WAMPUMPEAG PART 1 ( DO NOT FORGET TO GOT TO PART 2 )
SPIRITUAL SCIENCE OF THE WAMPUM BELTS
A RESOURCE BOOK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This resource book was produced with the participation of the Kitche Manitoo, the Spirits, the Star People and the Beings of light of the Wampum belts, the little People, the Ocean, the Milky way, the Stars, The Pleiades, the white sea Shells, the blue Quohag, mother Earth, the Trees to make the Lodges, the Spirit of the Ancestors of the 28 Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the Wabanaki People, the eastern Métis, Elder Ruby Denis Pollard, Elder Jean Kitchen, Dr. Mark Thompson and David Gehoe Medicine people and Spiritual Scientist, Eddy ( Crystal) Richardson Theorycal Physicist, Marty Dunn Layout, Charlie Hill and Lindsay Lambert editing, Standing Bear Layout for cover page, Anik Aubin formatting, Rejean Obowsamin / Jean Morisset photography, All the helpers who volunteered to help reproduce the Wampum belts, Wenda Obomsawin, Angela Ashawasega, Bruno Meilleur, Caroline Morisset, Sebastien Aubin, Pierrette Meilleur, Alice Darlington, Christian Meilleur, Beverly Jones, Sherley Cardinal, Carla Denis Pollard, Marie Christine Morisset, Louise McGregor, Louis Leblanc. Kristopher Aubin driving force and inspiration, Claude Aubin Engineering, conception and writing.
The Wabanaki people wish to extend their appreciation for the support and financial assistance from individuals, the Wabanaki Centre of Lower St_Lawrence operated by the Métis Nation in the province of Quebec, Marty Dunn Aboriginal Rights Consultant Ottawa, Amazing Images Ottawa, The McCord Museum in Montreal, The Sagkeeng Cultural Centre located in Fort Alexander Manitoba, Kabasagontiak/Centre de Resources pour la protection du territoire et du patrimoine Abenaki, Anishinabe Printing located in Maniwaki,The McCord Museum in Montreal, Le Musée des Civilisation de Québec, la Maison Arouanne desHurons Wendats.
Copyright 1996.
WAMPUMPEAG Project
All rights reserved for the people of the universe. Other then for commercial purposes,
all parts of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or spiritually, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, telepathically or with the help of spiritual ceremonies with mankind or to and with other Beings from the universe, without permission in writing from the WAMPUMPEAG Project.
First publication, 1996
WAMPUMPEAG PROJECT
WAMPUMPEAG is a group of volunteers from Canada and the United States who have been devoted for the last 25 years to help revive the uses of the Wampum belts to keep them alive in special ceremonies, as they have been with us for a long time. They can no longer be subjected to interpretation and pure speculation. We the people must empower ourselves to the true spiritual understanding and uses of the Wampum belts.
WAMPUMPEAG wants to help Wabanaki people regain the spiritual and scientific knowledge of the Wampum belts, which are known to contain advanced and refined knowledge of spiritual science known and practiced by many Wabanaki Elders and Ceremonialists.
WAMPUMPEAG is a project dedicated to the location of old original Wampum Belts and pictures of them which are scattered around the world: and to string "new" belts as exact copies of the original ones for the sole purpose of spiritual and cultural revival.
WAMPUMPEAG is pleased to announce that members of the group have been searching and have located hundreds of Wampum belts with the help of museum curators and interested Native and non-Native individual in Canada, United States and around the world.
WAMPUMPEAG knows how appropriate it would be to repatriate all these Wampum belts to their original owners. Unfortunately, as reality would have it, we do not hold any of these Wampum belts any more. They were sold to collectors of Native artifacts and to museums by the Wabanaki people who no longer knew their uses, and because of government policies banning our ceremonies and confiscating our ceremonial objects. So many Wampum belts have already been lost or destroyed through time. We must not denied the people access to the knowledge and the uses of the Wampum belts because the old one resting in museums are too fragile to be handled. Wabanaki spiritual knowledge is not frozen into time.
WAMPUMPEAG is preparing a special exhibit of Wampum belts called "Spiritual Confederacy" to commemorate and renew in the year 2001, the 300 anniversary of " La
Grande Paix de Montréal ". The Great Peace of Montréal took place on August 4, 1701.
The Wabanaki people have in their possession the Wampum Chest given to Kondiaronk by the French Government, to hold and preserved the Wampum belts brought by all the 48 Nations for this great occasion. The Wabanaki people do not hold any of these original Wampum belts. If they are resting in museum for protection, we believe there is a spiritual reason for it.
WAMPUMPEAG is stringing copies of Wampum belts for special transfer ceremonies in order to activate the new Wampum belts only from those old ones who are resting in museum and no longer available to the people, or are no longer in use. To proceed with the process of transfer, we must start by adequately reproduce copies with the raw material. We have not stop reproducing or using our pipes in our ceremonies just because so many of them have been deposited in museum for centuries. The people should not stop using and stringing new Wampum belts. The people must continue using the Wampum belts in proper ceremonies.
