Star Wheel

The Star Wheel teachings presented here come from an unbroken oral lineage that was passed down across many millennia, and crossed continents between the Arctic circumpolar peoples – from Siberia, through Alaska, to Greenland. My teachers, who grew up in indigenous circumstances in North America, and held deep knowledge of both Lakota Medicine Wheel traditions, and later came across a much older tradition of Arctic Wheel practices, recognized that this more original form represented a cosmological technology that has survived in relative purity due to geographic latitudes and lifeways. The Arctic/circumpolar peoples, including; Inuit, Yupik, Chukchi, and other groups spanning Siberia, Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland, do share genetics as supported by DNA evidence; have common shamanic practices with remarkable similarities across the polar region (by example Sámi Noaidi and the Inuit Angakoq); hold cosmological frameworks often involving circular/cyclical ways of understanding nature’s patterns. These all suggest migration of cultural exchange across this latitude over millennia. Beyond DNA studies, significant  points of cultural transference is illusive and hard to track empirically due to the protective silence of oral-only transmission.

For generations of circumpolar peoples, the teachings similar to the ones disclosed here, were intentionally not written down. This oral method of transferring wisdom ways protected the knowledge from colonial appropriation, academic dissection, commercial exploitation, and misunderstanding from noise generated by intersectional cultural agendas. Oral transmission was ensured only to those who earned it through relationship and commitment.

Contrary to this oral tradition, my elders recognized that we have entered a different era. Climate disruption threatens Arctic communities. Cultural continuity faces unprecedented challenges from external economic pressures. Perhaps most importantly, modern humanity desperately needs these ancient technologies for navigating “Earth Consciousness”, to understand our place in the cosmos, and remembering how to live in-balance with nature. The elders gave me explicit permission – indeed, asked me – to commit the salient aspects of these teachings to written form. Therefore, with careful attention to both protecting ancestral ways from misappropriation, while preserving the core message of these teachings in a more accessible, sharable format with a wider western audience, this work is about ancient knowledge dissemination. To that end, this document is undertaking a transmission of sorts that support those leading this nine-day quest. This written guide is not meant as a complete transmission. Certain ceremonial elements remain within oral lineage, which can be shared by the lucky one who is leading the initiate through their nine-day quest. This document is designed as practical guidance for those genuinely called to lead others through this work.

This guide uses the phrase “Star Wheel” as a step beyond the concept of “Medicine Wheel”, because these teachings emanate from deep antiquity that lives beyond the connotations of prescribing medicine or acquiring special powers. In this tradition, stars are thought of as ever-present, carriers of of ubiquitous light – an unsurpassed awareness that carries day into night, and resurrects once more as a new day. The stars can be used as points of reference. But they also betray a larger garment of a deeper resonance that forms, shifts, and reforms. Star People are the inspiration for this work, and in particular our immediate ancestor Grandfather Sun. Light, and the connecting energy of love is the knowledge underlay that supports every step on this wheel, to eventually find the center of the wheel as life in balance. Just as we move to bring our star into focus, our star also adopts, and moves us to stand in its full spectrum from day into night. This relationship does not impose any special conditions; there is no predetermined outcome that depends on levels of achievement.

The Nine-Day Quest

The Star Wheel is engaged through a nine-day ceremonial journey. This has a vision quest structure that moves through four directional encounters, four days of integration, and a final day of alchemical transformation. This is a metabolic journey as much as a metaphysical endeavour. It respects the turnings of Sun as our life-giving star, with the cardinal directions that it forces us to live by. The Quest requires solitude, focused attention, and willingness to meet what arises with unflinching honesty.

Key Principles

What is outlined here is a partial prescription of practices to adopt over a nine-day period, that can be seen as a quest for personal truth and integrity. Understanding the Star Wheel requires experiential engagement, not just reading instructions from a text. This makes the work of practice a demand for integrity. Cultural contexts are kept to a bare minimum to discourage misappropriation from acculturating symbols and making archetypal associations. This guidance will also be explicit about what is shared textually, and what remains protected by oral transmission.

Honoring Lineage

The opportunity is taken here to acknowledge the sources of these teachings. Including my immediate antecedents who were my lineage holders, Martin Silverwolf, Marta Jones, and their friends and relatives who helped me to clarify my thoughts, even after they had left their corporeal life behind. Also, I need to acknowledge the group of eight elders that Martin referred to as “The Grandfathers of the Medicine Wheel”. This group was described to me as a counsel, each holding one of the eight directions, and collectively holding the ninth direction at the center. As all continents have essence peoples who hold a close understanding how we humans move with the greater good, the eight elders in the circle all represent the eight corners of the world. The Wheel itself discloses to the elders, and with their “life pattern eye”, they guide myself and others from that reasoning. When they talk of the transmission chain, they are describing a tradition that has been connecting sensemaking for more than forty thousand years. It should be made clear that the tradition described here comes through direct relationship, rather than research. Most of the material described here cannot be found online, or even in the pages of anthropology papers gathering dust in the academies.

True to Form

I have attempted to translate concepts without diluting them. Show practical application, especially with regards to the act of creation. Touch on contemporary crises directly, with the hope that this avoids catastrophizing. And at all times, make these practices accessible without making them trivial. To prevent cultural exploitation, there are no attempts to commodify, instead to maintain ethical frameworks by naming the dangers of misuse, and create a sense of community and accountability.

