Unshod with D. Firth Griffith

Mitakuye Oyasin: We Are All Related

• Daniel Firth Griffith • Season 4 • Episode 48

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In this episode of God Is Red, Taylor Keen (Omaha / Cherokee) and I discuss Ehanamani’s great masterpiece, Mitakuye Oyasin: We are All Related, diving into the pre-colonial / Indigenous worldview of relationship—from balance to harmony to language to the lace weaving us the stars (cosmology and astronomy). Join in!

Learn more about Taylor’s work HERE.

Learn more about Daniel’s work HERE.

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Trigger warning—this conversation has the potential to make you mad. It also has the potential to wake you up. It carries great medicine, if you let it. If you are uninterested in such an affair, move on. If you are open and your heart is willing to see the many-selves dancing about, take a gander.

Welcome And Why This Conversation Matters

Daniel Firth Griffith

Hello. Welcome to the podcast. This is another episode in the Goddess Red series with my dear friend and brother Taylor Keene. Oh, and this is a good one. I uh I don't enjoy editing podcasts. It uh it's one of the banes of my existence. But getting to sit with Taylor again in this way, re-listening to our conversation was actually a rich pleasure for me. I I enjoyed editing this podcast more than I think I've ever enjoyed editing a podcast. This this episode. It's it's amazing. Taylor and I, we talk about a Hanamani or Dr. A. C. Ross's wonderful work, Matakuiasi. Uh subtitle We Are All Related, America before Columbus, based on the oral history of 34 tribes. Hanumani or Dr. Ross speaks at length about balance and harmony and the Lakota or Suyan language, and how it differs both in tongue and mind and heart from so many of the colonizing and modern languages of today. Um, we talk about cosmology and astrology and the stars and fatalism and everything that really makes up this pre-colonial indigenous worldview uh that is held uh by people today, wisdom holders, place-based knowledge keepers, stewards in the truest, truest and most sacred of senses of Earth Mother's sacred kinship and connection and wisdom. And uh and yeah, this this is this is it. I don't even know if these sentences make sense, but if you're interested in any of these thoughts, you're gonna want to tune in. Before we jump into today's episode, a quick note. Podcasting costs money. This costs money. We sink literally three or four hours into every recording, multiple hours of editing, the platforms cost money, the distribution costs money, time and hard money it costs to run a podcast. If you listen or have been a listener to the Unshod or previously known as the Danusian podcast, um, and and you've received any sort of gifts from this, we would deeply encourage you, or at least be wonderfully grateful if on Substack you would become a paid subscriber. It's a couple dollars a month, it's a cup of coffee, no more, but it literally is the power and the energy that keeps the lights on. Uh, in in the age of high technology, it's getting quite, quite difficult, uh, strangely, for us to continue making this podcast. And so I encourage you, if you receive anything of worth and you want to share back with reciprocity and in gratitude, I encourage you go to the Substack. That's called Unshod. Links in the bio. Become a paid subscriber for a couple dollars a month, and uh it'll keep us uh on, it'll keep us going, and uh and we can continue to make these wonderful episodes uh for people like you. And so let's jump into today's episode with Taylor Keene. Yeah, a hanamani. Yeah, and then it's metakwiasi. That's it. Metakuyasi. I've heard so many, so many people, mitikuyu, oyasin, or all different derivatives on the pronunciation, but you're saying it's metakuyasi. Matakwiasi. Matakuyasi. I was I was trying to skim some of my notes before this. Like all good books, we could spend a lifetime studying it. Is there any aspects of this, at least in your memory, or maybe in the notes in your very worn copy, that you want to focus on? Atlantis, language.

Taylor Keen

At last for sure. Because that was the impetus for um my chapter An Island in the East. Love to talk about Edgar Casey. Yeah, remind me where in the book that is. It's in several parts. One is on page 112.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yep. Yeah, the psychic readings. Yes. Yeah, that that whole paradigm for health and healing, I think, is well worth the moment.

Taylor Keen

He mentions Casey as well. Page 71, and I don't know he talks about it earlier than that. But connecting with the collective unconscious.

Daniel Firth Griffith

That whole section is just so powerful. Also confusing to me. Young Young's work is confusing to me.

Taylor Keen

Yeah, I'm I'm no expert by any means. He talks about the mounds, that's what got me started on everything. This book really had such an impact on me. I love that he starts out saying that indigenous peoples have been here for 20,000 years. No no one was saying that in 1990. It's only recently that we can prove that it's 23,000. At least.

Daniel Firth Griffith

At least Yeah, that's that's something we um haven't talked, I think, at at length about. I feel like we've had a lot of really deep conversations, but every time we approach that topic, something else takes our attention.

Taylor Keen

Well, we should start with that.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah. Could you remind me, because he talks a lot about the Dakota at Lakota, like in the book, it's just D slash Lakota. They're Siuian speaking, correct? Yes. And then what Algonquin tribes would be around them, Algonquin speaking peoples?

Origins, Migrations, And Language Families

Taylor Keen

Well, most of our Sian origin stories, which we can prove linguistically now, is that we came from the East Coast. Um and then we moved uh collectively towards the Great Lakes, and that's where we encountered Algonquin peoples. Um we had come through the Ohio River Valley. That uh term is still used in the Omaha language, loosely the place by which we passed to ultimately settle in this area. But that split linguistically speaking between the Dakota stock and the Degihau and the Sheer Weir probably happened somewhere around two thousand years ago. I'd have to look at my notes for my new book, but I'd document all that in there.

