In praise of Crazy Horse
October 29, 2006 by Bill
On the front page of the Santa Barbara News Press for Sunday, August 19, was a headline that made my heart warm. It read SIOUX REJECT 570 MILLION, SEEK RETURN OF LAND. This is the land of the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills of South Dakota. They told the Federal Government, “you just don’t understand…you can never buy us or this sacred land.”
One of my giant heroes is the ultimate warrior-holy man of the American Indian. I have given many lectures with the title of “In Praise of Crazy Horse.” I have spent a lifetime studying this man. We know so much about him from first hand knowledge. When I was born there were still many people alive who knew Crazy Horse.
Crazy Horse, “Tashunka Witco”, in Lakota Sioux. The most accurate translation of his name would be “the enchanted one”, or “the one who was mysterious.” He was adored, idolized, by the Sioux and the Cheyenne. He was often, out of respect, referred to only as “the man”. He was the classic holy man and warrior in one person. He was a loner, spending much of his time in meditation with Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery of the plains Indians. He and his Cheyenne wife often camped away from the village.
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Frank Waters…An American treasure
October 22, 2006 by Bill
Frank Waters is one of America’s national treasures. Five times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was vigorous and sharp until the day he died in 1995 at age 93. For more years than I can remember this spiritual genius has been one of my role models. I have his sacred Native American pipe that meant so much to him on the desk in front of me now as I type.
As a student, scholar and practitioner of the spirituality and cosmology of the Native American Indian he has no peers. The Frank Waters bibliography of fiction, non-fiction, biography and short fiction is staggering in its anthropological and religious dimensions. It is not too much to say that he is one of the true, genuine, Renaissance men of this period of history.
Many years ago he settled into his little adobe home in Arroyo Seco outside of Taos, New Mexico. It has been from that spiritual grounding, that piece of sacred earth, that he has roamed outward from the Maya of the Yucatan to the three mesas of the Hopi to become one of the pre-eminent Indian mythologists of our time. How and why did he choose Arroyo Seco. Here is his answer: “There is no accounting for the mysterious magnetism that draws and holds us to that one locality we know as our heart’s home, whose karmic propensities or simple vibratory quality may coincide with our own. My home is 8000 feet high. The rutted dirt road is almost impassable several months of the year. Living here for so long, I still do not have a phonograph, a recording machine or a TV set. Only two years ago did I put in a telephone. Every place on earth bespeaks its own rhythm of life. Every locality has its own spirit. ”
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Robert Ingersoll…”A most precious treasure”
October 15, 2006 by Bill
Robert Ingersoll, “a glorious flame of free thought.” How can I do this genius justice in such a short space? I will try. He lived from 1833 to 1899 and was internationally known as the “Great Agnostic”, one of the most brilliant thinkers, lawyers, orators, debtors and authors of his day, or any day. Twelve volumes of his works are still available and are a collector’s treasure. He lectured all over the United States and abroad to standing-room-only audiences. He spoke on many subjects, but thousands upon thousands turned out to hear him demolish the absurdities of orthodox religious dogmas, including Christianism. He found them repugnant due to the damage they did to the human mind and spirit. And yet, on a deep and profound level he had a sense of the Mystery that was breathtaking.
I can tell you that, without exception, his funeral eulogies are the most beautiful that I have ever read in the English language.
WALT WHITMAN, the poet laureate of the universe, said that only one man could speak at his funeral and that man was Robert Ingersoll.
CARL SANDBURG, said of Ingersoll’s eulogy of Whitman: “It was a most precious treasure.”
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