welcome to the sacred fire, an orientation
Sacred Fire Welcome Information
I would first like to share gratitude for all that supports life and for us to live fully in the moment. I m grateful you feel called to join us in this opportunity to come together in a good and healthy way to deepen our connections with life, community, fire and all that sustains us.
This document is a brief introduction to our upcoming sacred fire ceremony and serves to orientate you to some of the history, context and format.
This document refers to the community sacred fire rather than the questing element of the upcoming gathering but there is information within that is relevant if you are coming to partake in either ceremony.
Sharing some of this information before you arrive supports us make the most of our time together in the connective experience. We will take time to orientate ourselves to the ceremony in person too and there will be time for questions and clarifications.
The most significant thing you can consider as you prepare is what would you like this ceremony to mean for you?
What do you need or want to express your thanks for? What seeks movement in your life, what guidance might serve you, what prayers for yourself and your relations might you want to offer? What grief in you might need tending? Have you recently lost loved ones? Do you have ancestors from further back that you seek to grow connection with or support healing for? How might you deepen your relationship to the future generations and all of life?
As a dedication we always make this community fire about healing and happiness for all our relations. We can add nuance to this as we as a group and individuals need. In this case we dedicate our fire to support the questers and for cultural regeneration.
The sacred fire as we are offering it is from the Odawa people of North America. It has it’s roots in a time where there was great strife amongst the Huadenosaunee people and an individual known as the Peacemaker came in with a powerful purpose to unite five waring groups. The Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca nations ultimately came together for righteousness, justice and health. The peacemaker used this fire as a part of many skilful ways to reconcile hurt, heal grief and find a way for people to live unified under the great law of peace. There are few stories of true healing from warfare and it feels timely at this moment in history that we should be welcomed to use this altar for healing for ourselves and for our communities when there is so much division, polarisation and disconnection.
The peacemaker taught a version of this fire format and in modern times an Odawa man called Paul Rafielle reconnected with the practices that had been not practiced publically for a long time because of the genocide and cultural damage inflicted upon his people. He brought back together the elements of the ceremony and taught it to Jon Young who taught my teacher Sal Gencarelle. Jon and Sal’s teachers, Gilbert Walking Bull and Goddfrey Chipps were cousins and medicine men of a powerful healing Lakota lineage. We honour all the lineages that support this practice and in working with this ceremony do all we can to bring right balance to honour the origins, including offering some financial support to the families of the medicine people who have helped us learn about these ways. Part of your donation if you can make it will go to this end. We have been given full permission to use this format.
With this talk of lineage, connecting with fire transcends a particular culture or tradition and there is an opportunity at this ceremony to deepen your own relationship with this primal force that is at the heart of all transformative processes on earth. My teacher Sal says that if we want to be connected, connect with something that is very connected.
Fire is at the heart of human culture since the dawn of time and almost every life process is connected back to it. It is said that all knowledge comes from fire. In this understanding, being in healthy relationship with fire is imperative and part of the chaos and disconnection of this time can be seen as a reflection of how we have come out of healthy relationship with fire and so its capacity to destroy has become out of hand. Knowledge on it’s own is not necessarily helpful, it is how it gets used that is key. Honouring fire and acknowledging our own inner fire and how we use that in healthy ways can only serve to support life.
The community sacred fire is a road map back to healthy culture, a template to help us return to connection to ourselves, each other, nature and spirit.
It can be applied towards the release of trauma, grief, as a centre point for rites of passage, building of relationships, to facilitate conversation with the ancestors and the future generations and many more applications.
There is a long format of a 4 day fire specifically for transitioning through loss of a person. This supports the transition of the dead person and helps their relatives with grief and integration.
We will be offering this fire you are attending as an overnight process that brings all the elements of the longer fire together, dedicated towards health and happiness for all our relations, supporting our questers, for cultural healing and honed to the specific needs of our group so we are united in what we are doing together
The ceremony
We tend a fire from dusk until dawn through its life stages from conception, birth, childhood and youth, adulthood old age and ultimately death. We honour each stage of this process and through connection with fire in all it’s life stages can learn and experience a lot about the flow of life and integration of things that are moving in our own lives.