WAMPUMPEAG is always on the lookout for volunteer researchers willing to help locate Wampum belts and to assist in the publication of an upcoming catalogue of Wampum belts with color pictures for the benefit of the people. We are looking for volunteer Artisans to string copies of Wampum belts. We are looking for people to help us by distributing this resource book. We are looking for donations or grants from governments, the private sector or individual sponsors. With a single Canadian or American 5 cents nickel, you will help us purchase one of the 500,000 shell beads we needs to string new Wampum belts. You can sponsor one belt with a donation of $150.00. You can send your donation or payment for this book with the mail order form on the last page.
DEDICATION
This resource book is dedicated to the youth of the world, who will have to face the reality of the blindness of mankind, when dealing with the physical and spiritual forces of the universe, hoping that the spiritual and scientific knowledge of the Wampum belts will teach them and help them develop a technology that will respect the natural laws, protect the earth's environment and all living things. We hope for their own survival, they will spend their energy working on a Confederacy of people, identifying and valuing their similarities rather than their differences. We are all related.
Our spiritual experiences are full of scientific knowledge and do not make allowances for paradoxes. Our words shape our ways of explaining our experiences, and this is the only way that we can share them with others. However our experiences simply cannot be translated well into words, because to believe and truly understand, you must first have an experience.
Claude Aubin, Métis Nation, Québec.
PREAMBLE
While shell beads and Wampum belts were probably of early manufacture and used among the seashore Wabanaki people, they were very little known in the interior and west of the Hudson before the 16th century.
For the Wabanaki people, the origin of the uses of the Wampum belts come from the teachings of the peaceful Star People sent to the people of the earth by the Kitche Manitou. The geometric designs on the Wampum belts are holographic, scientific cerebral microchips for the mind. They program and work with the best computer in the world, the human brain.
Within the spiritual and scientific world of the Wabanaki people, the order of creation emphasizes the essential suffering inherent in matter, and the fact that the spirit must, of necessity live within the material world, so it can continue to teach that man is only fully born and fully alive when he has overcome matter and reached pure spirit.
Thus the equilibrium is established between man's inner and outer worlds. Matter must not be denied, but if man lives only in matter, his purpose on earth is not fulfilled. This is the teaching of a very old science of the Ancestors of the Wabanaki people, and of all the people of the earth connected with the spiritual science expressed in the holograms made with the geometric designs on the Wampum belts. The Wampum belts are the connection and the passageway between matter and spirit, an expression of an eternally recurring space-time.
Unfortunately in the Wabanaki world, the scientific and spiritual knowledge of the equilibrium maintained between the two aspects of creation, matter and spirit, was largely lost to our eyes and our minds with the arrival of the spiritual decadence of European cultures, the banning of our ceremonies, the confiscation of the Wampum belts and many other spiritual objects, the dissemination of the knowledge of the Wampum belts given to the people of the earth by Beings of light from the sky.
Regardless of what has so far been written about the Wampum belts to fulfill a political agenda, the Wampum belts still remain, for the Wabanaki spiritual scientists, a spiritual covenant with the Kitche Manitou, physical records of universal natural laws and DNA. Each Wampum bead is about a quarter of an inch or almost one centimeter long, the exact scale of what physicist calls the super string theory.
Wampum belts are like spiritual computers, so refined a technology, which mankind's technologies have yet not been able to grasp and understand. Then we must warn you, that not all Wampum belts fall into this category.
Later in historic times, as mankind lost the equilibrium between matter and spirit, the Wampum belts became records of tribal history and treaties due to the influence of materialistic philosophies and the political and social structure of the newcomers in North America. A new science was introduced which required retention through the memory and memory helpers called books and paper covenants.
Today the Wampum belts and spiritual sacred sites are still subject to interpretation, put down as religious shrines, or describe as archaic or insignificant knowledge of spiritual science. Mass produced for the purpose of trade, money and warfare, the spirits of the Wampum belts returned to the sky, taking with them the key to their knowledge, until such time as people are ready for their return. Today, very few people are empowered by the Life Force to learn the true spiritual knowledge and meaning of the Wampum belts. The belts are not records, but keys to the spirit world, teachings from the teachers from the Stars.
Accordingly, we find few traditions left on the uses and the origins of the Wampum belts, on their spiritual, medicinal, cosmological scientific knowledge. As for the Six Nations people, the origin of the Wampum beads was coeval with that of the Creation of their Leagues. It must then be coeval with the coming of the Peacemaker who brought the Great Law to the Iroquois Confederacy. But who was this Peacemaker and where did he came from? Was he a Being of light, a Star Being? This is why we must separate the Wampum belts into two categories:
The spiritual Wampum belts are strung according to and containing the scientific knowledge given to mankind by the Kitche Manitou through the Star people; these Wampum belts are only used in spiritual ceremonies.
The political Wampum belts, are strung like words printed in a book to be kept as records. They were introduced by the Dutch, used by the French, the British and the Iroquois to commemorate social and political events such as treaties. These belts were strung under the influence of European philosophies, political affiliations and religious beliefs in the total absence of the universal spiritual knowledge as was known by Wabanaki Elders of the time. They hold no spiritual meaning and like books are only mnemonic devices to record political and social events. Their use as records of treaties was so sudden and conspicuous an event that it did not make a great and lasting spiritual impression.
