American Indian Spirituality Dictionary

While we are sleeping, angels have conversations with our souls.

Read more here: » Angel Inspirational: Daily Angel Wisdom Quotes

In 1999, Bennie LeBeau of the Eastern Shoshone tribe began to experience a torrent of dreams and visions. The visions directed him to set in motion the plans for a massive Medicine Wheel Ceremony. The ceremony is set to take place at High Noon on Saturday, May 8, 2004 at more than 20 sacred sites in the American West, and at many other sacred sites elsewhere around the world, including Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and the Middle East.

Read more here: » Native American Spirituality: Native American Medicine Wheel Ceremony on May 8th 2004

Meaning of dream with Snake from different traditions • In Indian tradition, moving snakes symbolize the stirring of kundalini. • In Freudian terms, snake is a phallic symbol. • Jung, however, interpreted snakes as symbolic of the conflict between conscious attitudes and instincts.

See also: Meaning of Dreams about Snake

Read more here: » Dreaming about snake: Meaning of Snake in a Dream

The Native American Sweat Lodge, Temazcal, is an ancient practice from the native indians of America; a sacred ritual for Healing and Purification. Participants at the Oneness Festival will be able to experience this very powerful ritual both at day time, and, when it is as most powerful, at night time.

Read more here: » Sweat Lodge: Temazcal I/III - The Traditional Mexican Sweat Bath

Native American Indian health care:

community-based health care practices found among the tribes of North America that share the use of sweating, purging, herbal remedies, and shamanism.

(See also: Native American Indian health care , Alternative Medicine, Body Mind and Soul)

Vastu Shastra is the Indian science of space and architecture and how we may create spaces and environment that supports physical & spiritual health and prosperity.
Vastu Shastra evolved during Vedic times in India. The concepts of Vastu Shastra was transferred to Tibet, South East Asia and finally to China and Japan where it provided the base for the development of what is now known as Feng Shui.
Vastu Shastra is the art and science of designing houses, offices, temples etc that swirl with good energy. Indian Maharajas and Moghul Emperors used Vastu Shastra when they built their symmetrical palaces, artificial lakes, and geometric courtyards that thirstily absorbed positive energy.

Read more here: » Vastu Shastra: What is Vastu Shastra?

Ghost Dance

A new religious movement among Native Americans of the western United States.

The Ghost Dance had two distinct phases, both of which originated in the visions of a Paiute shaman living in western Nevada.

The Ghost Dance of 1870: Wodziwob (d. ca. 1872), the prophet of the 1870 dance, proclaimed that the world would soon be destroyed, then renewed; the dead would be brought back to life and game animals restored. He instructed his followers to dance a nocturnal circle dance.

This dance was similar to both older Paiute traditions and an earlier regional movement, the Plateau Prophet Dance, but it addressed very present conditions of deprivation resulting from white incursions into tribal territories. It spread to California, Oregon, and Idaho but, with the death of Wodziwob and the nonfulfillment of his prophecies, died out within a few years. The Shoshone and Bannock of Fort Hall, Idaho, however, continued to perform the Ghost Dance at least intermittently up to 1890.

The Ghost Dance of 1890: Wovoka (ca. 1856-1932), a Paiute Native American prophet, inaugurated the Ghost Dance of 1890 on the basis of a vision he had received during a total eclipse of the sun. His message was in direct continuity with the 1870 dance: there was to be an immanent renewal of the world in which dead Native Americans would be resurrected and the living would no longer be subject to sickness and old age, game animals would be restored to their former abundance, and the old way of life would once more flourish. Euro-Americans, by this time firmly in control, would be eliminated by supernatural means, such as a flood or earthquake. It is uncertain whether Wovoka announced a specific date for these events, but many expected them in the spring of 1891.

