‘power of the peyote healing experience can set a person on another course – a life of dedication in a deeper sense’.

Does anyone else see the similarities? Both rituals are meant for self enlightenment and healing. Of course the wafer doesn’t really have the same side-effects. I am sorry as I do not want to offend anyone but can you imagine a congregation of people experiencing the effects of peyote on a Sunday morning? According to the research, the participants could be starting out their week right, as it has been noted that an ‘afterglow’ effect can many times be experienced for 7 to 10 days after ingestion, humming the song ‘Because I’m Happy'...

The peyote cactus contains buttons that can be cut from the root and dried. The buttons can be chewed or soaked in water to produce an digestible liquid. They can also be ground into a powder and smoked in conjunction with the leaves of cannabis or tobacco.

The effects of ingestion of peyote varies from user to user but among the most common are; vivid   heightened sensory experiences (i.e. brighter colors, sharper visual definition, increased hearing acuity, more distinguished taste), difficult focusing, maintaining attention, concentrating, and thinking, loss of sense of reality; melding past experiences with present, preoccupation with trivial thoughts, experiences, or objects,  highly adverse reactions ("bad trip"), including frightening hallucinations, confusion, disorientation, paranoia, agitation, depression, panic, and/or terror. – This last one would totally be my

personal reaction to it!  Surprisingly, no physical dependence or psychological dependence has been reported, although it may be possible.

mental images and distorted vision, perception of seeing music or hearing colors, altered space and time perception, joy, exhilaration, panic, extreme anxiety, or terror, a distorted sense of body (users can feel either weighed down or weightless),

Because of the intense psychological effects of the consumption, the use of peyote in spiritual ceremonies has been present in many cultures for over 10,000 years. From the very beginning, ‘modern” society has misunderstood the Native American adoration of peyote. Fear and lack of knowledge has led to denouncing the spiritual journey as diabolic and satanic.

Serious study of its use, however, began 1890 when James Mooney, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution, researched Peyote meetings among the Kiowa in Oklahoma. He extended his studies of Peyote rituals to other American reservations as well as its use by the Tarahumara in Mexico. In 1918, Mooney testified in favor of Native American at Congressional hearings in an effort to obtain a legal charter to protect their religious freedom and the use of peyote within those rights. The Native American Church or NAC was officially incorporated in 1918. Currently supporting eighty chapters and members belonging to some seventy Native American Nations. 

In the present day, peyote is very effective is in the treatment of alcoholism. Acceptance into the NAC requires abstinence from alcohol and drugs. The community is also seemingly close knit offering the consistent support a recovering addict will need in recovery. The peyote itself is empowering in its own right. The ceremonies help  the addict mentally have power over the alcohol. During ceremonies, the road man will ask the creator to help the person by speaking to them through the peyote, as it acts as a messenger between the individual and the creator. By absorbing the healing power behind the ritual, and the experience, hope in a transformation and new ways of living becomes much more attainable and sustainable.

Whether you are receiving holy communion or looking for spiritual enlightenment through a ritual of faith, in the end, we are all looking for answers to the greater questions. Thus we are all the same. Methodology of enlightenment should not matter, as the intent of enlightenment is the growth of one’s own soul.

Lakota Woman - Posted by Ginger Simpson

Last month, I posted a letter I'd received from an expert on American Indians.  He suggested that if I wanted to get into the true spirit of the Sioux, I should order Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog.  I got the book and have been reading it to aid my writing and boost my research about the Lakota people.  I've been so moved by the story, I want to share the very beginning of the book.  Although this scene is not written about the same era which I elect to share in my novels, the content definitely has the hook that makes you want to read more...plus I'm getting a real feel of what the Indians have gone through at the hands of our government and the treatment they've received at the hands of the white people who call themselves Christians.  Let me introduce, Mary Crow Dog  (her married name):

I am Mary Brave Bird.  After I had my baby during the siege of Wounded Knee, they gave me a special name--Ohtika Win, Brave Woman, and fastened an eagle plume in my hair, singing brave-heart songs for me.  I am a woman of the Red Nation--A Sioux woman.  That is not easy.

