Atlanta Vampire Alliance [AVA]

[Kiera]

The Medicine Wheel…

East:

The East is the place of all beginnings, the direction from which a new day comes into the World. It is the direction of rebirth and renewal. The East is the place of innocence, trust, truthfulness and the unconditional love and acceptance of others. A human being must return many times to the East during the course of a life’s journey. Each visit will bring new lessons to learn or a new level of understanding.

The East is the direction of Illumination, just as the Sun rises in the sky to illuminate the Earth. Thus it is the direction of guidance and leadership. Within ourselves is hidden the ability to guide others on some part of the journey, we must continue to travel the Medicine Wheel to realize that potential. That is the essence of what it means to be a human being, to be found in the service of others. This is the greatest lesson of The Medicine Wheel.



South:

The South is the place where the Sun is at its highest point, the place of summer, youth, strength and vigor. It is a time of work to prepare for the fall and winter months. The South is the place of the heart, generosity, loyalty, sensitivity to others, noble passions and love.

Love develops in the South. In the East, Love is the unconditional love of an innocent child and the detached love of a leader for his people. In the South, Love is the desire felt for another person, which we must be careful not to allow to grow into possessiveness.

The South is the direction in which the physical body also develops. This is where physical discipline and sensory acuteness is developed. The traveler learns the idealism that makes all great causes possible in the South.

In the South our emotional capacities for love, loyalty, compassion and kindness blossom fully, as well as our capacity to become angry at injustice and repulsed by senseless violence.

It is here that our feelings are realized and can be developed, evaluated and refined through our conscious will. The most valuable and difficult lesson of the South, is the capacity to express feelings openly and freely in ways that do not hurt other beings. We must set aside our own feelings in order to counsel others, and yet we must also find ways to appropriately release our own feelings so that we can be clear-thinking and effective human beings.


West:

The West is the direction from which Darkness comes. The direction of the unknown, of Dreams, meditation and prayer. Thunder and lightning often originate in the West and is often associated as the direction of power. The West is a place of testing, where the will is stretched to its outer limits, so that the gift of perseverance may be won.
The nearer one draws to a goal, the more difficult the challenge becomes, this allows us to tap into our inner strength and steel our will.

The West is a place of reflection and spiritual insight which develops from isolating one’s self from the distractions of our daily lives. One must journey to the center of one’s being to attain a connection between the human spirit and the Creator. The great lesson of the West is to accept ourselves as we really are; both as spiritual and physical beings, and to never again cut ourselves off from the spiritual part of our nature. We must have some vision, some ideal, some purpose or goal to work toward, or else we will have no way of knowing what we must do.


North:

The North is the place of winter, the dawning place of true wisdom. Here the intellectual gifts are taught and symbolized by the great mountain and the sacred lake. One of the great lessons of The Medicine Wheel is that all human beings can attain gifts in all of the directions, however many of these gifts require a tremendous amount of focus, discipline and effort to achieve. Oftentimes human beings feel overwhelmed by the discipline required to attain the gifts of the North. The North also symbolizes the final lesson upon a journey, the completion of a task. The final lesson of the North is balance, for wisdom teaches how all things fit together. Balance, when applied to the interconnectedness of all human beings, becomes justice.



Center:

We must learn to look at ourselves from the detached perspective of the center of The Medicine Wheel. From the center point, we can see how we fit together with everything else. We will experience ourselves to be a small but infinitely sacred part of a very large process. Indeed each of the gifts of the cardinal directions is balanced by other gifts. The boldness of the Eagle is balanced by the humility of the willow and the prudence of the turtle. The idealism of the South is balanced by the wisdom and clarity of thought learned in the North. The mystery of all endings is found in the birth of new beginnings. There is no ending to the journey of the four directions. The human capacity to develop is infinite. The Medicine Wheel turns forever.