Wovoka's message also contained ethical admonitions (e. g. , members of different tribes should live in peace with each other; they should cooperate with, not war against, the whites). In anticipation of the great event and to speed its arrival, Wovoka instructed his followers to perform circle dances periodically. They did so in large numbers, and (especially among Plains tribes) dancers often fell into trances, subsequently reporting that they had visited the spirit world and spoken with dead relatives, who were living a life like the one that had flourished before the coming of the whites. The 1890 dance spread mainly eastward along the length of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. In some tribes (e. g. , Paiute, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Pawnee) acceptance was almost unanimous; in others (like the Sioux) only segments of the population became believers. No Pueblo (except at Taos) or Navajo accepted it, the latter because of a culturally conditioned aversion to ghosts. As news of the Paiute prophet Wovoka began to spread, tribes sent delegations to the Walker Lake Reservation in western Nevada to see him. They returned with versions of his teachings that were sometimes shaped by the particular needs of their tribe.

Among the Pawnee, the dance provided the basis for an important cultural renewal, for the visions of the dancers made possible the revival of old ceremonial activities that had fallen into disuse because knowledge of their correct performance had been lost. The Sioux, who had a number of current grievances against the government (e. g. , loss of reservation lands, cuts in rations), altered Wovoka's message in the direction of greater hostility toward the whites. Delegates like Short Bull and Kicking Bear advocated the use of "ghost shirts" (special garments that were supposed to make the wearer invulnerable to bullets) and spoke of the possibility of armed conflict with the government soldiers.

During 1890, newspapers around the country carried often sensational stories about the "messiah craze" (Wovoka was often called the "Indian messiah") and the possibility of renewed warfare with the Sioux. Violence did erupt in December: during an attempt to arrest him, Chief Sitting Bull was shot to death, and Chief Big Foot and almost three hundred of his band were massacred by the cavalry at Wounded Knee. These events were more the result of government blunders than of a Sioux outbreak. Following the violence among the Sioux and the failure of the expected transformations the next spring, the popularity of the dance began to fade. However, it did not die out altogether.

Wovoka remained active, but shifted his message in the direction of ethical admonitions. As late as 1896 some Kiowa were still dancing, and one of the early Northern Cheyenne delegates, Porcupine, led a brief revival of the dance in 1900. The movement continued elsewhere in a more substantive way. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Fred Robinson, an Assiniboin who had been instructed in the Ghost Dance by Kicking Bear and had corresponded with Wovoka, brought the dance to a small community of Sioux living in Saskatchewan. Combined with a traditional Medicine Feast, apocalyptic elements disappeared and the themes of ethical admonition and community solidarity predominated.

Among the Wind River Shoshone (Wyoming), the Ghost Dance apparently combined with an earlier ceremony (the Father Dance) of thanksgiving to God for food. As a result, the annual renewal of nature took on a cosmic dimension: shamans reported dreams in which they saw the dead assembled in heaven waiting to return to earth at some unspecified time in the future. The people on earth anticipated this event and performed a dance thought to imitate that of the dead. In both these places the Ghost Dance continued to be performed into the 1950s.

In the 1970s the dance was revived by the activist American Indian Movement. Even among persons and groups who no longer practice it, knowledge of the Ghost Dance has not died out and lessons are still derived from it. Thus ca. 1970 the Sioux medicine man Lame Deer reinterpreted an old Ghost Dance song about straightening arrows and killing and butchering buffalo to mean that individuals must live upright lives in order to help bring about a new earth.

(See also: Ghost Dance , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Coyote Energy

Trickster energies. Named from bb bbb the American Indian Trickster Coyote who tricks man into learning what he needs to learn. Applies to one who constantly jokes and clowns. Also applies to the concept of "Holy Fool" in many traditions.

(See also: Coyote Energy , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

classical Indian medicine (ancient Indian medicine, Ayurveda, classical Ayurveda, classic Hindu medicine, traditional Ayurveda, traditional Indian medicine): A group of certain of the ancient indigenous medical ways of India that stems principally from two ancient treatises - the Caraka Samhita and the Susruta Samhita. Both describe Ayurveda's source as divine.

(See also: Classical Indian medicine , Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)

mysticism: Spirituality; the pursuit of direct spiritual or religious experience. Spiritual discipline aimed at union or communion with Ultimate Reality or God through deep meditation or trance-like contemplation. From the Greek mystikos, "of mysteries."

Characterized by the belief that Truth transcends intellectual processes and must be attained through transcendent means.

See: mysticism, occultism, clairaudient, clairvoyance, psychic, trance.psychic abilities, siddhi.