But at the point we are now, it is not important to find out to whom they belong to, who where the first, second or third to use and to string the Wampum belts. The original Wampum belts have a spiritual purpose and hold within their holographic three dimensional geometric designs, the universal knowledge of spiritual science and cosmology given to mankind by the Star people.
What is important today, is not to lose precious time and energy in the activities only related to the repatriation of the old Wampum belts from museums, but to first regain the spiritual and scientific knowledge of the uses of the Wampum belts through special transfer ceremonies to knew one, in order to make and maintain contact with the Life Force called the Kitche Manitou and the Star people, our teachers from the universe.
This will help the Wabanaki and the Six Nations people to empower themselves to use the knowledge of the Wampum belts properly, not to acquire ethnocentric and egocentric powers, but to share this knowledge to help provide spiritual, cultural, social and political healing in Native communities, and in the World.
With all respect to the Kitche Manitou, the Star People, the Wampum belts and all the Native people, this is what this resource book will try to do, may be it will help you bring some pieces of the puzzle together to help you find peace for yourself, order in Native communities and protection for the world's environment.
We will attempt, with the help of the Star People, to make you realize that there is more here than meets the eye. We will help you see the Wampum belts with your third eye, your spiritual eye, as three dimensional holograms. We will help you see a Wampum belt in colours by using a triangular crystal prism. We will ask you first to keep an open mind because the spiritual Wampum belts are more than material objects, to act as memory, or flat visual objects to be read like the pages in a book. They are holographic cerebral microchips to help you make contact with, and seek the help and support of people who travel and reach us from another dimension at a different vibration level. We called them the Star people, other extraterrestrial.
The spiritual Wampum belts are one of the physical and visual records of the intangible forces of the cultural heritage of the Wabanaki people, which we constantly refer to and talk about. They should no longer be subjected to political interpretation matter, his purpose on earth is not fulfilled. This is the teaching of a very old science of the Ancestors of the Wabanaki people, and of all the people of the earth connected with the spiritual science expressed in the holograms made with the geometric designs on the Wampum belts. The Wampum belts are the connection and the passageway between matter and spirit, an expression of an eternally recurring space-time.
Unfortunately in the Wabanaki world, the scientific and spiritual knowledge of the ee of the earth and the universe.
RECOGNIZING THE WAMPUM BELTS FOR WHAT THEY ARE
It is the time to keep an open mind, and ask ourselves why we are now talking about the intangible spiritual forces within the Wampum belts, but are not ready to fully recognize them for what they are.
Is it because we are forgetting the order of things, the natural laws? Is it because we are so influenced by the thousands of institutionalized religions created by mankind based on a mere interpretation of the knowledge given to us by the Star people? In principle the Kitche Manitou must hate man made religion when he see Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims, Native Traditionalists and all other religious denominations fighting and killing each other for the preservation of their faiths, their beliefs and parcels of land, praying to their Gods to be winners in their wars.
Native people in North America, also called Turtle Island are fortunate to still have very special Elders empowered by the Kitche Manitou to perform the Seven Spiritual Ceremonies given to all the Wabanaki people by a spiritual woman. Given different names around the world she is called the Buffalo Calf Woman among the Wabanaki People. When she came to the Wabanaki people she carried the Pipe in her left hand and a stone that had seven circles carved into it in her right hand. The spiritual ceremonies to be used with the Pipe are, the Sweat Lodge for purification, the Vision Quest for meditation and fasting, the Star Lodge to connect with the people of the universe, the Sun Dance to give thanks to Father the sun, the False Face to recognize the spirit in ourselves and in other people, the Adoption Ceremony to adopt more children, more parents, more brothers and sisters, the Shake Tent or Spirit House for honesty, unlimited knowledge and the only justice system known by the Wabanaki people and recognize by the kitche Manitou. Where this woman did came from? Why did the stone in her right hand have seven circles? Did she come from the seven stars of the Pleiades?
Through mankind's cultural and spiritual evolution, we have received very important spiritual tools to work with and to help us make contact with the Kitche Manitou, the Spirit World, and the Star People. Native people must therefore seriously ask themselves why we are submitting the Wampum belts only to political and one dimensional visual and materialistic interpretation. Why are we not using them properly in spiritual ceremonies? Why are they resting in vaults or in museums, suspected only of containing political values?
They are described in terms of possession. They are either ours or theirs, however when we debate to whom the physical belts belong, and where they should go, we lose precious time to empower ourselves with their true spiritual, ethereal and scientific knowledge.
The original Wampum belts did not contained political directives but strong spiritual directives from the Kitche Manitou, the Life Force. They are subordinated to the controlling artistic dimension of cerebral designs, our spiritual writing, the only universal writing which enables us to meet and converse with the Kitche Manitou and the Star people.
A spiritual Wampum belt is like a key which opens a box. Within that box lie other keys such as language and culture. But a key is not simply a spoken language or objects such as a dictionary or lexicons. Words in any language or any culture mean more than the mere vocabulary or sounds would have us believe. To deal with the literal lexicography, cultural prose, poetic or moral dimensions of a culture and a spoken language, or that which is written in books in other foreign orthography in isolation of the spiritual dimensions of our spiritual reading and writing, through spiritual cerebral geometric designs known by some of our Elders, is to forget and deny that the individual keys of our knowledge. These can be legitimately obtained only by empowering the master key of our language and our culture, as written on the Wampum belts and other spiritual objects, in the universal language of spiritual communication.