Daniel Firth Griffith

That's always so interesting. I I I I get the idea of it, but the practical reality of it seems to I don't know, be infinitely complex because the Cherokee people so your paternal line, as I understand.

Taylor Keen

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Algonquin speaking. No. No, okay. That's my confusion. Iroquoian. So how does Iroquoian fit within the greater because it is Iroquoian its own language set? Like, does it have any relationship to Algonquian? No. It's a different language family. I didn't know that all this time.

Taylor Keen

The Cherokee language is the, I believe, the sole surviving Southern dialect of Iroquoian. So our most closely related tribe to the Cherokee or the Seneca. So somewhere, and just going back to the impact of Dr.

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A.

Taylor Keen

C. Ross's work, Metokiacy. I read that when it first came out. I just graduated from college in 1991, and I think I found it in 1992. And uh it just blew me away. There were so many things in there, and uh he starts off documenting what his understanding of how long indigenous peoples have been here, which is something now thirty-five years later, I'm coming to the same conclusions that he did a very long time ago. I assume I'm about the same age now as he was when he wrote this, so there's lots of interesting parallels. But he also begins with the topic of Atlantis, looking at the creation stories of the Lakota people. And um he describes an island in the east, and that's a story that the Cherokees have as well. I heard it first recounted at the um Stokes Ceremonial Stomp Ground back in Oklahoma, and then realized that this that story was with many tribes. And he goes into discussing the impact of Plato's writing on it, which is what I did in my book as well. So I owe a great thank you to Dr. Ross and his impact upon me. Original teachings of the red man.

Daniel Firth Griffith

I think as we yeah. Yeah, this starts on page 60 of the uh I believe they'd be the only copy in circulation, this yellow copy, page 60. It it's interesting. I think we'll talk a lot about like symbols and structures in culture, but then also language. Because that that's something to me that's been interesting for these conversations that you and I've shared for many months now, is is this linguistic connection. Because even Ross writes that there's a great connection in the Algonquin language to the Celtic and Basque languages as well. Which is an interesting similarity given our previous conversations about the Cherokee creation story of maybe what five five conversations ago.

Taylor Keen

What I find so fascinating about Dr. Ross's work is he's just asking questions.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah. It's it's almost it's almost infuriating in that regard, in a good way. You know, there's nothing easy in this book, but yet everything is simple.

Taylor Keen

No, I've I must have read this book I don't know how many times, and every time I read it again, I'm learn more. He brings up um Edgar Casey's work uh Edgar Casey on Atlantis, and that led me down a huge rabbit hole. Edgar Casey was one of these individuals who had a brain injury and was able to connect to the collective unconscious and uh bring prophecy, most of which are very fascinating. He writes about the origins of man, that there were five different origin spots for man, one in being in North America. Yeah, this is what sparked my interest in the esoteric for sure, fueled it.

Atlantis, Lost Lands, And Sea Change

Daniel Firth Griffith

I think so much of the modern conversation about land is is fixed upon a very false notion that land is stable or that land is static. You see this in the way that certain cultures, especially like the set of culture here in the Western Hemisphere, uses land, views land, devotes themselves to religions that are devoid of kinship or, let's say, relationship with the land. So you see that there. But like when you look at Ross's work, like here on page 62, he's writing about Dr. Piggott, a uh Frenchman, I believe, and archaeologist, who uh took some core drillings in the soil of the ocean floor where he believed the potential idea of a lost land, a lost Atlantis, if you will, lived. And Ross writes that in the middle of the Atlantic, Piggott, Dr. Piggott found volcanic ash in the core, in the core of these drillings, in the bores that they they drilled. The ash he determined, that is again, Dr. Piggott, could not have been formed underwater. It had to have been formed in the open air. And and the one question I wonder how your mind sees this, but so much of our culture and who we are as a species has been built and constructed from land that isn't there anymore. So in Western Europe, there's more land called Dogerland that is under the North Atlantic Ocean that my, I guess I I would say my ancestors lived on and about for hundreds of thousands of years than there is land today. So there's an equal size Western European landmass under the ocean as there is on dry land today. And so you can call our home on that dry land, but that's also only half true. Most of the land that we lived on is now under the under the ocean. Um it seems like the same thing with Atlantis here. I wonder, like, what what is your view on land and land inhabiting when oceans and like the crust of Earth is always in ebb and flow? Does that make sense? Like, is our home under the ocean, or does that get redefined as as things like Atlantis come to an end?

Taylor Keen

Whatever you want to call the island in the east, we have these stories across all cultures. Flood narratives, and now we're intersecting into the end of the ice age, the Pleistocene and the younger Dadreas event, which was probably sp sparked by a comet fragment splitting at the atmosphere and hitting the ice sheet all around the world. So the ice sheet alone explains why so much land that we were on is now underwater, is because the ice sheet pulled up all the the water and exposed a lot more land. In my chapter in uh rediscovering Turtle Island, I talk about Atlantis and where all these things come from. And um, it's just mind-boggling to think about how things move around and cite the work of um Charles Hapgood who um theorized that that the continents or the plates are constantly shifting and uh at a certain point uh the planet's polarity shifted and moved things dramatically quickly. And one of the theories is that Atlantis moved and became Antarctica, which has been a place of mystery and intrigue of what's under the ice up there. I guess one of these days we'll figure out whether or not that's true or not. But certainly the continents have moved, you know. We're certainly no longer Pangea, we're constantly shifting and moving. AC Ross's work, of course, intersects in my mind with Vine Deloria's work. The overall premise for the talk we is we are all related. And it's all about our relationship to the land and that all of the beings on earth are related. So that as a concept is something that I hope all your listeners can try to wrap their mind around to understand. It's taken me decades to understand what that means. Certainly it means all the races of men are related from an evolutionary point of view. We all come from the same beginning. And if we can keep that in our mind and in our hearts, then the world is a much better place, in my opinion.