We use tobacco offerings to the fire to offer our prayers. We sit with the fire in prayer and share if needed, sing if we feel, or remain silent. Songs, stories, reflections and are very welcome within the context of being in heartfelt connection with the intentions of the ceremony. There are no spectators, we all co create this gathering and our unique contributions are really valuable and important whether we are vocal or remain quiet.
We always move in a clockwise direction around the fire as we embody the archetypal movements of creation.
We are smudged into the space which has a clearly defined entrance by a water woman. The men tend the fire with one man always in this role focused soley on the fire and the prayer of the ceremony.
The opportunity includes
- Seeking wisdom from all the life stages
- Honouring all the life stages
- Communicating with our ancestors and the future generations through this conduit
- Laying prayers through the fire
- Listening.
- Coming into direct relationship with fire and exploring how to communicate with it
to learn from fire, like sitting with a teacher
- Allowing the things that need to move in our lives to move (fire transforms states faster than any other element)
- Allowing grief to flow and be transformed
- Being present with ourselves in nature
- Deepening our relationships with each other through sharing this experience in community
and many more things that may be unique and personal to each of us.
Some things to consider and understand before choosing to come.
Offering a clear outline of the framework we are using for this ceremony allows you to see whether the architecture of this process fits with your world view and make a conscious choice to attend or not.
Our prayer and vision is that this is a place to be in connected relationship with ourselves and one other.
We are aware that certain themes can evoke strong wounding around them.
Roles
There are clearly defined roles in this ceremony depending on your sexual structure.
We recognise that gender identity is fluid and that this has always been the case in indigenous cultures. In the context of this ceremony we differentiate between sexual structure and gender identity.
It is said that ceremony teaches us how life works and we honour the polarity between the masculine and feminine principles and acknowledge that there is Yin and Yang. Male bodied and female bodied people hold different roles in this ceremonial format that are archetypal representations of the processes of life. Women create the container and tend the space. They are the womb into which the spark of life is brought by the masculine so that life can be regenerated.
Men tend the fire. Historically this was partly because women tended life and men did more of the killing in the communities. When we tend fire life dies, small insects, the wood itself. This is a part of the back story, and I believe there are many more teachings embedded within defining this role division.
It is worth noting that there are many situations in Lakota teachings where women tend fire, but in this particular format, as I have been taught, it is organised in this way.
We have the two roles of water women and fire boys. A part of intention and potential of ceremony is about healing disconnection and I have really appreciated this aspect of the sacred fire in this format for honouring the masculine and the feminine and offering a template for really healthy reciprocal relationship. This said I appreciate this is a tender place for many with big historic wounds. If this feels true for you we warmly welcome you and make an invitation to let go of the known and step into the potential relationship, learning and new experiences that this ceremony with this structure may offer.
If you are new to this ceremony we will explain more about the different roles on the day and how you can participate fully.
Protocols around ceremony
As many of you will be aware all ceremonies are different. Different traditions and lineages work with their own unique alignments to creation. These are important to align with to ensure good conduct and relationship between us and the Powers of creation.
Some basic principles –
Be in an upright mind even though we may need help with struggles and challenges. We are asking for help within the ceremony so it is really resourceful to remain humble.
Approach with respect, humility and a willingness to heal with all aspects of the ceremony including preparation, during and after.
We don’t step on or over anything around the ceremonial space, including wood, water, smudge, tools etc. We attempt to walk in conscious awareness of our surroundings. This tangible act not putting ourselves above anything reminds us to not believe we are better than anything else, more significant, powerful or important.
We don’t drop anything to do with the ceremony.
We are conscious of good conduct with our thoughts, emotions and words.
Moontime, Women and the Sacred fire.
NB - Women on their moon are welcome to quest. It is a time of great intuition and connectivity. We are deeply committed to supporting women to take care of their needs and choose what feels like the most nourishing way to meet this enhanced connectivity in our gathering.
Within this lineage women on their moontime (menses) are considered to be in their own internal ceremony. This is a very powerful ceremony that has a huge depth of teachings associated with it. We will explore some of these together during our time. For the sacred fire the moontime ceremony is given it’s own dedicated space.