We should never forget that the master key respects all languages and all cultures, simply by recognizing that cultures and languages represent people's spiritual connection and relationship to the Kitche Manitou, the order of things, the earth, and the universe.
RECOGNIZING OUR SPECIAL ELDERS
˜Not all the Elderly people are the keepers of our spiritual and material cultural heritage. Some of our special Elders are extremely young and some are extremely old, but they are all teachers. They are our link to the understanding of the unlimited past, present and future. Without their guidance we are left trying to make our trail into the future using only the physical technological tools of the dominant ruling materialistic culture and science, which is causing permanent physical damage to all living things on the earth and eventually the other planets, stars and in the universe.
Because of these special Elders and because of all of the spiritual objects in the world, cultures and languages are not lost in time, because our knowledge of time does not make us look at time in a linear way. With this knowledge, our special Elders know that the past, the present and future are the same, moving in a circular motion. To recall this information it require the knowledge of the computerization of both sides of the brain and the full part of the mind and spirit, to reach this knowledge of the collective consciousness.
All of our knowledge is stored in a time-space continuum within the holographic designs of the Wampum belts which act as doors, to enter the universal bank of knowledge and help retrieve any past, present and future information. This is done with the knowledge of spiritual science in action, through very special ceremonies performed by special Elders. Very few of these Elders are left because we could not retain in museums or in writing materials, the spiritual and scientific knowledge of the Wampum belts and spiritual objects resting in these terminal places.
We have lost so much of our understanding and the meaning of the Wampum belts, because we are so disconnected from the reality of who we are as people. Today mankind has become so materialistically egocentric and ethnocentric. We became so religious but no longer spiritual.
We regard spirituality and religion as being the same, when it is not. Spirituality is the universal essence of all man made religions in the world, while each religion claims to be the only true faith. This is why we must protect native spirituality from certain Wabanaki ethnocentric traditionalists who are turning Native spirituality into a man made racial religion, for status and treaty Indians only, rather than a way of life for all the Wabanaki people and all the people in the World.
Our people must not fear the special Elders who hold one or all of the seven spiritual ceremonies, because of what is written about them, or because of what the different churches or people have said about them under the influences of the linear materialistic philosophy which still rules the world today. We must learn to truly recognize them for who they are, and trust and respect them. We must also trust the cultural, spiritual and scientific knowledge they hold.
These spiritual Elders, are our healers and our scientists, and are more of an endangered species than we think. We can no longer forget that they exist. We must accept them for who they are, and the way they are, with their own human imperfections. Maybe our people don't know who they are, or how to recognize them. Maybe they don't know how to ask them for help, or to ask the questions in order to get the answers.
Maybe it is time we stop relying on the writings and interpretations of anthropologists who never could understand the spiritual and scientific nature of the Wampum belts, as most of them could not believe that First Nations people could hold such and advanced scientific knowledge on spirituality, cosmology and natural science.
Maybe it is time we stop running away from who we are as people, denying recognition of our own knowledge, and playing politics with all the Wampum belts. It is time we stop relying on interpretations of others just because we lost our own understanding of what they really are used for. We have ceremonies to teach us again their proper uses. When the time is ready, when we open our mind to understanding, when we remove our fear of the unknown once well known by all Native people, when Native people will become tolerant to spiritual ceremonies performed by their ancestors, way before the religious services performed today by different churches in native communities, the teachers from the universe will appear again. May be they always have been there. It is time we seriously prepare to empower ourselves with the help of our special Elders, because their is not much time left. The time is now.
picture of Albert Launiere/Kritopher Aubin(playing Drum) DAVID GEHUE
(BOX IN the text every where)
THE MAKING OF THE WAMPUM BEAD
Because of the importance the Wabanaki Nations attached to the Wampum beads and what they would trade to acquire them, the European thought that Wampum beads were the gold of the Wabanaki people. They never understood the spiritual connection of the Wampum beads when string with deer hides and sinew as a Wampum belt.
With their advance knowledge of cosmology, the Wabanaki people used the Wampum belts in their spiritual ceremonies to make contact and seek help from the Kitche Manitou, the Life Force, the spirit world and the Star people. For the Wabanaki people, the Wampum beads represented little lights, little spirits, and little prayers.
According to the Elders and from European writings of the 17th century, the Wabanaki people used to make their first strings of Wampum chiefly from small pieces of wood or animal bones of equal size, stained black or white. A few were made from fresh water mussels, which were esteemed to be very valuable as they were difficult to make: for a lack of proper tools, they did not spend much time finishing them. The completed beads were angular and clumsy in appearance. They were not made to serve as ornament but to serve spiritual purposes only.
The Europeans attached more importance to the aesthetics of the beads for their use as ornaments, rather than their spiritual uses. They soon contrived to make strings of Wampum both neat and elegant, and in abundance. They bartered these with the Native people for other goods and found this traffic very advantageous for their own economy, their warfare and the making of treaties. The Wabanaki people immediately gave up the use of the old wooden substitutes for Wampum beads produced with mussel shells. These were not valuable in European terms but were always regarded by the Wabanaki people as spiritually important.
