Oral tradition of the Cherokee people

Tsalagi Elo - our philosophy, our oral tradition - tells how the Principal People, the Ani Yun Wiwa, originated in the star system known as the Pleiades, whence first arose the spark of individuated mind.

From the mysterious void came forth a sound, and the sound was light, and the light was will, intention to be, born of the emptiness: "Creator Being," fundamental tone of the universal song, underlying all manifestation.  Compassionate wisdom arose as will perceived the unmanifest potential of mind streaming forth.  Will and compassion together gave birth to the fire of building intelligence, and thsu was formed the sacred triangle from which all matter is derived, the Three in One.  It is a mystery, we say.

The first "thought beings," tla beings, carriers of mind's pure light, existed like cells in one body, of one mind and purpose:  to explore the mysteries of mind.  Coalescing along twelve vortices of activity, elemental lines of energy or force, mind took form, the One became the many.  Star Woman fell to Earth, opening the way for star beings to manifest upon Earth the light of pure mind.  The Three Elder Fires precipitated the planets and the animals, while the people were the dream children of the angels, their dreaming arising with the primordial sound.

The twelve original tribes of the Tsalagi Nation each exemplified a particular vortex of activity, a particular creative energy, all moving cohesively together.

Tribe                            Activity/Energy

1         Quality of will.  Crystal caretakers, maintaining clear thought and rituals to keep form in order.  Timekeepers, drummers.

2         The healers, caretakers, high teachers; the Peace Chief who never sheds blood.

3         Those with understanding of sacred geometry and astronomy, watchers of the skies, giving instruction on proper building.

4         Masons, builders of the form shaped by the Three.  Local administrators, responsible for good clan and community relations.  Craftspeople, creating objects of beauty for prayer, contemplation, and utility.

5         The scientists, mastering and teaching the wisdom of particulars; observing patterns and possible futures.

6         Great caretakers of the temples and holy gardens where the sacred food is grown for the communities.  Kepers and manifesters of the ritual form.

7         Sacred warriors, warring on ignorance; the shakers, transformers, life force makers; guardians of correct action.

8         Ambassadors with other realms, having access to consciousness (this the Ani Gadoah are particularly known for, with their great accessibility to other realms).  Planetary understanding; assisting in planetary weather system, distributing energy for the benefit of all beings.

9         Communicating with stars, creating inventions for clear communication.  May bring forth new plants to feed the people.  Expressing a more ethereal manifestation of the conscious building seen in the third line of force.  Magnetizers, world shapers.

Of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth lines of force we do not speak, for their function is beyond words; it cannot be cognized.

These star people came to Earth in Elohi Mona, five islands in the Atlantic Ocean, later known as Atlantis.

Before the star people came there were great waters upon the land, and male and female still existed in one body.  There was emotional nature but not yet the mind to actualize and complete the intention of Earth being a place of learning, a place of dreaming what is good.  So the purpose of individuation of mind and the descent from the stars was to quicken life upon the Earth.  The star energy came to spark the fire of mind, that all might return again to the Mystery.  The human being is much like the salmon; we all come forth from the lake of clear mind; we swim out into the ocean of experience, with its many lessons and opportunities and illusions - and as the salmon finds again the stream that leads it back to its spawning ground, so too must human beings find and follow the stream that will bring them again to the clear vast light.

The star children, the Sacred Seven, primary energizers, were greeted by the Children of the Sun, already living upon the Earth, in the Americas.  They had been attuned, through crystal and sound, to receive the inpouring of pure mind carried by the star beings.  The Sun Children were the true Earth people, in that they first experienced individuated mind while on Earth, as the dream children of the star beings.  The first to come forth from the Pleiades were the Adawees, great angelic beings; in contemplating form, in dreaming, they precipitated the Earth and its peopling in concordance with the great principle of creation.  It is taught in this way that all human life originated in the Americas, whereas the Sacred Seven originated as seeds of pure mind in another star system.

That the seed of pure mind might become firmly rooted upon the Earth, it was decided by the Adawees, the Seven Before the Throne on High, that those who came from the stars were to marry and bring forth children with the Children of the Sun, and that at some time those of Earth would come to full ascendancy.  It was known that in this process there would be periods of great travail and confusion until there was clear recognition of mind, that sacred fire burning bright within all people.

