Seed in the Earth Lodge
I have a special treat to share with you on this longest night and first day of winter…a full chapter from Annie Bloom’s memoir: Buffalo Dreamer. I met Annie over 20 years ago when she and Lauren Chambliss guided an Animas Valley Institute program called, Conversations with the Sacred Other at Rune Hill retreat center where I was living in central NY. Serendipitously, Annie and her husband Niles currently live just over the mountain from where I live in southern Utah and I have personal experience with all that they offer through Buffalo Dreaming Lodge, their amazing heartstead and their creative gifts of woodworking, art and pottery they share with others. Please make yourself a cuppa tea and settle in for a cozy morning or evening as you receive the gift of Annie’s eloquent expression.
A Seed in the Earth Lodge
May 1995
Deep in the night, I awaken from a dream . . . I am a seed within earth, under the soil, and I can feel the sensation of warmth and light somewhere above me. I long for it and am stretching towards it.
As I contemplated this dream, I was drawn to find a way to put myself into the earth to experience what this dream was evoking in me. It seemed I had heard or read somewhere that indigenous people practiced an earth ritual of this nature, where they were buried with airways for breathing, or put in a grave with planks of wood laid on top.
I didn’t remember where I got this information, so I asked Bill, whom I was apprenticing with at the time, if he could take me through some form of burial ritual. He told me no, but directed me to Steven Foster and Meredith Little, whom he thought had led a ceremony of this type with people. But when I wrote them and asked if they could take me through a ritual of this nature, they also replied no, saying I already had a guide and he should be the one to do this with me. I wrote Bill back, and he said no again, that he really couldn’t do it because he had never done it himself.
I wrote Steven and Meredith again, and this time they said okay, we have a small group of people coming for a training in May, and we will arrange to train them in the Earth Lodge ceremony. They told me it wasn’t actually a burial, but I would be enclosed in a very small cave which would be sealed up. I would go in at dusk and re-emerge thirty-six hours later at dawn, going without food or water during my time in the cave. Because it would be in May, I asked them if I could do this on May 13th, my birthday, to which they agreed.
I drove to Big Pine, California, where Steven and Meredith lived, and upon arriving was immediately swept into ceremony, answering questions they asked about my intentions for going into the Earth Lodge. After my vision fast in Arch Canyon two and a half years before, I had been in ongoing therapy for the sexual trauma of my childhood that I had remembered on my fast, as well as having entered into apprenticeship to become a vision quest guide. The seed dream felt to me like a celebration of life, coming out of Earth’s womb, a seedling emerging from deep within. I had cried an ocean of tears for over a year and was impatient to move beyond the darkness I had been in. I wanted to feel the sunshine of my dream enticing me forth as I sat enfolded within Earth. I longed to be in joy, humor, and exuberance after the heaviness and restraint of the past two years. I wanted to be sunshine radiating.
Meredith and Steven, along with the six people they were training, held a sweat ceremony for me in a big sauna room with a large wood stove in the middle, where water was intermittently poured over rocks that sat on top, creating big bursts of hot steam. A spontaneous, rollicking blues song erupted that had us all singing and moving our bodies in the heat, and what had been somber within me began to break loose. Afterwards, we drove to a moonscape where we parked, then walked to a basalt protrusion on the crust of the land, an ancient lava tube that had fire marks on the ceiling, indicating that the Native people of this land had used it for shelter. This was the little cave I entered, with big canvas tarps covering the top of the cave and draped over the opening.
Steven and Meredith had been given this ceremony to enact with others by Eagle Man, a Paiute medicine man who lived in the Owens Valley on tribal lands. Steven had us all gather in a circle before I went in, telling us that earlier that day they had received a message that Eagle Man had passed away that very morning. Tears rolled readily down his cheeks in grief and gratitude for this man who had honored them with this ceremony. The synchronicity of me arriving at this time to do this ceremony was evident—I could hardly believe it.
I knew of Eagle Man from Evelyn Eaton’s book I Send a Voice, i which I had read six years earlier. Evelyn was a white woman who lived on the edge of the Paiute Reservation in the Owens Valley in the 1960s. The Indians came to trust her and asked for her help with legal matters, as she could help translate and type what they needed. Over time, they began to invite her to their ceremonies, and at her first sweat lodge ceremony she met Eagle Man, who was pouring water over the red-hot rocks and guiding everyone with prayerful songs.
At that time, a white woman invited into the Indians’ spiritual life was very rare, and I knew from reading her books that she received this with great humility; it wasn’t without some push back from members of the tribe, who weren’t happy about a white woman participating in their ceremonies.