The uses of shell ornaments as money are so well known that no discussion of the subject is required. Gardiners Bay and the east end of Long Island were the original seats of the Wampum trade, although this is less ancient than has been supposed. The trade reached the New England coast in recent times. The Narragansett and the Wampanoag were the most prolific makers of the Wampumpeag, and supplied the other Wabanaki Nations with
many shell beads, pendants and bracelets.
The white Wampumpeag or the Wampum bead produced mainly by the sea coast Wabanaki were made from the thickest and white part of any sea shell.
The purple or black Wampum beads were mostly made from the shell of the quahog, abundant in the Cape Cod area, territory of the Wampanoag. The process is simple but requires a skill only attained by long practice. The fresh shell are broke off about half an inch of the purple color of the inside, were the purple is 3/8 of an inch. The shell is soften in boiling water, bored with a sharp stone, then cut to the right length before being polished on an abrasive stone. Women produced as much as 40 Wampum beads a day.
While only beads which were generally of a certain size and form could be used in such Wampum belts as we are accustomed to seeing, it is evident that uniformity of beads would not be necessary for stringing the Wampum belts.
According to Wabanaki and the Six Nation Elders, the Wampum beads made of sea shell and used in Wampum belts by the Wabanaki people are almost as wide they are long, larger in diameter and shorter in length than those produced by the Six Nations people, from soft water river and stream shells. In reference to Wampum belts used by the Six Nations such as the one used in the well known meeting in Oswego, the fresh water shell beads produced and used by the Six Nations are narrower and longer in size, and
more blue than purple in color.
COLOUR OF THE WAMPUM BEADS, OLOUR OF THE BEINGS OF LIGHT
At one time the colors of the Wampum beads held a different meaning from the one that is expressed today. Long before the coming of the Europeans, the Wabanaki people produced belts from Wampum beads to be used only in spiritual ceremonies given to them by the Kitche Manitou the Life Force through the teaching of the Star People. Most of the ceremonies with the Wampum belts were performed in the wilderness, secluded on a mountain top, away from distraction and interruption. This was done to focus and rise natural energy and to provide the best chance to meet the Star people, to receive some teachings and answers to our questions.
All of life consist of vibrations and from vibrations comes colors. The Wampum belts work with that knowledge and are also powerful tools for healing. Vibrations are raised by our drums, songs, rattles, bells and cover an infinite number of octaves or different sound levels. Color is merely one octave in the range of light and we called it electro magnetic vibrations. Each color has a role and is a door way to allow us to travel in other planes of the universe or to travel into the universe to reach people of other planets, galaxies or stars.
The uses of white and purple seashells beads were of great importance. Because of their phosphorus content, they had the ability to light up and glow in the dark when the beads are charged with particle of energy created at the ceremony, and when exposed under the invisible beam of light projected to the ceremonial site from a craft of the Star people. When performing the special ceremonies, the white beads became clear like crystal and the purple ones become a little more opaque like amethyst. Both became little lights radiating all the colors of light energy. Any one participating at a shake tent ceremony during the time of the fire flies in mid June, will notice that all fire flies at proximity of the shaking tent, will automatically light up by the thousands, because they are within the magnetic field created by the ceremony, therefore grounding themselves. Like sea shell, fire flies have pure phosphor in them.
If you attend special ceremonies with the Wampum belts, you will notice the belts are only brought outside the special lodge in the light of the night, preferably by the light of a full moon. With the presence and the participation of the Star people, the whole Belt will light up to see a beautiful hologram in front of your eyes. The geometric designs will change dimension to become three dimensional, and the white beads will light up and stand up
like little fluorescent light bulbs, in the same way that white objects glow when exposed to ultra violet light. The centre of the white beads being is pure white, while the bottom and the top is mainly blue, red, yellow and green. The Wampum belts will also provide all the energy needed for the people doing the ceremony to cross over to other dimensions, to go were they are supposed to go, or to do what you they supposed to do.
The white Wampum beads on the belts glow the same way the Star People glow, when they come to meet us, moving away from their main huge source of light near or in the Sweat Lodge, the Shake Tent or the Star Lodge ceremony. This is what they look like on the ground, and how we see them when they come to visit us, because they have not totally crossed over into our dimension. When we observe them at special ceremonies, these Beings of Light are of pure spirit. They range in size from a small red orange dots like fire flies to the size of one foot tall to 4 feet tall and sometime more.
The purple Wampum beads made of quahog are never fully purple; they are marbled with some white colour. They give a feeling of the million of stars in the Milky Way, the background of the hologram. They also provide the energy, the ultra violet and gamma rays, radiating all the colours of the light needed at the ceremony. Always remember that one of the characteristics of crystal is that they decompose and retain light vibrations into colours, creating a tremendous amount of natural atomic energy.
The colours of the beads on the Wampum strings lost there importance when under the introduction of the materialistic system brought to this land by the European. White beads became the emblem of something good and purple beads of affairs of a more serious nature, but this was not invariable. Because of the greater rarity, the purple Wampum beads being double the value of white were often used to signify affairs of great importance.