What we see today is that prophecy come true.  Those who believe in the primacy of matter seek to manipulate and curtail the fire of clear mind and spirit.  Ming of separation, mind of domination, these have birthed genocide of Native peoples throughout the world, the Inquisition and the Nazi holocaust in Europe, the destruction of lands, cultures, and peoples in Asia, and the invention of weaponry with power to kill all people on Earth twenty times over.  In the Tsalagi teachings such great sufferings are seen as unnecessary.  They are the result of pride, the idea that one is better or more important than another.  In reality, in the circle of right relationship, there is no above and no below, no in or out; all are together in the sacred circle.

Thus the Sacred Seven intermarried with the Children of the Sun, the Earth people.  Their descendants in North America are the Tsalagi, Creek, Choctaw, Yuchi, and other Red nations of the southeastern United States, each nation having a particular function in the hoop of life.

The islands and civilization of the Elohi Mona were eventually destroyed through the arrogance and ignorance of those who abused the sacred power, seeking to enslave others.  Through lust and grasping, a few carriers of the starseed became enmeshed in the material world; instead of seeking to educate and enlighten, they sought to manipulate and oppress.  Such thought forms were antagonistic to the very elements holding the people and the islands together.  The form would no longer hold them, for they went against the sacred law, which is cohesive.  Thus over a ten-thousand-year period the islands began breaking up and the great migrations of the people began.  It is in this way that give of the original twelve tribes were lost and their seed dispersed throughout the remaining seven tribes (or "types" of people).  From these seven tribes many people in North America today can trace some affinity to the Tsalagi Nation.

The people found their way through South and Central America and eventually met with people living in what is now called the Four Corners area.  There were many migrations.  Similarities in Native languages throughout the Americas are indications of common origins and meetings.  Before the coming of the Europeans, just in North America alone there were over 587 different Native nations and languages; in the 1600s there were some sixty million Red people in what is now called the United States.  Now there are perhaps two million.  This is the result of deliberate genocidal destruction of life, land, language, science, art, religion - a result of people ignoring or fighting the natural wisdom light, forgetting that all humans are relatives and that we all are to care for one another and for our mother, the Earth.

In the course of the many migrations people settled in groups in different places, yet their common roots may be known and honored.  Long ago the Tsalagi and the Iroquois were one people, for example, and in the Tsalagi language the root stock, Algonquin, is still discernable.  Tsalagi and Maya once shared the same religious practices; the Mayan seed and nobility was of the star people also.  The two peoples diverged over the Aztec imposition of rituals and blood sacrifice opon the peaceful religion and way of life of the Principal People.  Such practices were not part of the original teaching, and much of the community of spiritual relationship and exchange among these people ended when the Aztecs "conquered" the Mayans.

Thus the mound builders, the temple keepers of the Americas, trace their migrations to the land of Elohi Mona.  In North America they built a strong creative culture and civilization, from the southeastern to the southwestern parts of the present United States up into Canada.  The mound society, or temple society, was composed of four levels of people.  The Sun People were the rulers, in that they very clearly manifested the light of clear mind for the benefit of all; then there were the nobles, the average people, and the "stinkards".  The stinkards were those who may not have honored the clarity of mind or allowed the fire to burn brightly; they probably did the work of butchering, tanning, and so on.

That all future generations might be infused with clear mind, all Sun People were required to marry stinkards, ensuring that the spark of wisdom fire would move throughout all levels of the people.  This sacred purpose is still honored today in the manner in which the Ywahoo lineage is passed.  There was once a family bloodline that amassed great power; they were magicians who abused the rights of the people, who then rose up and scattered and destroyed them.  Thereafter it was decided that the lineage would pass, not to first daughter or son, but to appropriate family member, in-law, or one adopted into the family.  The lineage was passed in this way from Eli Ywahoo to his son-in-law Eonah Fisher, my grandfather.  So it is that the holy duty to instill light continues to be fulfilled.

The temple society existed before the time of Christ.  When De Soto arrived in the Mississippi Valley and found the beauteous and clean cities of the Tsalagi, he sought their wealth and captured their female leader.  The average mound-building city had no more than 18,000 to 25,000 inhabitants (except during ceremonial times, when all people came) because it was considered very important that no area be overburdened.  While the decline of the sun temples began with the coming of the Europeans, the theocracy continued until the forced removal of the 1830s.  The existing temples continued to be maintained until that time, although no new ones appear to have been built after the Conference of the Elders preceding the first hell in A.D. 1531.  Some Tsalagi continued to keep the old ways, even into the present.  They became the Kituwa Society and the Etowah Band, and some small traditional communities in Oklahoma.

