An obscene monument

On Sunday, March 18, 2012, the New York Times wrote a major story about the arrogance and greed of a white man who wanted to carve out an obscene monument in the sacred mountains of the Lakota Sioux, the Black Hills of South Dakota, “Paha Sapa,” “the heart of everything that is,” was and still is, their sacred center and most holy place.

The most obscene monument was to be of Crazy Horse, the ultimate warrior-holy man of the plains Indians, the Lakota and Cheyenne. The most accurate translation of his name would be “the enchanted one” or “the mysterious one.” He was adored, idolized, and was often 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. He and his Cheyenne wife often camped away from the village. I think I have every book written about this man and have given many lectures about him.

The old ones of the Lakota and Cheyenne nations described him in detail in the late 1800s and early 1900s and what he was like. They said when he went into a village there would be a ground swell of “the man is coming.” He always wore only one or two Red Tailed Hawk feathers in his hair. He never participated in a Sun Dance. He was light skinned and small boned, of medium height. He never allowed his picture to be taken.

The Crazy Horse image is still very sacred to the Lakota, and the most obscene insult to Crazy Horse, sculpted in stone on stolen Indian land, is the so-called monument being carved into the Black Hills, that has made the sculptors millions of dollars in “tourist” money being spent there. Arrogance, greed and ignorance combined in the most obscene and monumental insult to the American Indian and the Lakota and to Crazy Horse. The founder of Native Sun News, in nearby Rapid City said “I have never heard one single American Indian, not one, say “I am proud of the mountain.” They look upon it as degrading and the ultimate offense.

The Holy Man, Fools Crow said “It would be like us going into your St. John the Divine, or the National Cathedral, and carving up your walls and breaking your stained glass windows.” Or as the Holy Man Lame Deer put it: “Good art is not made with a jackhammer. Anything in disharmony with nature is evil. It fits into our sacred mountain like a red hot iron poker in someone’s eyes.” It is the monumental blind ego of an insane so-called sculptor. It is from the same psychotic emotions that raped the Black Hills for gold.

THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE IS NOT IN DYNAMITE AND A JACK HAMMER.
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The moon and resurrection

If you ask, what phenomenon played a vital part in developing the human imagination to believe in a life after death, it was, quite simply, observing the moon. The part that the moon has played in resurrection beliefs is one of the most fascinating subjects in the history of religions.

The sun is always the same. The moon, on the other hand is born new, grows to maturity, dies and is resurrected. The period of the new moon, the resurrection of the moon, became one of the most important religious celebrations in all primitive cultures.

As late as 600 B.C. in the Hebrew culture of the Old Testament, the new moon demanded special and generous offering and sacrifices. The Hebrew Sabbath was originally a new moon celebration. As the moon is reborn at the end of the third day, so shall the dead be reborn to a new life.

And do not miss this next fact: Even church father, St. Augustine, writing within the framework of 4th century Christianity, still used the cycles of the moon as his “proof” that there was a resurrection from the dead. Other church fathers used the same argument as “proof.” Little did they realize, in their primitive superstitions, that someday we would walk on that same moon.

“On the third day he rose again from the dead” is a phrase found in primal religious liturgies that refer to the resurrection of the moon after the third night of darkness. “As the moon dies and cometh to life again, so we also, having to die will rise again” declared the San Juan Capistrano Indians in celebrating the new moon.

Basically the moon was “she,” but in some few cases a “he,” for the Moon-Goddess created time, with its cycles of creation, growth, decline and destruction. This is why almost all of ancient calendars were based on phases of the moon and menstrual cycles. Calendar and “time” consciousness developed first in women, because of their natural menstrual body calendar, correlated with observations of the moon’s phases. Read more

Which God?

From time to time, as do all writers, I receive anonymous letters. In some of these I have been asked, “Why do you always quote only men and women? Why don’t you read the bible and quote God, where truth is?” That always reminds of a great cartoon in the New Yorker magazine. A minister is standing, robed, in his pulpit, with waving arms and saying, “And now, reading from the bible, God says, and I quote of course…”

Which “God” of the last 50,000 years do they want me to quote? Yahweh, Elohim, Ahura, Mazda, Ra, Osiris, Zeus, Jupiter, Dionysius, Demeter, Asklepios, Hermes, Aton, Odin, Thor, Varuna, Shang-ti, Amaterasu – Omikami, and we have not even touched the Goddesses.

OH NO, it is only biblical Gods that these writers are interested in, so again I would ask them, “Which ‘biblical God’ do they want me to quote, ‘Yahweh, Elohim, Hadad, El Shaddai, Ba’alim or Anath’?

Or maybe the anthropomorphic “God” who walked and talked in the garden; or the “God” in Genesis who came down from the mountain to sire children by earth women (what a deal), or the jealous and vindictive God, the God of war, the vicious and cruel God who commanded a scorched earth and genocide, or the God in the Book of Numbers who commanded a young woman to be raped?

Even now, there are still some who believe that the bible is “infallible,” “without error,” the “word of God”…this God they want me to quote. Which story would I use for moral and spiritual edification? The inspirational story about Lot’s two daughters who got him drunk with wine and went to bed with him? (Genesis 19) Today, we call it incest. You could call it holy debauchery I guess, since it is God’s infallible “word.” Well more of God’s “word”: There is the rape of Tamar by her brothers (2 Samuel) or a little gang rape in the Book of Judges (19-25). The “word of God” says “they abused her all the night long until the morning.”
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