Pre colonial Wampum belts produced by the Wabanaki lost their meaning, and were no longer used for their spiritual purposes. In some Mi'gmag and Abenaki communities, the beads from old spiritual Wampum belts were dismantled to string new belts of no spiritual significance. They were strung in recognition of the new religious faith, introduced by the Catholic Church which called the spirituality of our ancestors’ evil medicine. The Wampum belts were no longer strung in connection with the spirit world, the knowledge of the cosmology and the geometric design, the language of the Star People.
Wampum belts were produced to satisfy the needs of the political games and warfare of the colonies and to protect individual wealth of Europeans, Wabanaki and Six Nations alike. So much of their spiritual significance was lost that we started to paint the Wampum belts with red paint to state the affair concerned war. Under this influence, a purple belt
strung with the mark of a hatchet design and coloured with red paint represented a war belt, which when sent to a Nation together with a twist or roll of tobacco, was an invitation to join in a war.
We started to pray to the Kitche Manitou to ask him to help us win in battle, and kill many enemies. Never in the history of the Wampum belts of the Wabanaki Nations before the coming of the Europeans, the Wampum belts or the tobacco was used to instigate war amongst Wabanaki Nations and kill people. It was against the law, and the teachings of the Kitche Manitou, the Life Force, to kill an enemy. Amongst the Wabanaki Nations, it was more honorable to touch an enemy and count coup than to kill him.
Some bizarre attention to colour is seen in Sir William Johnson's address to the Warriors at Onondaga in 1756. He said "With these Strings of Wampum, I paint you as becomes Warriors." He gave five large black strings. "With these strings of White Wampum I feather your head as is customary among you when engaged in war." Who did he think he was, the Kitche Manitou? There were notable occasions when British and French military personnel departed from the significance of colour, and seemed to be partial to the precious black Wampum beads. White to the Wabanaki people, does not necessarily represent peace but rather the spirit world, the place where you go when you die. This is why Wabanaki people don't like to go into hospital room with white wall. They think they are going to the hospital to die. For those representatives of the colonies, black represented the darkness of death.
After the arrival and under the instigation of the European governments, the Iroquois unfortunately became the allies of the British, and the powerful enemies of the Wabanaki people, therefore shut off from the ocean. The Wabanaki became allies of the French. The iroquois could never conquer the Wampum maker then, but time, union and opportunity brought a great change, when the British broke the Franco-Wabanaki Alliance and defeated the French.
Today, because many Wabanaki Wampum belts were placed under the care of the Six Nations Confederacy for protection against reprisals from the British Army, the sole ownership, the understanding and knowledge of the Wampum belts are not in accordance with the popular opinion of the Elders of the Wabanaki Nations. According to oral traditions of the Wabanaki people, the Iroquois have always have been scared of the power of the Wampum belts held by the Wabanaki Elders.
This is why during the occupation of the French and the English, the Iroquois frequently raided the Wabanaki camps to steal the Wampum belts from the keepers. They thought that by taking them away, the Wabanaki people will lose their magical power and their mysterious ties with the Star people, and they would finally be able to defeat them in battle.
THE USES OF THE WAMPUM BELTS
According to the Elders, the material used to string the Wampum belts is not of great spiritual importance. It is the two contrasting colours, and the order of the geometric designs which create the hologram on the belts.
Each row is like a super string and their numbers may correspond to the number of moons, the time of the year, the level, the dimensions, and the rate of vibrations, the longitude, the latitude, the dimension, the direction and the time to perform the ceremony.
The chemical composition of the shell beads is related to the DNA formula and to enhance the lighting intensity because of the phosphorus content. Among the Wabanaki Nations, the Wampum belts must be used in the darkness of the night with very spiritual ceremonies such as the Shake tent, the Star Lodge and the Sweat Lodge. It is best used during the full moon to facilitate the opening of the doors, and the coming and the going of the teachers of the night sky, the Star people. Some Wampum belts are road maps
and doors to travel into the universe through the milky way.
Some Ceremonialists hold the knowledge of the forces of the universe, the natural laws of the Life Force, Kitche Manitou. All Spiritual Wampum belts are holographic with three dimensional geometric designs. They are of refined and advanced scientific knowledge of natural technology. They are also formulas for the Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid, or the DNA formula, the basic building block of all life.
All Wabanaki people knew that the knowledge of the Wampum belts was given to them at special ceremonies by Beings of light, the Star People. They became objects of spiritual significance when they were strung to create the hologram on the Wampum belts, covenant with the Kitche Manitou, the Spirit people and the Star people. This was done with respect, knowledge and understanding of the forces of the universe and of creation.
Some Wampum belts should be looked at and used lengthwise to make the connection between and with the forces below and above ground, and all around. This can be achieved better by hanging the belt on a stick between two poles six feet from the ground in the semi darkness of the traditional lodge, that all people might see them. Others can be looked at from side to side.
