Circle of Life

"You have noticed that everything an Indian does in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything and everything tries to be round.

In the old days all our power came to use from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.  The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain, and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance.  This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.


Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle.  The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars.  The wind, in its greatest power, whirls.  Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.  The sun comes forth and goes down again in its circle.  The moon does the same and both are round.  Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were.  

The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.  Our teepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
                             --Black Elk--

Circles are all around us.  When we were young, we spun ourselves around in circles and gleefully laughed when our dizziness caused us to fall. When we find ourselves unable to think straight, we say that "our head is spinning".  When we are lost and cannot find our way, we say that we are "going around in circles".  We form a circle in our rituals; the moon and the planets "circle" the sun.  

Birth, life, death, rebirth...Life is like a wheel, a circle.  The wheel...an ancient symbol which combines the meaning of the circle as wholeness or completion with the element of movement or the passing away...such as the changes of seasons...that is captured in the wheel's turning.  Daily life occurs at rim of the wheel; it is a state of perpetual change....and it is change that takes us where we want to go...Just as the wheels on an automobile spin and take us on our journey, so does the wheel of life which spins about as we journey through life.