We Are All Related: Kinship As First Principle

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah, I think there's there's a lot of you know, a lot of conversation surrounding topics like at Atlantis, where culture began and then spread out from as a wagon wheel sort of effect, has the what I feel is to be like a spiritual othering effect. That is to say, like the show Ancient Aliens all the way to a lot of modern archaeological or anthropological work. It's it's to create an others storyline that may or may not even have human hands behind it. But something that is interesting that you're marking on here with Ross in this book is so much of what so many of the questions that he's uncurling for us in the text as as he like approaches the text through questions, and the questions get bigger and bigger, and they get fuller and fuller, and their supposed answers, it's inviting, it's weaving together. It's like we're bundling the experience of life back into what it should have been in this tight, wonderful weave in the beginning. But in Atlantis, it's interesting. So many creation stories and mythologies, so many of the ones that even you and I have talked about in this God has read series, forces modern humanity to deal with very well changing landscapes from the Hopi myths, which we've talked only a little bit about, or the Hopi stories, I should say, to the stories we've talked about with you and your writings, to a lot of the Irish myths that we've brought up very topically, even some Slavic myths, Lithuanian myths that I know, they all begin with this understanding that once we lived there, but something happened and now we don't, and now we live elsewhere, and that their place, that original home, is not only not home, but different, maybe even covered under water. And Ross takes care of, I mean, he he talks quite a piece about this. And and he, you know, calls it Atlantis and things. And maybe it's exactly right, like you were alluding, maybe it's still there just in a different tectonic location. But it it is just interesting how how many human myths deal with migrations because of a changing landscape. That seems to be something that we all share, regardless of whether or not we all share that same shifting landscape. It seems to like pull us together to knit those stories into a singular fabric of human experience, I think.

Taylor Keen

I was just um skimming through the book again. It brings me such joy. Um around page 152 is where he starts talking about astrology. And I I just remember at the time I I'd never really, I mean, I I knew that I was born on June 27th, so I was a cancer, but I had never really thought about star charts or any of that. Just looking at all those different star charts. His mentor and spiritual leader Dawson has no horses, his um star map, which corresponds to the astrological wheel at the time of your birth and in a specific location. His is a triangle. King David's is, of course, the six-pointed star of David. He has Fool's Crow on there, and then Jesus. When I've done mine, mine's in the shape of an infinity symbol. I I often look for things that are poo-pooed by everybody else, especially especially churches, and astrology is one of those things that really seems to be a trigger point for a lot of people. It gets very angry very quickly to discuss it. And I wonder why.

Astrology, Ceremony, And Real Skepticism

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah. Well, I feel in in the same sense as a lot of yoga traditions have been bastardized by well-intentioned white people without understanding the truth of it or maybe the power of the particulars. I think astrology is something very similar. Any, I should say, every ancient culture I've ever studied, the Lakota Dakota culture that Ross is writing about or writing from is uh no exception, has some form of astrological calendar or at least astrological understanding of the psyche or the human experience within the clay meat suit, um, or the psyche's experience in its in its cage of bones, or however you want to say that. But it it does, it seems like a lot of astrology today is this very simple little website you can go to and learn everything about yourself without asking any questions. And and again, though, going back to what you were saying earlier, so much of Ross's work is the asking of those questions, right? Like even in the beginning, When he's talking about ceremony, um, like more towards the teens, maybe 15 or 16 page. Fifteen or sixteen, he's talking about his understanding of ceremony and as it's uncurling before him when he has needs, you know, he makes the tobacco ties and he struggles through that, and he just emerges. It's it's a journey of understanding. And I think astrology is very easy in the modern sense to just jump into the end without the journey, without going through that. Um, like he writes about ceremony. I wish I could I might be able to pull this up fast enough. Oh, he says, any this is on page 13. Anytime you wanted knowledge or information, you went to ceremony. But I think so many of us go to knowledge, either we skip ceremony, or we go to ceremony for other reasons without the intention of actually acquiring that knowledge or wisdom. I think astrology is the same way. So I I can see why it's alienating or touchy for a lot of people as you begin to talk about it, especially in a very caring sense. As you do.

Taylor Keen

So it's just it's just so curious. Just back on the astrology thing, I'm just skimming through here on page 152. Scientific discoveries that rocks contain vibrations just reinforce my belief that the stars are alive and the possibility of one spirit acquiring vibrations from them even more believable. It was at this point in my life that I wanted to acquire more knowledge on astrology. In visiting with my cousin and his wife, I learned that she was a novice astrologer. I asked her, where could I get hold of an astrologer who could teach me more about astrology? She gave me the name of a New Age bookstore in Minneapolis. Exactly. That's exactly my point, you know. Just curious and says, I need to learn more about this. And off he goes, and he was not afraid to blend Eastern mysticism with indigenous thought and all these different cultures. Just a very curious person. I just love that. He was not offended to go to a new age bookstore in Minneapolis. And uh he goes back to Casey many times. I forgot how many times he mentioned Casey. I'm gonna have to do a deep dive back into Casey again. If your birth date is between June 24th and July 24th, you are known as a son in cancer, which is me. If you were born from October to November, you are called a Scorpio or Southern Scorpio. And then Pisces. Casey said in the psychic readings that if you were born during any one of these three times, one of the characteristics that will dominate in this life is spirituality. So he goes to the sundance ground and starts asking sundancers when they were born.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Well, it's uh you know, it speaks of an organization that is cosmic in its origins, which I think a lot of what Ross is talking about when he's speaking of the what does he call it, the white buffalo constellation with Pallades at its head. I think it's towards the end of the book.