When performing a spiritual ceremony with the spiritual Wampum belts in order to make contact with the Star people, the belts were placed inside a birch hoop in a special Star Lodge, and looked at with a special round stone with a small hole in the centre. Those stones are called God eyes. The spiritual belts are considered to be alive and being made from the skin of mermaids, the first messengers of the Star people sent by the Kitche Manitou to habited the earth. Wabanaki people never exposed them to the sun light to avoid burning and damaging the sensitive skin of the mermaids. Because of their advanced knowledge and an understanding of the spiritual forces which they hold and provide, the Wabanaki people also used Wampum belts to kindle a Council fire and to serve as spiritual wood or fuel for this fire. The fire has a spiritual nature, and represents the entrance door to reach the Kitche Manitou. A woman would be given the loose beads and strung the Wampum belts according to the instructions given by the Kitche Manitou to the Wabanaki Elders, through special ceremonies.
In accordance with their idea of the soul, they usually made one present to put back the reasonable soul in the seat of reason. This of course demonstrated their advanced spiritual knowledge and their relationship with the Life Force of the universe, and proved that the Wampum belts were more than mnemonic devices.
We must recognized that non spiritual Wampum belts strung in later years as aids to memory to record a particular affair or chain of events, in order to communicate them to the people, who thus learn the history and engagements of all the Wabanaki people.
Among the Wabanaki people the Wampum beads were often given when a prisoner was freed in order to break his three bonds, of the legs, arms and waist. This was not a ransom which was more personal but was the gift of the Nation setting the prisoner free. In the spirit of fun, some Nations threw Wampum on the ground for a scramble at some of their feasts. The Huron Wendat had a funeral game for prizes. In the northwest the bones of the dead were enclosed in cases of bark, covered with new beaver robes and enriched with Wampum belts and strings. Wampum beads were among the funeral presents because of their spiritual connection. More secular prizes of a kettle and a deer skin were hung from the top of a grease pole, which people had to climb in order to win their.
With the coming of the Europeans and the influence of their churches, the uses, meaning and understanding of the Wampum beads and belts changed drastically, and new interpretation was introduced. In a very short time the Wampum beads, the strings and the belts lost their spiritual meaning as they became solely associated with materialistic values. They served as money, jewelry, ornaments, annals and for registers to bind of Nations and individuals, an inviolable sacred pledge to guarantee messages, promises and treaties.
They were no longer used for the same purpose as it they were before, to make sacred pledges with the Star people sent by the Kitche Manitou. They were used and abused by European, Wabanaki and Iroquois Nations alike as objects of secular trade. They were mass produced by the Dutch in the 18th century.
In 1670 Father Milet used Wampum beads for teaching religion to Wabanaki youngsters. During one week he placed before their eyes different strings of Wampum to mark the number and diversity of the things he was teaching them. At other times, he suspended by the same cords a beautiful collar of Wampumpeag before the altar of his chapel to teach them there was only one God, his God. Some strings of bugle beads were used to explain the liberality of which Heaven made use in rewarding all good actions. He gave these as reward for learning, because he of course knew as a religious man, the spiritual importance attached to the Wampum beads by the Wabanaki people.
put a star ship on this page) any kind with a Wampum Belt under it.
COSMOLOGY AND THE WAMPUM BELTS
Wabanaki cosmology always refers back to the fact that we are from the earth, which is govern by the moon and the sun. Since it is a star, the sun and its planetary system are elements of a dimly remembered galactic order of which Wabanaki people are a part. By the peculiar nature of their calendar, the Wabanaki people held time as they see history in terms of repetition extended over a very long period. With their knowledge of time space, for there are inscriptions by means of holographic geometric designs on Wampum belts, recording a regression of hundred and hundred of millions of years into the past, and others which look at least four thousands years into the future.
The Wabanaki calendar is made of 18 periods of 20 days to make the 360 days and the 360 degrees of a full cycle. 5 days are added to the calendar to form a year and during those five days no one would fall asleep during the day light hours of these extra calendar days, nor to quarrel, nor to trip as they walk. The Wabanaki people believed that what they did then would do forever. Nonetheless the sun, the earth and its moon function according to a common galactic timing frequency of 13:20. The timing frequency of the earth is also 13:20. Do not forget that a frequency is also a vibration.
Within the cycle of the earth about the sun, a smaller kind of years was made up of succession of 260 days divided into 13 groups of 20 days week. A day would be known as one water serpent, two days as two water serpents and so on. In the same way 13 companions of the day presided over the hours of daylight and 9 companions of the night presided over the hours of the night.
The total companions add to 22 hours, making real time space hours longer than marked by contemporary time and clock. Time of that 260 days year was subdivided into 5 periods of 52 days to create the 4 parts of the compass point and the centre, creating the symbol of the cross of the medicine wheel, and have an exact parallel on the 52 years cycle at the end of which the sun had to be revived or creation would end.
The symbol of the cross was known to Wabanaki People who seem to have regarded the horizontal arm as signifying the transitory and the perishable, the vertical one as the eternal and the stable. The vertical arm representing time in various heavens and underworlds, where as the horizontal direction was associated with the passage of the sun across the sky. Wabanaki people, were acutely aware that time like all else in the universe is mortal. Fires must be lighted every 52 years to keep it going. But the mainstream of this fifty two year clock to be wound up by prayers and fires was a cyclical one. At the end of the 52 years period fires were pout out everywhere in the land. At midnight when the time had run out the Wabanaki would kindle a new fire to start a new cycle. We should note here that the number 5 was associated with the 584 days of the revolution of Venus to equal 2,920 days or exactly 8 earth years of 365 days.