Something beyond my ken was happening with Eagle Man’s passing on the day I was entering the Earth Lodge, and it evoked great tenderness in me, harkening back to the profound awakening that occurred when I was a teenager and read The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux.
ii In The Sacred Pipe, Black Elk tells the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a sacred woman, a wakan woman, who comes to the Plains Indians bringing a spiritual template for a good way to live in relationship with all of life. My only prior association with the indigenous people of America had been from watching TV shows about cowboys and Indians as a kid.
My religious upbringing as a Catholic, which I devoted myself to in my teen years, stopping at church on my daily walks to high school to attend early morning mass or to light a candle, had become abstract and rang hollow as I learned more about the hypocrisy entrenched over centuries in the religion. I, of course, had been baptized and had First Communion, confirmation, and observed all the significant venerated times of the year—the birth of Christ, Ash Wednesday, Lent, East Sunday, and so on—and I had loved all of these ceremonies. But I left the Catholic church in my late teens because the sermons were flat and uninspiring. Still, a longing to experience the Divine had taken hold in me, and I began to experiment with fasting, inspired by the story of Jesus fasting in the desert for forty days and nights. Doing this on my own, without structure or guidance, I was left with more questions than answers.
The sacred rites that Black Elk spoke of had entered into me like an invigorating elixir, bringing alive images of a people living in simple homes directly on the land, observing these rites as part of their everyday lives. One of the rites that particularly piqued my interest was the Hanblechyapi, where people would sit alone in a circle fasting, praying to the Creator. This was my first glimpse of a different way to live than in a suburb on the outskirts of a large city, and I became wistful imagining a life such as theirs.
The Story of White Buffalo Calf Woman
It is told there were two hunters who went out with their bows and arrows to find food, and while walking through the prairie they saw ahead of them someone walking towards them. They could see there was something different and unusual in the way this person walked, and as they got closer, they saw it was a very beautiful woman dressed in fine white buckskin, carrying a bundle upon her back, and she was good to look upon. One of the young men looked upon her with bad intentions, saying to his friend he would like to have her under his blanket. His friend replied he mustn’t have those thoughts for surely this woman was wakan ~ holy. The woman came very near to them, putting down her bundle, and asked the hunter with bad intentions to come close to her. As he eagerly approached her, they were enveloped in a great cloud; when it lifted, the sacred woman was standing there with a pile of bones at her feet, snakes weaving their way amongst them.
The strange woman looked at the other young man and told him to go back to his village and tell the chief to make ready for her coming by building a large lodge for all the people to gather within, for she had something of great importance to tell them. He hurried back to the village and told the chief of the mysterious woman and what she had told him. The chief had his people take down several tipis and erect them into one large tipi. All the people dressed in their finest clothes and came to gather in the great lodge.
Soon the wakan woman was seen walking towards the village, and upon arriving, she entered the lodge and walked sunwise around the circumference until she was standing in front of the chief. Taking the bundle off her back, she held it out to the chief with both hands saying, “This is the first gift I give to you. Behold it and love it, for it is very sacred and must be treated with reverence and respect. Within this bundle is a pipe that you will use to pray and join your voice with all of creation.”
She then unwrapped the bundle, taking from it a pipestem made of wood and a red stone carved in the shape of a bowl with a buffalo calf carved upon it. She fit the two together, and held the stem pointing upward towards the sky, saying, “Your father and grandfather, the sun, who brings forth light and warmth every day.” Then she touched the stone to the ground, saying, “Your mother and grandmother, for every step you take upon her will be a prayer of gratitude for all that she provides for you.” She then gave them explicit instructions on how to use the pipe to bring what was in their hearts into loving words for all of creation.
When the sacred woman left the people, she walked a ways, then rolled over, and when she stood up she was a brown buffalo. She walked further and rolled again, and standing up was a black buffalo. She then walked even further and rolled, and upon standing was a white buffalo. Bowing in all four directions, she walked over the hill and disappeared.
Six people were being trained to do the Earth Lodge ceremony, and each dawn and dusk of my time in the cave, two of them were present to attend to me. The rest of the time, they remained off in the distance, watching over the landscape, but twice a day they would come over to open a small flap and let me out for five minutes. I ghosted into the cave at dusk with the flap lowered behind me and, alone in the dark, I listened as the cars drove away, knowing my two attendants were somewhere out there and entirely grateful for their protective presence. The cave was very small, but had a space in the middle where I could lay down upon my pad. The ground was rough with rocks and dust, and the ceiling tapered off on the sides, with just enough height in the center that I could sit up, slightly hunched over. It was eerie as I oriented myself to this small space, and did it all by braille as I couldn’t see a thing. I wished I had inspected the interior before going in, but there I was, smack dab in the middle of the ceremony I had asked for.