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Yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Page 169. And he's talking, I mean, we can talk all day along about Pallades and uh things. I know he writes quite a quite a piece about it, but this this idea that so much of earthly human understanding that is earthlings on earth is still resonating, maybe even springing from some cosmic origin that that still has a you know woven thread with us today, which which which speaks to the truth of astrology when approaching, when approaching it right, that there is an actual web being woven that it's not just chaos in some eternal sense, but that chaos has found in this life's experience something that is healing as a community, right? Like if everybody was spiritual, then everybody would sun dance. The point being there's a sense of organization here, which seems to stand outside of this Western civilized view of organization, going back so many episodes you and I talking about to Tocqueville, who claim that the native peoples of America can never be civilized because they never will be organized. So if you were to look at these two thoughts together, it kind of feels like what Ross is saying, not that he cares to speak about Tocqueville or the idea of civilization or anything else. He's not talking about any of those things. But he seems to be talking about an organization that extends even like the plane of this Earth's existence, that's also cosmic. Which kind of like 10 ups the idea of Tocqueville, you know, like I don't know. That's a that's a very interesting thought if you let your mind wander. Like we're cosmic civilization. Like you're talking about like Earth civil like like no no no, these views are cosmic in their origin.

Taylor Keen

If one is to believe that all life on Mother Earth is related, why doesn't that extend to the stars?

Cosmic Organization Versus Western Order

Daniel Firth Griffith

Right, right. Yeah. Especially when most sacred times of the year in every culture I've ever studied, this one not exempt, deals with stars and their rising or setting or becoming into fullness or things like this, like the Pallades and the Irish calendar that you and I have talked about, the Pallades and the Lakota Dakota calendar. Even the Seven Sisters, you know, that Pallades. And uh I don't know what conversation it was between you and I. I believe it was one of the first, maybe the Second Indigenous talk on agriculture or the view of agriculture. I think it's like episode two or three of the God is Red series. I could be wrong on that. What I mean is, and I'll stop rambling, if ceremony is to have knowledge and wisdom, and so much of ceremony surrounds the rising and setting of cosmic bodies, then it would also lead one to think that knowledge and wisdom has connection to the rising and setting of cosmic bodies, that is to say, in the cosmic bodies themselves. So it doesn't seem like that much of a stretch if you believe in ceremony, to believe in a cosmology of relation. We're not just related here, we're related there. So have that vertical relationship.

Taylor Keen

Love that he he has a chapter entitled Strategies for Global Harmony.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah. Yeah. It's I'm trying to find it. I don't have that one marked in my I remember reading 179. One question I have for you is what we've been discussing about this astrology and cosmic, you know, connection, let's call it. Does that have anything to do with the concept you were talking about a couple conversations ago about fatalism? So many people look at indigenous views of life and they call it fatalistic. Does it seem fatalistic because those looking into that culture don't come from a society that honors the sacred connection to the stars? Because you could call astrology fatalistic.

unknown

Right?

Daniel Firth Griffith

I might beat spiritual because I'm born at the spiritual time of year. That that's fatalism. I didn't choose. There's no free will item to that. How does fatalism and astrology and cosmology fit within each other?

Taylor Keen

Now we're talking.

Daniel Firth Griffith

I'm trying to get you to go deep, you know? I feel like you can go real deep on this.