When I was a young child listening to our elders speak about the true history of North America, I stood with my feet firmly planted to the ground, in the now, and realized that they were speaking great truths.  I thought it odd that others did not know or understand or believe these truths; even today I think it odd.  This true history will emerge again and be known by all.  There are Native scholars now studying and recovering our history, and ancient documents and books of our people, stolen from this land, are preserved in the archives of the Vatican and Spanish museums, taken there by those who feared revelation of the magnitude of the destruction they had wrought.  When our elders spoke of these things there was never bitterness or blame as they expressed the brutalization and genocide committed upon the Native peoples.  They were simply stating what had occurred, that the truth might be known.

Our elders also told me that long before the white men made their first appearance upon the shores of Turtle Island, other visitors had come.  In the great long time ago, the Black people came from Africa; they came to visit, to look, and they also came to conquer - but they found people who were self-empowered and without a need for domination, and so they were unable to conquer.  Also, they were turned aside by the energy of the Uk-kuk-a-duk, or Ukdena, the great dragons that used to protect this land, who have now moved into another dimension.

The connection between these dragons and the mind of humans is significant for our understanding in these changing times.  The dragons were energy moving in the wave pattern of Earth's energy.  They used to follow the will of the great medicine people who, with certain crystals, would call them to turn aside dangerous activity and thus protect the people.  The medicine people became too few to give them proper guidance, and the dragons became weaker and weaker; many were tied into the mountains, and the intelligent ones vibrated themselves into another dimension.  The last dragon was seen in the Smoky Mountains in the 1700s.

Basically, the dragon is the unconscious of all nations, the untamed energies of anger and fear, waiting to be called into the light of clear thought.  Until people awaken to their own minds, the dragon appears to be dangerous; when emotions are tamed, the dragon becomes a winged angelic being.

So it is not the dragon that is evil, and known one's true power and the movement of clear mind in one's own being is not evil.  Evil is thoughtless action, evil is what causes harm to others.  Evil begins in the heart of ignorance and the desire to dominate.  So we teach the young ones that nothing is above or below; the leader and the community are ever in a reciprocal relationship.  Our most sacred teachers, our most sacred leaders, they are like a walking stick; they steady the people who are like the body holding the walking stick, so they find safe passage, yet they are guided along by the people themselves.  The Six Nations Confederacy is based upon this concept of leadership, and it was borrowed from the teachings of the Peacemaker for the writing of the U.S. Constitution.  It would be well for us to search within our hearts again for the true meaning of leadership and right relationship.  A leader is not to dominate; a leader is to guide like a walking stick, that the nations and all the people may move firmly on the road of good relations.

The history of North America as written by non-Natives is incomplete, for it is written by those who think they are conquerors.  The conqueror is the person who looks outside himself to make order rather than making clear his own mind; therefore, all that he sees and speaks is based on the lies of pride and confusion.  The Native people, particularly the Tsalagi people, had a philosophy and a written language probably before the people of Europe were emerging from their caves.  The calendar of the Americas is the oldest calendar in the world and one of the most accurate.  The first people to understand the significance of zero were the Native American people, through careful meditation and observation of the universe.

Medicine was and still is a very highly developed art among the Native people; ninety percent of the world's pharmacopeia is derived from the medicines of the Red people of the western hemisphere.  And over 130 of the foods that are eaten around the world were first cultivated in the Americas; in the Land of the Hummingbird, the Amazon basin, and in the high Andes Mountains, that is where it began.  Corn, tomatoes, beans and squash, all of these things originated here.  People tended gardens.  Even now in various Native American nations different types of sacred corn, beans, and squash seeds are kept until the appropriate people come to plant them, care for them, and distribute them to others.  In the traditional way of life gardens were a ceremonial event for all, an opportunity to give to the Earth as well as receive.  The seeds of good food are also the seeds of good relationship, so caretaking the garden is symbolic of caretaking all beings.  The garden can be an offering to all.

Native relgion is a whole way of life, based on everything being in relationship.  The sacred rituals are to maintain harmonious balance of the energy currents of sun, moon, Earth, the entire universe, so that the seed's bounty can be brought forth.  Contemplating this orderly, harmonious universe, ten thousand years ago our ancestors here in the Americas were able to develop a mathematics and an astronomy that reached the highest level.  These are things that archaelogists are beginning to learn only now.  And it is good that these truths be rediscovered and made known, for the wisdom of our ancestors is a gift to all the children of the Earth, that we, too, may be wise and generous in creating a good future for those not yet born.