Initially, there were tiny pinpoints of light here and there in the cave, but they disappeared as night deepened, and then I was in unfathomable black. Spontaneously, I invited Eagle Man to come into the lodge with me as a way of honoring him in his passing. Immediately there were unmistakable footsteps at the entrance and a shadowy shape entered. I jumped, feeling a presence lie down beside me, and feeling alarmed said, I didn’t mean for you to come right in here with me! Then heard his wry response, What do you expect when you extend an invitation to enter into a ceremony that has been enacted by my people for centuries? I bowed my head, speechless. I couldn’t see Eagle Man, but could hear him breathing throughout the night, and over time I perceived someone on top of the cave, and eventually discerned it was Evelyn out there in the star-filled night. She had passed away eight years before.
A broader understanding of how the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman had jumped into me and was being lived out in my life unfolded in the dark womb of the cave. I was very sensitive to the shadow of appropriating the Native people of America’s spiritual ceremonies, as one by one these ceremonies had come into my life without my seeking them out. For instance, a year after we were married, I received the unexpected gift of a prayer pipe from my husband, which I secreted away out of sight, because I felt unworthy of smoking it. The following year, on my thirty-fourth birthday, I hiked into the Wasatch mountains to pray with it for the first time, and, with Evelyn’s I Send a Voice as my guide, prayed in each of the four directions with my heart’s truest voice coming out.
A vivid and life lasting image comes to me as I pray . . . all the peoples of the world have their shoulders against the timbers of a massive water wheel, and with a tremendous abiding love of life and Earth, push with a spiritual strength to water a dry and parched land, bringing it back to life.
For the rest of that summer, I went out every morning before dawn and smoked my chanupa. The pipe became my teacher in how to pray, bringing an indescribable feeling of wellbeing and peace each time I did.
Recently I had apprenticed to be a water pourer in the Inipi, or sweat ceremony, as it was in the tradition of the Vision Quest to do a sweat ceremony before people went out on their solo fast. And now I was apprenticing to the Vision Quest. Eagle Man and Evelyn’s arrival in the Earth Lodge felt like a radiant benediction for me as I embarked on the path of guiding others in a wilderness rite of passage that had its roots in the Native spiritual culture of North America. I had been wrestling with coming to terms with the schism that some Native people felt about white culture taking and using what was precious to them, and I was brought to my knees, literally, in my tiny incubation chamber, as I listened to Eagle Man breathing beside me, and Evelyn above, watching over the landscape along with my attendees. She had forged an alliance with this medicine man, who respected her and she him, and as I felt them with me in the dark, I knew they had come to a true, caring love for one another’s differences. I expressed my deep gratitude to Eagle Man for sharing his wisdom and ways with Evelyn, Steven, and Meredith, and to Evelyn for sharing how she was moved by these ceremonies through her books. I dearly loved all of these ceremonies; each one of them was teaching me so much about how to live and how to be a good human being, just as White Buffalo Calf Woman intended.
I dozed off and on in the night, never fully falling asleep because the inside of the cave in the inky black became all about light.
In impenetrable darkness, I see on the wall in front of me an opening which the sun begins to shine through with increasing brightness until the cave is dazzlingly alight—then quickly closes again and is dark. Whenever I have to pee in my bucket, it’s as if I am in a vast cavern and the floor is lit up. At times, a pale, yellow glow plays at the edges of my sight. One pinpoint of light somewhere in front of me flickers and moves, swelling in brightness, then dims again. One miniscule light is constant throughout the night and brings comfort to me.
At dawn, my two attendants came quietly, calling my name, and opened the flap so I could come out for five minutes. They emptied my bucket and stood attentively next to me while I stretched my body out of its nighttime contortion. Then it was time to go back in for the long day, with every part of my body aching—a succession of aches from head and jaws, to chest and ribs, hips and sacrum, legs and feet, from top to bottom and back—a ceaseless pain, with my internal organs feeling like they were squeezed tight.
Every so often I drifted into a light snooze and my body would relax. Even with all this discomfort, the day was playful and loving, but very, very long. I sang, I cried, but mostly I was awash with feeling how loved I had been the past two years as I roiled through an intensity of emotions in my recovered memories of sexual violation. I could hardly believe eight people were attending to me alone in the cave, me a stranger to them, selflessly attending me in this ceremony. I felt the love of my husband and daughter and the sweetness of our little family. I fell in love during this aching day . . . with myself, and all the people who loved me and received my love for them.
With my belly on the floor of the cave, I experience the sensation that this is not just a cave floor, but Earth’s body I am lying upon, and in my permeable fasting state, I have a sudden sensory perception of the mass of her body stretching out in all directions. In a flash, I viscerally feel her expanse, and me a tiny life form among trillions of life forms that live upon and within her. The love emanating from her massive body vibrates through me and I am utterly transfigured in this all-encompassing love. I fall asleep.