Fatalism, Free Will, And The Noetic Field

Near-Death, Plant Medicine, And Healing

Taylor Keen

Yeah, I've I've I've always believed um I remember this is a Lakota story. But it's about uh two Lakota brothers who were um curious about taking a journey. They're not even sure which direction to go to. But they're sort of morbidly fascinated with the West because that is the direction of death. And so they began their journey, and by the end of the first day they come to a high heel, and then they can they turn around and they can see their home camp and everything else. And uh the younger brother looks to the older one and says, What lies beyond? And the older brother doesn't answer and they journey on. End of the second day they look back and they can't see their home anymore, but they can see the hill that they went to. They journeyed on to a third day and the fourth day, and the younger brother asks again, What lies beyond? And finally the older brother answers him and says, Is that a question? And then says, It's the Great Spirit. And I've always used that as a way to explain our notion of God to people, and people sometimes have a hard time understanding that, but God is the question of all that we do not understand. And um I told that story to one of my good friends, not very religious Harvard prof, and his medical uh fiber optic type stuff, super brainy. And he scoffed and says, You all are fatalists to that story. So I've always worn that as a badge of honor. But yes, some some things are you know, if if we look at life I've been totally into the field of noetics. I don't know if we've talked about this yet. But basically this is a theory that consciousness is much greater than what our brain can perceive. It's the theory that you know, we this goes back to the Greeks who often pondered the differences between mind, body, and soul and what all that meant. And um probably best uh typified for me to explain the field of noetics is to about a near-death experience that many people have had. When I was a a young teenager, I was involved in a canoeing accident and I basically drowned. I was revived, but I remember as it was happening, I didn't realize how much trouble I was in until the dumped over canoe that I was riding on. Uh, came to rapids. And that's when I knew why everyone was so frantic trying to get me out of there. And um was such a young little nerd that I had all of my gear on, including a Boy Scout canteen, which became wrapped around one of the crossbeams. And I eventually couldn't breathe anymore, so tired. And I remember as I was getting closer, I was assumed that I was just passing out from lack of oxygen. Um, but an extreme calmness came over me, and some sort of voice inside my head or God or a spirit from the other side comforted me and said, It's okay, you can let go. And I was holding on to the top of the canoe with just my fingers. I remember letting go, and there was no pain, there was no fear or anything else. Of course, then a violent upheaval as my knees were brought to my chest and all the water came out, and a bunch of other little teenage boy scouts were crying because they thought I was dead, and I came back. But that experience has forever changed me, and I've been studying it all. But right near the point of death, our body becomes devoid of all of the chemicals that regulate what we would call consciousness, and it's known as GABA. And with it, we're hyper-focused on everything around us. Little babies have lots of GABA. That's why they can connect with their mother and father, those who care for them, and um psychoactive substances, entheogens. Right. The theory is that they're not taking you on a trip, they're inhibiting the GABA so that you see the collective consciousness, not even unconscious. Right. What's what's there? What's what's really there? Yeah. And one can attain that state through uh near-death experience. People have had out-of-body experiences when they're anesthetized or have a heart attack and they see themselves hovering in the room above. But m most most of the interesting near-death experiences often involve going through a tunnel, coming out, encountering a being, a judge of sorts. Sometimes it's maybe Jesus or God or Mohammed or Buddha, just depending on what upbringing they had. And they all describe and they'll there's no words that can explain what I felt that this language is not complex enough for it, but that they are like a molecule that's in love with all of the rest of the universe. And so if that field of noetics is true, then that's what we experience in the afterlife. And from that perspective, it's all fatalism. This trial of life is merely a trial, and when we're done, we get to go back to being connected to the rest of the universe. I um a couple of summers ago, I went through some ketamine therapy, dealing with life-changing issues, and I felt it was time for some type of ceremony, so I went to this retreat, and I think all of us deal with trauma and those sort of things, and I was trying to work my way out of some of that. I was finding my mind going towards fear and shame way too often, and I was trying to reprogram my brain to, you know, for its brain, the brain plasticity to improve. And um I'm firmly convinced that antiogens originally plant medicines, and now some of them are recreated, but ketamine can help mimic some of the activities that the brain feels during near-death experiences. Had the most beautiful experience. People will with near-death experiences will speak of you know their life flashing before them. Some of my other buddies who have really encouraged me to go through the ketamine training and therapy. They said, Don't be surprised if your life flashes in front of you. And I had once gone to see a Del Jaholi exhibit where he had made all these glass structures and the patterns of uh Navajo rugs. And then he uh rolled the glass up into cylinders. And so I saw one of those cylinders during my therapy. First, I was in space, and I've never had good eyes, as evidenced by my glasses I'm wearing right now. But at that moment, I could see millions of stars. And now I understand why people say things like, I can't put it into words. I don't know. I the more I looked, the deeper I looked, the further that I saw. And my brain was so happy that art glass object had all these little windows with different people in my life, and it all just spun by me. And again, I don't have the words to explain, but I know that it was everybody in my life, and then it turned into a um black hole-type vortex, and soon I was up above it and then down in it, and I fell and I fell until I finally bounced softly off the bottom of whatever this was. And I looked down at myself and I had my human form, but I was a being made of light, like a whole bunch of little neon amber-toned light objects. And I carry a lot of my emotional pain in a portion of my back. It's where my back always goes out if I have troubles, and um if I get stressed, I feel pain back there. It's just wherever I evidence it, everyone's a little different. And I remember thinking, ooh, I better look at that spot, and sure enough, it was all dark. And I thought. And it was then um, and this comes from the tribal traditions, but the ant people from the underworld, and they were little beans of light too, and they came out and they fixed my dark spot. And then they pushed me out of the vortex up and out, and then I was in the stars, and I had become a sphere of little blue light. And at that point in in the therapy, they had given me my second dose of ketamine. And uh that's when it started getting really funky. Sound started to change. Um, and I really felt like I was not here anymore. That that the reality of you know, I was waking up as a soul. That's the only way I thought I can describe it. And I began to hear an ancient language, and I thought to myself, I know this, I know it, I know it. And it began to come back to me, and I don't know, I I felt that eternal gratitude and love that other people have such a tough time putting into words, it's the only thing I can say that how I felt, and I was like, so that part of the journey is over, so this is the real journey. This is so beautiful. And I was beginning to remember what my soul always knew, and that's when I came out of it. But if that's what the afterlife is like, then count me in. Dr. Ross uh spoke about the red road and the black road and the uh juncture, the dark rift of the Milky Way, otherwise what I call the journey of the souls. And he says that on average it takes uh a soul six or seven times on this journey here to pick the red road over the black road. Black road being of materialism and selfishness and hurting others. The red road is finding that we're all related and that love is the most important thing, and spirituality is. I just thought that fascinating. It takes a soul an average of six or seven times to get it right here. I often will um gravitate towards other old souls, and you're you're one of those, brother. Got an old soul. We're very curious about all these things and trying to. I think that's our true self. And if that's fatalism. Count me in. Yeah, count me in. Your your Lakota story You asked for me to go there, so I went there.