I had my baby during a firefight, with the bullets crashing through one wall and coming out through the other.  When my newborn son was only a day old and the marshals were really upon us, I wrapped him up in a blanket and ran for it.  We had to hit the dirt a couple of times and I shielded the baby with my body, praying.  "It's all right if I die, but please let him live."

When I came out of Wounded Knee, I was was not even healed up, but they put me in jail at Pine Ridge and took my son away.  I could not nurse.  My breasts swelled up and grew hard as rocks, hurting badly.  In 1975, the feds put the muzzles of their M-16s against my heard, threatening to blow me away  Its hard being an Indian Woman.

My best friend was Annie Mae Aquash, a young, strong-hearted woman from the Micmac Tribe with beautiful children. It is not always wise for an Indian woman to come on too strong.  Anne Mae was found dead in the snow at the bottom of a ravine on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  The police said she had died of exposure, but there was a 38-caliber slug in her head.  The FBI cut off her hands and sent them to Washington for fingerprint identification, hands that had helped my baby come into the world.

My sister-in-law, Delphine, a good woman who had lived a hard life, was also found dead in the snow, the tears frozen on her face.  A drunken man had beaten her, breaking one of her arms and legs, leaving her helpless in a blizzard to die.

My sister, Barbara, went to the government hospital in Rosebud to have her baby, and when she came out of anesthesia found she had been sterilized against her will.  The baby lived only for two hours, and she had wanted so much to have children.  No, it isn't easy.

When I was a small girl at the St. Francis Boarding School, the Catholic sisters would take buggy whips to us for what they called "disobedience."  At age ten, I could drink and hold a pint of whiskey.  At age twelve, the nuns beat me for "being too free with my body."  All I had been doing was holding hands with a boy.  At age fifteen, I was raped.  If you plan to be born, make sure you are born white and male.

It is not the big, dramatic things so much that get us down, but just being Indian, trying to hang on to our way of life, language, and values while being surrounded by an alien, more powerful culture.  It is being an iyeska, a half-blood, being looked down upon by whites and full-bloods alike.   It is being a backwoods girl living in a city, having to rip off stores to survive.  Most of all, it is being a woman.

Among Plains tribes, some men think that all a woman is good for is to crawl into the sack with them and mind the children.  It compensates for what white society has done to them.  They were famous warriors and hunters once, but the buffalo is gone and there is not much rep in putting a can of spam or an occasional rabbit on the table.

As for being warriors, the only way some man an count coup nowadays is knocking out another skin's teeth during a barroom fight.  In the old days, a man made a name for himself by being generous and wise, but now he has nothing to be generous with, no jobs, no money and as far as our traditional wisdom is concerned, our men are being told by the white missionaries, teachers and employers that it is merely savage superstition they should get rid of it they want to make it in this world.  Men are forced to live away from their children so they can get Aid to Dependent Children.  So, some warriors come home drunk and beat up their old ladies in order to work off their frustrations.  I know where they are coming from.  I feel sorry for the, but I feel even sorrier for their women.

Skipping ahead a little...

The Brule, like all Sioux, were a horse people, fierce riders and raiders, great warriors.  Between 1870 and 1880, all Sioux were driven into reservations, fenced in and forced to give up everything that had given meaning to their life--their horses, their hunting, their arms, everything.  But under the long snows of despair, the little spark of our ancient beliefs and pride kept glowing, just barely sometimes, waiting for a warm wind to blow that spark into a flame again.

Skipping again...just to the conditions in which Mary lived with her grandparents:

The old couple raised us way out on the prairie near He-Dog in a sort of homemade shack.  We had no electricity, no heating system, no plumbing.  We got our water from the river.  Some of the things which even poor white or black ghetto people take for granted, we did not even know existed.  We knew little about the outside world, having no radio and no TV.  Maybe that was a blessing.

****

Wow....I can't wait to read more of this book...in fact by the time this blog is published, I will probably have finished it, but I wanted to whet your appetite.  I'm thinking that Yellow Moon (my current WIP) is going to take on a whole new meaning after this.  My current beginning chapters are way off base, according to the expert, and if anything, I want to get my historical facts right.

Maybe next month, I'll share more from Mary's story.  I think you might like that.  Right?