At the end of that day, I was eager for dusk, anticipating being out of the cave for five minutes, but it was hard for me to stand, weak and breathless as my attendants supported me. I’d been in the cave for twenty-four hours, and it felt like a lifetime.
All too soon, I was back in with the flap closed and the night drenching me in total blackness. I prayed with the four directions as my focus, recognizing that my yearning to feel the juiciness of my creativity flowing again, after two years roaming around in the dark history of my past, lived in the east. This day’s loving embrace was a threshold, crossing from the heaviness of grief into the sweetness of the present. I was cognizant of the darkness lifting from me.
Rattling and speaking out loud for a long time, caught up in the beauty trance of heartfelt prayers, I stop and the silence is loud. Sitting quietly, the silence surrounds my body in a state of receptivity, like a seed in a state of potent stillness, awaiting the moment of germination . . . still . . . silent . . . my breathing the only sound . . . feeling the time is almost here to tickle the thinned membrane and reach upwards. I sense presences entering the cave and my skin prickles with fear. Nervously, I ask to know if they are friendly or wish me ill, and hear far-off wispy voices saying they are Light Bringers. Light Bringers! I begin to see them, a filmy glow outlining seven small, elongated, two feet-tall kachina-like figures, like the ones I’ve seen in Navajo weavings or sand paintings. They are all business, no emotion, and I am weakened with no volition to resist as they gently push me down, each assuming a place alongside me.
All sense of time disappears as a laser beam of light shines into the space between my eyes, so bright it hurts. One figure comes onto my stomach and begins squishing a white sparkling light into the tissue below my ribs with his feet. One is above my head, and I feel my hair being pulled up as if by electricity. A sun is placed in my chest, a light vibration of sensation is in my throat, and a slow-moving white snake is put into my womb.
The floor beneath me gives way, and I am underground as sparks start to fly and sounds of metal hitting metal ring in my ears. I am gone in a great wind of breath that is hotly pulling things out of me, while an agonizing hammering, pulling, and prodding continues on all my organs—I feel each organ in my torso distinctly, as if outlined in light. A murmuring chorus of voices fills the cave as it begins to rain. My body leaps towards the moisture, bringing me back up from somewhere in the chthonic underworld, as the cave is slowly illuminated with a shaft of light penetrating through the ceiling and continuing up and up into the night sky that has opened above me.
I look up in wonder . . . how is this happening? Sitting back up, I see my shadow fall on the floor in front of me, startling me, and begin to rattle again . . . how is it that I can see my shadow when it’s pitch black? There is a luminous outline around the rattle in my hand and around my body, and the cave glows with an ethereal light until it all subsides and is black again, the sound of rain hydrating every part of my desiccated body. The Light Bringers silently file out of the cave, disappearing into the black night while my interior gleams with the numinous gifts bestowed within me. I am truly in a sacred womb of mystery.
I saw the light of dawn peeking through the little cracks of the cave walls and crawled over to the door flap that had come slightly open with the wind, wanting to be certain it wasn’t moonlight I was seeing. I had to orient myself to come out of this disorienting divine night and find it in me to greet the day and small communion of people who would be waiting for me. I was ready to come out of the cave, but felt ragged with how I hardly knew myself for what had just happened.
I put my things away, get warmly dressed, and do a final ceremony, gratitude welling up within me for the spirits and ancestors who came into this cave of darkness and light. Songs are sprouting out of me when I faintly hear cars pull up and people gathering and calling out to me. I am impatient to emerge. Like a baby heading down the birth canal, a seed pushing through the soil’s surface, I unfurl into a miracle of light and air and the uncanny beauty of soul shine in the glistening eyes of those who welcome me into the world on the first day of my forty-third year. They are singing Happy Birthday, holding a cake with a single burning candle, all of us laughing and crying and beside ourselves with the love of life that is never more acutely felt than in ceremony.
I left Big Pine, Steven and Meredith, my six gracious attendees, and the miraculous light under the earth with its symphony of hues that had appeared and disappeared as it shone in a host of ways. Hallelujah! I was born anew into the light after those grueling emotional years. But who will I be when I get back home? How do I go back to normal? It had been a hard vigil by myself in a dark and confined space—so much harder than being outside in a beautiful place, sitting in the lap of the wide world humming. I was more than full with these deceptively short thirty-six hours in the Earth Lodge, and glad to have a long drive home to let the gifts sink in.
i Evelyn Eaton, I Send a Voice (Philadelphia: Singing Dragon, 2012)
ii Black Elk and Joseph Epes Brown, The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala
Sioux (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)