The Red Road, Reincarnation, And Wholeness

Daniel Firth Griffith

I'm glad you did. Your Lakota brother story, Walking West, reminds me. I don't know if I've ever told you this story. It's uh the the local people, the Monacan, Suian people, as you know. So in 1607, right, the Englishman established the colony of James, Jamestown, which is about three hours downriver from us. And John Smith asked the Powhatans, the the Cinecomaka, who else lives upriver or upland, because the Senecamica were so prevalent all among the the James River tributary as it as it forms from its large river system and other river systems into the Chesapeake Bay and then the Atlantic Ocean. And the uh Powhatans they sent them upriver. To modern day our property here, or just maybe a quarter mile from us. And the ancient uh Monacan settlement, which I believe was called Manahasana, although I could have that a little bit off, um, is located just just just upriver from us. And in 1608, he met the Monacans. And uh, when I say he met the Monacans, uh, on their way to what's I think called uh Mohaskahad, Mahaskahad, um John Smith's group happened upon a hunting party near the falls of the modern day James River, which I think is what Mahaskahad is is named in the Monacan or Suyan tongue. Well, they took one of, I believe it was the chief of that hunting party, a member of the Hassanin Hassaninja or something like this, named Moralek captive, which is a whole other conversation. But they they took him captive and over a period of time had a conversation with him and they asked, and it's all recorded in John Smith's journal, this part. The uh English settlers ask Moralek of the moniken, they ask, uh, whose land is this? And he says the moniken, which we later understand means earth people or earthling. So whose land is this? It's the people that Earth gave it to, I guess. And then they say, Who lives over the mountains? And at this, the person inquiring is this English man named Moscow. So basically, who lives to the west? And this is where I saw the similarity. Over the mountains, over the Appalachian Mountains, the Blue Ridge would be the first chain that that Moscow man, that English man would be looking at, and uh Amorlak, the Monacan man, the Suyan man, he says, the sun. That's it. Just the sun. And then he spoke no more, and then I think they killed him actually. Again, bigger conversation there. But it's so grounding, right? Like you asked the wrong question. What is over the sun? Or what is over the mountains? What is to the west? The sun, or you know, as you said, the great spirit, that that ethos, that idea is so shared. Maybe it's a Suyan thing, maybe it's just a land connected thing. But it has great power, I think. Because I think what fatalism does so well to do is, especially in the way that you talk about it, it's both grounding but also lifting. It's grounding in the sense when Moralek said, you know, this is Monacan Land, I'm here, right? Fatalism is to place us here. This matters, this experience, this walk of life, this moment, this breath, everything matters. And yet it's also to extend into the cosmos, which is to say that almost the opposite is true. It's to bring us into this everlasting ether of the eternal road and the way of souls and the Milky Way, and it's that eternal cosmic connection. So the idea of fatalism to me is both grounding and lifting, lifting and grounding. And uh it is interesting in the Celtic calendar. We've talked about this a number of times, but the Droylin, the Nine Sisters, as we call it, or the Wren is the Platey Star Cluster, and our two most sacred ceremonies of the year exist. Really, it's the idea of a biurnal year, uh, a two-part year, and they both celebrate the idea of fire. There's a very feminine fire lit in November when the Platey star cluster rises into the night sky. And there's a very masculine idea of fire that rises into the morning sky in May to celebrate the masculine of the year, which is when the Pleiades rises just barely over the horizon with the sun, at least in the northwestern hemisphere, it does. And so again, you have this idea of burning. And I when I think about burning and fire, many ancient cultures all of obviously celebrated and sees fire as also an animate form, like you were talking about when you were reading from Ross. Ross and rocks, when he's talking about rocks and stars, like if rocks resonate energy and spirit, so also must stars. I think the same thing is true with fire. The idea of fire being both grounding, like fatalism, but also eternal and lifting, like fatalism. Fire like brings you into the moment, but it also rises into the ether, the atmosphere, and becomes all of the moments, all of the breath. So I think fire is a really interesting characteristic of that very fatalistic spirit in a good way, in a very ceremonial and healing way.

Taylor Keen

What does, or where does Beltane fit into all this?

Fire, Pleiades, And Seasonal Rites

Daniel Firth Griffith

So Beltane, so Beltane is English. Beltania would be like the Irish version. It just means two fires. Bel, uh two beltania meaning fires. And so the idea of Beltania is the May celebration when it depends on who you want to ask. I think it's a little bit more ancient than this, but the modern tradition over the last thousand years or so is you light two fires, and you pass, the whole society passes through these two fires, burning off the black period of the year. It's to symbolize the burning off of that outer layer becoming new, emerging and out of the womb, the dark period, the kaluk, um, as we would say, of the year, the death, uh, that womb period of winter. And so that's that's that's Beltania. Sawun is the first fire. And so you have two hills in Ireland, one is Tara and one is Ushnu. And you celebrate, I have this right, Sawin at Tara, Beltanya Arushnu, and there's a masculine and a feminine. I might have that reversed, but there's a masculine and a feminine, and the the Sawin fire is a bone fire. So at the birth of the year, which is really the death, or I should say at the beginning of the year, which is the death, when the Pleiades rises into the night sky. So the feminine, let's just call it the feminine time of year, you historically would call the sick livestock. If we were agricultural at the time, you would cast away the things that you didn't need to bring into the death period. So basically, anything that pulls you negatively down to earth and doesn't let you escape into this idea of, you know, the dark waters is a term that I guess we would use. You would burn that. And so there's a lot of life burning in the sowen fire. So historically, farmers that couldn't take a sick cow, let's say, through the winter season, they would kill it and then burn it, both to purify the sickness from that body, uh, but also symbolize the release of sickness, the release of that tethering to earth, you know, through fires, that's sowen, that's that dark, feminine period of the year, that's winter. And then Beltania is when you take the healthy and you rut them through those fires to give it new skin, fresh skin. And so that that's how that exists.