Preparatory Practices

Fasting from the usual amounts of food, water, and emotional triggers, it is necessary to ensure proper orientation of attitude, intent, and relationship. This guide uses frameworks to set the stage as well as sequential learning to prime understanding, and steps to proceed on this nine-day quest. The guide encourages opportunities to respect, reciprocate, and revive what is being offered. The warning signs of disrespect, discounting, and denial, indicate that these teachings are being misused; these too will be flagged as “off limits”. Most of all, there is no room here for prejudice. This nine-day quest holds no privileges for particular races, or other cultural practices, other than the universal principles promoted here. People of good character, and fair intent, well recognize the value of holding ourselves accountable to the world we create, and to create a world that we would want to hold dear.

Like myself, all those who step up and participate in the wake of the stars will be drawn into a rare condition of understanding that our ancestors have also been drawn into. This initiation is an exceptional position to gain explanatory power to view ourselves as nature would; being “as is” instead of wishing what might have been true at another time.

Responsibility and Respect

As for myself, I am an authentic lineage holder, rather than an academic observer. I hope to serve as a cross-cultural bridge that translates between modern Western ways of thinking and the explicit guidance that my elders wanted to share more widely, and with those ready to receive it. Notwithstanding problems of bridging very different world views, I hope to introduce a new kind of understanding that circumpolar shamanic ways came to from traveling around the crown of the planet. Standing at those latitudes brings insight and respect for our planet organism that has no room to see our world as a machine to be re-engineered for economic gain.

NINE-DAY ARCHITECTURE

DAYS 1-4: The Directional Encounters (Solar Alignment)

Day 1 – EAST – SUNRISE – EARTH (Red)

Supervision: Spirit Eye, perceiving senses

Solar Position: Facing East, where the Sun is at dawn

Spirit Guides: Call in the Stone People of the East

Somatic Resonance: Organic Earth Body

Stone Talisman: A stone chosen to represent the East

Spirit Teaching: Spring, becoming life-giving soil

Day 2 – SOUTH – NOON – WATER (Yellow)

Supervision: Dream Mirror Eye, perceiving percipient

Solar Position: Facing South, where the Sun is at midday

Spirit Guides: Call in Water and Plant people of the South

Somatic Resonance: Emotional Water Body

Stone Talisman: A stone chosen to represent the South

Spirit Teaching: Summer, becoming life-giving growth

Day 3 – WEST – SUNDOWN – FIRE (Blue-Black)

Supervision: Karmic Eye, perceiving past participation

Solar Position: Facing West, where the Sun is at dusk

Spirit Guides: Call in Fire, Four Legged People of the West

Somatic Resonance: Mental Fire Body

Stone Talisman: A stone chosen to represent the West

Teaching: Autumn, becoming purifying fire

Day 4: NORTH – MID-AFTERNOON – AIR (White)

Supervision: Life Pattern Eye, perceiving the whole body

Solar Position: Inner Sun, where Sun contains its light

Spirit Guides: Call in Air, Human Ancestry and The Winged people of the North

Somatic Resonance: Spiritual Air Body

Stone Talisman: A stone chosen to represent the North

Teaching: Winter, becoming carrier of seed

DAYS 5-8: FIELD OF GESTATION – BALANCING

Solar Cycle: Four days of rest, silence, integration

Sense: Return to ordinary space while maintaining extraordinary awareness of the teachings that germinate in darkness like seeds in soil

Spirit Guides: Journal daily – what do the guides want manifested through you? What did each direction reveal? Allow the four encounters to speak through your writing.

Somatic Resonance: Gestating the seed inside – the four teachings take root in your body

Four Stone Talisman: Each evening, lay out your four stones in a cross pattern aligned to the cardinal directions. Sit with them. Feel their weight, their witness, their remembering

Safeguards: Resist the urge to “figure it out” or force meaning; trust the regenerative field; protect your silence.

Teaching: Welcoming returns, becoming the orbit of life

DAY 9: The Turning of the Wheel (Alchemist’s Transformation)

Solar Position: late afternoon

Somatic Resonance: “Capturing the space within”

Safeguards: Hold attention on crucial interests

Stone Talisman Turning: –

Arrange East, South, West, and North stones to mark the four cardinal directions on an area of ground, roughly 10 ft in diameter. At the center of this cross, build a small fire from kindling.

Call in the East guides as you pick up the East stone. Carry it sun-wise (clockwise) to the South position and place it there;

Call in the South guides as you pick up the South stone. Carry it sun-wise to the West position and place it there;

Call in the West guides as you pick up the West stone. Carry it sun-wise to the North position and place it there;

Call in the North guides as you pick up the North stone. Carry it sun-wise to the East position and place it there.

The wheel has turned. All guides are now reconfigured in their new arrangement

(see the diagram guide below):

The turning has sealed the space, and made the center and perimeter secure.

Next, light the fire and sit with it, and intently watch with the Five Eyes as it burns down through the legacy of the four alchemical agents: the flame changes from red to yellow, leaving black charcoal, and eventually white ash and salt.

Your attention never wanders from the flame until the white ash stage, at which point you release the spirit guides from their cardinal points, and dampen the remaining heat left in the fire. This completes your nine-day quest.

Teaching: Earth falls to Water, Water falls to Fire, Fire falls to Air, Air falls to Earth – each element surrendering into the next, each transformation releasing what is mortal while preserving what is eternal. The center point where the fire burns is the eternal residual – what remains after all falling, all transformation. This is what you carry away.