The moontime can interact with other ceremonies very easily. Every other ceremony that humans do is formatted and designed in some way, even if under the guidance of spirit. The moontime is different and it is not a manipulation in any way. It is not human created. It is our natural design. As many ceremonies are aligned with life or the possibility for spirit to interact with the physical, the moontime is connected with the dissolution of the potential of physical being. This is in it’s own way about renewal of life, but it is very particular energy at this phase concerned with movement of what needs to be moved in our own systems and releasing the old so that new life can regenerate.
It is understood that this is not just a personal thing for the woman or women concerned, but serves a function to move and regulate what is needed for balance in the local surroundings and our communities. Basically women in the moontime are cleansing and purifying and sensitive both to themselves and to what is moving in the collective. There can be a lot of strong energies in motion around the immediate altar of the fire itself in this process. Some of these may be connected to grief or wounds that are in healing. As she is more porous in her moontime it is supportive for the woman to have some separation from the impact of that as her system is primed to cleanse and process what is in the field. It is a time when we are more sensitive and capable of deep visioning, listening and strong prayers and some personal space, acknowledgement and a dedicated space to tend to that is supportive.
As a part of this ceremonial format we have an honoured place close to the fire but not in the immediate ring for moon women. They are looked after by the community and not expected to work at all. They can separate if they need from the energies and processes of other people that may be triggered by the ceremony. They are supported through this symbolic space to tend and pay attention to their internal ceremony as it needs to unfold and not end up so easily processing the stuff of others. Their perspectives are the first to be harvested when we share stories after the ceremony.
We are in apprenticeship with these practices and at this time feel it is important to offer the ceremonies as they have been taught to us without changing elements.
We recognise the potential wounds that may exist around separation of the feminine and how challenging it can be for some women to feel not a part of something when we do not have a strong context of the value and importance of internal ceremony in our culture. However when practised well, which we truly intend to do this honoured space of the moon time is a chance for the women to rest fully from any responsibility and experience support and recognition of their process by the men and women of the community and have their needs tended so they can tend themselves.
Tobacco
We use tobacco offerings. A small pinch of tobacco is offered to the fire before each manipulation and we offer tobacco as we enter and leave the space. We can offer tobacco at any time to give a prayer. The moon women pass their tobacco through the fire boy.
Tobacco has been used for generations because it is understood that it carries prayer and intention to the unseen realms more effectively than any other plant. Sal has explained this to me that the tobacco plant does not give back to the earth in it’s growing cycle and needs humans to complete this circuit back to nature. It is seen as sacred by so many traditions. We appreciate some people may have a difficult relationship with tobacco and you must do as you see fit in relation to this part of the ceremony, but we invite you to experience the feeling of working with this plant in a good way.
The fire as an intergenerational altar
We have made a considered decision to welcome families at this gathering and children to the fire ceremony. A big part of our personal alignment for doing this work is for cultural repair and it is our belief that having young people connect with these practices is healthy and supportive to healthy connection moving forward. We will invite their voices in and offer stories for them (and us) in the early parts of the nights ceremony. They can sleep by the fire or camp close enough to be in ear shot. We ask that you arrive at the times outlined so that we can support you all to be settled well and orientate the young people to the ceremony in their own age specific ways. We will have tenders on hand to offer some very light structure outside of the ceremonial time but this is a co created camp and if you are bringing children please take responsibility for them at all times and collaborate with other parents/tenders to support each other and our village thrive and flow.
What to bring – more detail soon for this, but what you need to bring for the ceremony itself is
A comfy chair
Warm clothes and a hot water bottle
Something to put on the ancestor altar to represent your ancestors if you would like.
A pouch of additive free tobacco.
No charge for ceremony – healthy relationship
There is no charge for ceremony but it does take a huge amount of time, work and energy to bring together this experience. The reason for there being no charge is so that finances do not stand in the way of anyone attending and seeking healing. If you are in a position to afford to donate it is a wonderful way of expressing your value for the experience and supporting those holding the ceremony to live. We honour the roots of the work through donation of some of what we receive back to the Pine ridge reservation where material resources are very scarce even as the cultural heritage is so rich. Please give what you can, with no pressure.
With love
Jill