Taylor Keen

So if Beltanya is rebirth spring, right? Right. What is death and autumn? Is your corresponding Sawan, yeah.

Daniel Firth Griffith

That's that single fire of Sawin, November, when the Pleiades rises into the night. Yeah, or the evening sky, really. Yeah. So it begins in darkness, the feminine, and then it is born in the springtime in light and masculine, if you want to see it that way. But fire is that commanding force that begins the ceremonies of both those seasons.

Taylor Keen

Dr.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Ross would be proud of us right now. If Google is right, he's still alive. His website, I I couldn't figure out how to use it. It's quite old. Maybe I'm just too young. But he I would I would love to sit with him and ask him some questions. Because there's so like this series, I think we have, you know, try to, if not do, send you all of the response that I get from this series. And we've talked about this reckoning and people's distancing from it, and we've had that conversation, but there's so many that resonate because the message that I think Ross, with the idea of, you know, Matakwasi, with the idea of God is red and rediscovering Turtle Island, and the idea that you've carried so well through all of this, your life work and everything in between, is that this love and hope that connects all of us is actually quite healing. And we live in such a time of diversion and separation and desolation and maybe even like denusion of all the things that make us human. Separation, that coming back to that intrinsic human source of just you know, relationship and the idea of you know taquyasi, and I th I I think I think it's power in the truest sense that maybe human communion and connection back to what makes us the clay, the blood, the stories, the breath, the air, the all of it might be what the world is in truly need of. And so it brings a lot of people hope, is my point. So yeah, and buy this, buy this book, if you're listening, and this is interesting at all, I'm so glad you recommended it to me. I've I think I I sent you a text about a month ago, but I had to buy a couple copies. So when people come and visit me and we talk about books, I can just give them a copy.

Taylor Keen

Page 180. As discussed in The Flowering Tree, Edgar Casey stated that if one practiced brotherly love, peace, patience, balance, and harmony, and had the ability to endure long suffering situations for a period of two years, he would achieve a condition of wholeness with everything. Having arrived at this state, one's spirit has completed its evolutionary journey on earth, and the individual would not be required to reincarnate. Astrology is yet another way to aid oneself in attaining wholeness. Astrology, as previously mentioned, provides a mirror in which a person can recognize his easy and difficult aspects by working on correcting one's negative personal traits. He is able to transcend his birth chart and achieve a state of wholeness.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah. He says right before that, preparing for wholeness can be accomplished through creating self-awareness. Can I ask one question here? Um the previous page, and this just might, you know, you might just have to leave this, leave this to Jungian scholars, but it seems from Ross's work and Ross's understanding of Dr. Jun's work, that in this idea of um, let's see if I can pull it up fast enough. In this idea of Jungian psychology, this conscious, unconscious, and then collective unconscious, they're all equally related as well. So, like this whole conversation you and I have been discussing, the idea of living beings being connected, being related, we are all related, the Takyasi. But it seems also that the layers of human psyche, the the model of the human psyche and those layers are also all related, the conscious, unconscious, and collective unconscious. And that being self-aware, maybe even living well in ceremony, is a part of allowing those three phases of the psyche to cohabitate properly with each other. Do you understand how this works? Do you have any words to say what?

Taylor Keen

I'm not sure that I do. Do you want to try to give it a stab and then I'll try to help?

Beltane, Samhain, And Renewal Through Fire

Daniel Firth Griffith

I have no idea. I I just I mean that my so my understanding of of of this model, if you will, this Jungian psychic model of conscious, unconscious, and collective unconscious, is that the collective unconscious, I think Ross writes, is our ancestral past. I've heard a biological, biological evolutionary biologist, I'm sorry, that's their term. He made the concept, um, he was questioned, uh, the biological evolutionist was questioned about uh intuition. And so if if he's an atheist, this man speaking, and so he was asked if God doesn't exist, what is intuition? And and he made the claim that it's all of our past lives or all of our genetic memories past lives. And so it seems, not that I agree with some of his fundamental assumptions about the nature of the heavens and God and creator and things, but it seems like the outcome of the collective unconscious is this ancestral past, genetic memory, ancestral life living in the bone marrow or blood waters, right, of our of our clay suit, our our body, if you will, that then seems to commune very well with our soul, maybe our psyche. And that's that's how the psyche, the soul, the clay meat suit, kind of understands the collective unconscious. But it in the same sense that so much of what I understand to be this indigenous spirituality or indigenous way of understanding the spirits of of this created world, that nothing is innately evil or good. Nothing is it's just it's it's the idea of balance, which I also think is the nature of the red and black road. I think that that that same idea of balance is there. Ross, he talks about health as a balance, um, which is a conversation that we haven't yet had, I guess, but the idea of balance, it it seems then that conscious and unconscious, the first two layers of Jung's model of the psyche, also find health when they become balanced in that way. And so being present and being not present, but also sitting with your ancestral past, those balance of those things seem to be the healthful way of living, which is really a balanced way of looking at the Jungian model, conscious, unconscious, and collective unconscious. I don't know if I've talked myself into a corner or made it more clear, but I guess my question is it it seems like the the idea of balance is the nature of human existence. And it seems to be that in the psychology of union psychology, but also in the spirituality of a cosmic-centric life way or traditional way, right? Going back to fatalism and such, it's fatalism seems to be balanced. The opposite of fatalism seems to be imbalanced. The opposite of fatalism is, in my opinion, to Tocqueville's definition of modern, Western, enlightened civilization, which creates imbalance. So all of the different ways that you look at it, it seems like balance to some degree is central, most important. Can that be said? Can balance be most important? I don't know. It sounds like that's it seemingly imbalanced for something to be most important, but I don't know. I just I I say these words in hoping that one of them sparks a thought in you.