To this very day the sacred fire of the Tsalagi peolpe still burns, rededicated by the Pale One and tended by the people for thousands of years.  The Tsalagi and the Hopi are the keepers of the sacred fire in this hemisphere.  The fire has burned as long as the people have existed; it has never gone out.  It was carefully tended and carried even during the Trail of Tears.  That fire is the breath of life, it is the manifestation of pure mind, it is the clear ligth of things in their essential truth.  The fire is the strength of the people, a symbol of the wisdom fire carried here from the Pleiades.  Its significance, the fact that it has kept burning, is the energy that has kept this planet intact.  Scientists still cannot explain fire.  It is the Mystery made manifest, it is the stirring of thought into action.  In recent years, from the main Tsalagi fire other fires have been lit.  It is very beneficial to all of us that htis fire is being kindled and tended in other places, for it is a spark of our pure nature, recalling us to enlightened action.  That fire of clear mind is in everyone, and to remove any obscurration of its clarity is the duty of all people in this time, that each one may remember and find our way again to the source of our being.

We are the temple keepers.  Our priestcraft went underground in the 1800s and families have been keeping the sacred wisdom for this moment, when all people choose to be reunited as human beings dedicated to peace.  So now we speak again of the sacred craft, weaving a tapestry of beauty.  Each one carries the seed of truth; our shared life is the garden in which to plant and bring it forth.

The sacred teachings of the Tsalagi people encompass a 100,000 year time period, during which there have been four great upheavals of Earth's life forms.  The first was a change of direction in Earth's rotation and polarity, caused by a large comet and its attendant radiation destroying and mutating many life forms.  The second change was brought about by intense winds arising from people's confused thought and action, destroying the Earth's mantle.  It was during the second change that beings who were once male and female in one body separated into different entities, and are even now looking for their other halves.  The third change was due to volcanic action stirred by the destruction of Earth's sister planet that once dwelt between Mars and Jupiter.  The volcanic action forced humans to live beneath the ground for generations, subsisting on transparent fish and fungi.  The fourth change was wrought by water as the human types sought to integrate emotion and mind power.  This was the time of destruction of Atlantis, Elohi Mona, and during this age only those who heeded the voice of truth within were able to avoid destruction by reaching the high places.  According to Tsalagi time-keeping we are now in the Fifth World, the ninth and final stage of purification, and entering the Sixth World, the time of reintegration of the people and the land.

So at this moment we are on the threshold of a new world.  According to the ancient calendar of the western hemisphere, on August 16, 1987, we leave the last cycle of nine hells, and on August 30, 1987, we enter the first of the new cycle of thirteen heavens.  This calendar is most accurate; it considers the movement of Venus, Mars, and the Earth around the sun, and Sirius and the Pleiades.  These star systems give forth a crystal voice singing throughout all worlds, reminding us to come again to the circle of right relationship.  Star songs call forth a vision of peace, the morning star a reminder of the Peacemaker's promise that all may trace their roots to the Great Tree of Peace.  Just as seed grows fruitful when planted by the star's signs, so the seed thought of planetary peace has taken root.  May it sprout through all heavens.  May each one cultivate caretaker mind, caretaking one another and the Earth herself.  Let us each consider our actions unto seven generations.  Thus a new age begins.

Human beings have the opportunity to exercise the creative power of intellect.  Some of men's inventions have gone astray and run wild; such inventions as armaments and pollutants threaten the existence of life.  Just as these inventions arise first as destructive thoughts of control and domination, so may your mind give birth to creative means of reconciliation and transformation.  You make a difference.  Know that they very thing which disturbs your mind's peace offers opportunity to generate clear mind and transform patterns of disturbance for all.  Replace your anger with care; defuse potential destructive energy by clarifying conflicts in your own mind and relationships.  By the force of resonance that clarification will expand through your individual relationships to your family and neighborhood, to the nation and the planet.

A new day arises, spawned by our thoughts and deeds - seed thoughts of peace moistened by love, tilled by right action, weeds of discord pulled by diligent action.  The harvest shall be abundant joy sustaining future generations.  The first heaven opens the gates for all who will cultivate enlightened action.