(See also: Mysticism , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

A Theosophical definition of Yuga :

Yuga

(Sanskrit) A word meaning an "age," a period of time. A yuga is a period of mundane time, and four of these periods are usually enumerated in "divine years":

1. Krita or Satya Yuga. . . . . . . 4,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .  400

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . ..  . . . 4,800

2. Treta Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . .  .  . 300

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,600

3. Dvapara Yuga. . . . . . . . .  . . 2,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . .200

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . ..  . 200

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2,400

4. Kali Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .  100

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 1,200

TOTAL . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .  . . 12,000

This rendered in years of mortals equals:

4,800 x 360 = 1,728,000

3,600 x 360 = 1,296,000

2,400 x 360 = 864,000

1,200 x 360 = 432,000

. . . . . .Total 4,320,000

Of these four yugas, our present racial period is the fourth or kali yuga, often called the "iron age" or the "black age." It is stated to have commenced at the moment of Krishna's death, usually given as 3,102 years before the Christian era. There is a very important point of the teaching in connection with the yugas which must not be forgotten. It is the following: The four yugas as above outlined refer to what modern theosophical philosophy calls a root-race, although indeed a root-race from its individual beginning to its individual ending is about double the length of the composite yuga above set forth in columnar form. The racial yugas, however, overlap because each new great race is born at about the middle period of the parent race, although the individual length of any one race is as above stated. Thus it is that by the overlapping of the races, a race and its succeeding race may for a long time be contemporaneous on the face of the globe.

As the four yugas are a reflection in human history of what takes place in the evolution of the earth itself and of the planetary chain, therefore the same scheme of yugas applies also on a cosmic scale  - there exist the four series of satya yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga, in the evolution of the earth, and on a still larger scale in the evolution of a planetary chain. Of course these cosmic yugas are very much longer than the racial yugas, but the same general scheme of 4, 3, 2 applies throughout. For further details of the teaching concerning the yugas, the student should consult H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and the work by the present author, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.

See also: Yuga , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

A dictionary Of Commonly Used Sanskrit terms. From Tada to Yukta.

Please note that all words in grey, like "yoga", "enlightenment" or "kundalini" are hyperlinked to archives further explaining the term. At the corresponding archive you will also find articles related to the term.

 Indus Valley Civilization (ca. 4000-1,500 BC): an advanced civilization in ancient India concurrent with the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations. Numerous sites of ruins lie along the Indus River in present-day Pakistan.

(See also:  Indus Valley Civilization , Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Society of Friends

Better known as Quakers, an Anglo-American pacifist sectarian movement originating in the religious confusion of the English Civil War and Commonwealth era (1640-60). George Fox (1624-91), a "seeker" discontented with both the Church of England and the Puritan and other sectarian alternatives that flourished during the period, attracted a radical group of followers through his prophetic words and deeds.

According to one tradition, Fox and his followers became known as Quakers when, refusing to swear oaths or otherwise respect the status of the law courts, they urged magistrates to tremble before God rather than the law.

More correctly known as the "Society of Friends (of Truth)," they distinguished themselves theologically from other Christians through their doctrine of the "Inward" or "Inner Light," the manifestation of the divine within each individual that, when recognized and nurtured, inevitably led to religious truth. Friends in Britain flourished despite adversity. Many were jailed for their pacifist and other nonconforming ways, while others organized their resources to alleviate these sufferings until relief came in the form of the Toleration Act of 1689. Barred from the universities and professions, they benefited from their reputation for honesty and hard work and often were successful in business.

Friends rejected hierarchy and churchly authority, organizing instead according to local weekly meetings for worship and progressively less frequent and geographically more encompassing regional meetings for governance. Weekly meetings were not led by ministers, but a clerk was present to record their proceedings. Worship was conducted in silence in a bare meeting house, with individuals speaking only when prompted by the Inner Light. The "friendly persuasion" was transplanted to the New World in 1682 by William Penn, an aristocratic convert who secured a royal land grant in payment of debts owed his family.