Taylor Keen

Balance is harmony. Recognizing the duality in all of us. So we have our perceived consciousness and then you have the collective. It's always there where we just can't figure it out. We can't see it. I think for some that would be too much to see it, to see true reality.

Jung, The Collective Unconscious, And Balance

Daniel Firth Griffith

I think so much, you know, Ross writes at the beginning that indigenous peoples that you don't proselytize, you don't go door to door trying to convert people to Lakotaism, right? I think this is how he says it. And and it and it seems to be, I mean, obviously rooted in so many more extensions from this, but it maybe at the center of it is this idea of balance that maybe we need to see what we need to see, but not yet. Like Black Elk, I know in in the John Needhart documented biography of or memoir, let's say, of Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, I think it's called. He seems to allude to that same thing. He talks a lot about things that are comma, just not yet. So they exist, but they don't exist yet. But that doesn't mean they don't exist, just not yet. And I think it's a very balancing and healing idea.

Taylor Keen

Page one nineteen. He brings up uh Casey and the uh Akashic Akashic Records. I just love this stuff. The Akashic Records as the recording angel. The universal memory of nature. Casey, in answering a question about the difference between prayer and meditation, said prayer is supplication to God, and meditation is listening to his answer.

Grammar As Worldview: Verb, Object, Subject

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah, even a couple pages previous, it seems like that same Moray is replicated here on page 112, he says, again, speaking about Casey, any illness can be healed if the person aligns his will to the will of the spirit within. When a person achieves this alignment, he then becomes whole and at once with everything around him. Seems that's a much more meditative act or result. Which, if I can jump this direction, I've been wanting to this whole time, just because of some other things that I'm working on, but the idea of language, it seems to echo the same idea of both fatalism balance, health, turning inward, self-awareness, things like this. He writes that the what he calls the Lakota language runs with the verb at the end of the sentence. So in Lakota, it seems to be subject, object, verb. Now in English, which he claims is op is is backwards, it's subject, verb, object. And so in the Lakota way of well, speaking of writing too, I guess today, the verb coming at the end of the sentence seems to disregard the subject and work only on the object. So for those listening, the subject is the person, place, or thing that performs the action. The object of a sentence is the person, place, or thing that receives the action. So in the Lakota way of communicating, the verb is at the end and the verb plays with the object. Thus, as Ross speaks, that the verb is more oriented to the object, and this leads some to assume that the American Indian is more interested in the result than the cause. And the interesting thing is Irish, not that this connection needs to be made because the Celtic languages is something that Ross uh acknowledges as being quite similar to many of the he equates them a little bit to Sesuian, but definitely to the Algonquian language sets. The Irish language leads with the verb, which is different than Lakota, obviously, and then it goes subject and object. So again, many Irish or Guelga scholars conclude that the Irish language is verbs playing with objects, dismissing the subject. The subject of a sentence in an Irish sentence is disregarded. It's to some degree thrown away with. It's there, it acknowledges it in many more modern ways than let's say the Lakota language doesn't. So it doesn't have full similarity. But it's much more related to Lakota than English is, as verbs play with objects. It's just the location of the verb in the sentence differs between Lakota and Irish. And the reason I bring that up is on this same vein of both self-awareness and balance in view of this discussion of fatalism, which I think is also the celebration of our connection and kinship with the cosmos and the stars, which is threaded through this entire conversation, seems to be the way we speak. And the way that we speak that changes the way we think, and the way we think that changes the way we commune and live and be, which is I think goes both directions. One, the idea of causes and results and the way that many American Indians view these things and speak about these things in their own language implicitly. We can go down that pathway. But also when it comes down to like naming this book, right, like Ross could have easily named it we are all related. And he didn't. He named it Matakuiasi. Right? There's a certain layer that's to me as I understand it, there's a certain layer of linguistics that's needed to understand this whole new, or really old for you, it's new for me, way of being that requires our mouth to change. It requires us to not just acknowledge it, but live differently, and to let the communication and the words and the symbology of the words flow differently because of that change. And I think that's something that's very difficult for most people. And I think that difficulty is something that you and I haven't well discussed in this series as of yet. That this kinship, I think, requires the examination of not just culture or belief systems, but also language. How how do you see those those organizations?

Taylor Keen

I think it's important to discuss at least the impact of thinking about language in a different way. Thinking about the results and not only the cause of them or to put an emphasis on another way of thinking. I think that's part of this balance that we're discussing. We can never temper our minds too much in terms of looking from different perspectives.

Daniel Firth Griffith

Yeah, it does seem to call for for that balance. This this whole conversation it's just But uh see that's the interesting thing. When you go back to the beginning and I think of if I have my individual right, um Chief Standing Chief Luther Standing Bear. Luther Standing Bear. And uh and I in so you think about the integration or really the the confluence between Sacred places and this balance, it seems to be wholeheartedly connected, like a very strong confluence, a living confluence. And it seems that as the sacred places wither away, our balance to that which makes us here also seems to wither. At least I I see more of a connection now after reading Ross's work to the idea of sacred places and the sacred rites or ways of living in those sacred places to bring us balance. One of the roles of ceremony. Which is interesting also because the first thing a master does, the first thing colonization does is remove the sacred places and the way we talk about those sacred places, but then also the ceremonies that make them what they are. It seems to be a very powerful force in the decreation of maybe the woven fabric of life.

Taylor Keen

I don't think that we could uh say it any more eloquently than what you just said, my brother.