The Pennsylvania colony was based on Quaker principles of consensus and fair dealing in its governance; its capital, Philadelphia-"the city of brotherly love"-reflected in its name and spacious layout Penn's hopes for a peaceable society. English demands for support in the French and Indian Wars, however, led to a series of compromises and finally, in 1756, the renunciation of governmental power by the Quakers, who nevertheless continued to constitute a commercial elite in the region. Quakers in the new American nation continued to cope with the problems engendered by their pacifism, which led to suffering but also proved instrumental in securing governmental recognition of the rights of conscientious objectors.

Quakers pursued a peacemaking role by opposing both violence and the injustices that provoked it. Their Inner Light doctrine was incompatible with social inequality, so that women enjoyed equal status to men. Quakers such as John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and, later, Levi Coffin, were active in the lateeighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century campaign against slavery. Many contemporary British Quakers also became active in reform causes. Their plain speech and dress, modified over time, were also manifestations of this egalitarianism.

Internal divisions manifested themselves early in the nineteenth century in the United States, when social and geographical divisions expressed themselves in theological forms. From 1826 to 1827 followers of Elias Hicks (1748-1830) near Philadelphia rejected the local elite's embracing of evangelical Protestant tenets and symbols, and called for a return to early Quaker practice.

Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), an English Friend, pressed the evangelical cause further, while John Wilbur's (1774-1856) followers tried to combine the two emphases. Richmond, Indiana, emerged, in the first half of the nineteenth century, as a focus of Gurneyite settlement that was later influenced by the Holiness movement. In the twentieth century, the Philadelphia Meeting-part of the larger General Conference-became the center for Friends concerned with philanthropic and peacemaking activity, while the Friends United Meeting (Richmond, Indiana) and Evangelical Friends Alliance (Cleveland, Ohio) represented more evangelical strains. In the 1990s, Friends in the United States of various affiliations numbered in excess of one hundred thousand; this was somewhat over half of the worldwide membership, with roughly 20 percent of the remainder in Britain.

(See also: Society of Friends , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

band

Each person attracts spirit entities who may attend them according to their needs and backgrounds. It is said bands may include: a master teacher, American Indian(s), a healing doctor, a guide, a gatekeeper, teachers, counselors, seers and others according to the personality attraction of the subject. It is generally accepted the guide may have the strongest relationship and may stay for the lifetime of the person

(See also: Band , Body Mind and Soul)

Self: The nearest English equivalent of the Sanskrit word “Atman”, the essential Divinity of an individual.

(See also: Self , Hinduism, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Crown In the Qabbalah, the first or highest Sephirah, Kether (Crown). In the Stanzas of Dzyan, "Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the sixth to the seventh -- the Crown" (SD 1:31), which means that fohat, in this case working as Eros or divine love, strives to blend atman with buddhi, and the same on the corresponding cosmic planes.

Crown also signifies the summit of attainment in initiation, spiritual sovereignty, or dignity or splendor, and is much used in those senses in both the Old and New Testaments, and was typically so employed in pagan initiatory rites.

The kings and pontiffs of modern times are the feeble imitators of former king-initiates, whose insignia comprised the crown, representative of the glory or buddhic splendor, which actually encircled the head of the initiate as a nimbus, as it does in the case of the yogi in samadhi and of the buddha. The ceremony of coronation was performed in the Mysteries as the outward symbol of the completion of this attainment; and that ceremony is still perpetuated. The later Roman emperors adopted the Eastern royal fillet, which they called by the Greek name diadema; the Papal tiara goes back through it to the Persian royal headdress of that name. The American Indian wears feathers imitating the rays of light from the head.

(See also: Crown , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Ama Deus: Reportedly, a system of healing, magic, and divination used for millennia by Guarani shamen in Brazil. The Guaranis are a South American Indian people.

(See also: Ama Deus , Alternative Health, Body Mind and Soul)

Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM):

1. Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani.
2. Ayurveda, naturopathy, Siddha, Tibetan medicine, Unani, and yoga.

(See also: Indian Systems of Medicine , Body Mind and Soul, Alternative Health, Alternative Health Dictionary)

COYOTE ENERGY - trickster energies. Name for the American Indian Trickster Coyote who tricks man into learning what he needs to learn. Applies to one who constantly jokes and clowns. Also applies to the concept of "Holy Fool" in many traditions.

(See also: COYOTE ENERGY , Wiccan Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)