We have then multiples of 13 periods x 20 days, 18 periods x 20 days, of 52 days and 52 years and of the synodic revolution of Venus and the planet's Conjunction with the calendar year on earth. There was also a division of 5 periods of 73 days which multiplied by 260 days cycle created the 52 years cycle. 73 days x 260 days, divided by 365 days = 52 years.
The Number 13 refers to the 13 lunations which synchronize the earth solar year. It is a circular science. Fortunately, 13 rows on a spiritual Wampum belt does not represent the 13 colonies created under the occupation of the European, but is rather in relation with the 13 moons of one calendar year.
The number 20 also refers to the number of wave spells which are the galactic timing standard. A wave spells is a fractional sequence of thirteen units of kin. All Wabanaki people follow the path of 13 moons. However it is in the 20 digits of the 10 fingers and the 10 toes that the solar frequency of 20 is best remembered by Wabanaki people to ground themselves. No wonder that number such as 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 20, 52 were held sacred by Wabanaki people and always correspond to the numbers of rows on most of the Wampum
belts.
From a modern astronomical standpoint, the sliding scale was a surprisingly efficient one. For instance, the agricultural solar calendar of 365 days, multiplied by two 52 year period, gives 37,960 days, 146 times the 260 days period also gives 37,960 days; and the synodic revolution of Venus are 584 x 65 or 37,960 days. So that every 104 years these three sliding scales coincided. Again five periods of 260 days make 1300 days or 44 revolutions of the moon about the earth. We have a shaking tent with the same amount of poles. Mercury Cycles is 116 days, or about 9 x 13. The 584 day Venus cycles 2.25 x 260. One cycle of mars is 780 days or exactly 3 x 260. Jupiter cycle is 399 days, roughly 18 x 22. Saturn's cycle is 378 days or 360 + 18. By the sliding scale, the cycle of the planets could be calculated with a degree of accuracy that was remarkable.
SPIRITUAL READING OF THE WAMPUM BELTS
Wabanaki people did not have books or written material. They had hieroglyph, archetypes and cerebral geometric designs. To understand the Wampum belts, you must return to the doorway of the collective unconscious of the right hemisphere of your brain. This is how you make contact with the spirit world and the Star People. Your brain is like a computer. It stores everything it sees and hears in its relationship with the universe. The only real trick is in knowing how to recall that information. With a computer you just key up the menu. We used to recall information through pictures, symbols, key words, and diagrams that had been left to us over thousand of years. Spiritual writing still exists all over the north and South American continents and the world, but we have lost our way of spiritual reading.
Many of our Wabanaki Elders retained the knowledge of our cultures and our sciences, and know that everything in nature is based on a timing frequency. A timing frequency governs the growth and development of all phenomena. Timing frequencies predate and actually governed the rise of Wabanaki Culture and all universal civilizations.
The perfection of understanding Wabanaki sciences will depend on the degree to which Wabanaki people can match Wabanaki learning with the natural timing frequency as taught by our special Elders.
Modern science operates on a 12:60 timing frequency rather than the natural 13:20 used by Wabanaki people. The end result of this modern science is an electrical over charge, and the current situation of world disorder and imbalance. 12:60 science is a linear science and this way of thinking cannot produce any solution to halt the environmental mess. But has the potential of totally destroying the planet. The natural frequency of the earth was replaced by the 12 month year and the 60 minute hour. This is what is giving us a false concept of time. We believe that we are in the universal year 1996, when we are not.
Our Wabanaki Elders are speaking in their own way about this, but is anyone listening? Every time they speak to us they are warning us about the terrible things that will to come before 1999. They predict huge floods followed by a nuclear world war. They tell us that time is not a clock, and that a clock does not measure time. A clock is only a measuring device of a lower materialistic world which will come to an end and according to Wabanaki Elders perhaps sooner than we think. Are we preparing for it?
To survive what is coming, everything in our Wabanaki teaching must be rethought, rebuilt and developed from the natural 13:20 timing frequency if we want to regain control of our cultures and survived what is coming. Perhaps this is what our Elders are saying, that Wabanaki teachings will be the education of tomorrow.
If we begin to understand that the Red Road has always been a wholistic concept for Wabanaki learning synergy, then we may interpret it as a whole brain approach to Wabanaki learning. Each side of our brain is dominant in different modes of thought: the left is logical, linear, verbal, abstract, sequential and serial. The right side is instinctive, wholistic, nonverbal, concrete, random and spatial. Today non aboriginal learning system
used by Wabanaki people emphasize the development of left hemisphere activities more than the right.
Consequently this forced Wabanaki people to learn to place emphasis on books and libraries as the sources of all knowledge. In contrast in traditional Wabanaki culture any time a person wanted knowledge or information, he attended a ceremony and requested the information from the collective unconsciousness portion of the mind.
If you want to learn the basic ABCs of spiritual reading and how to apply it to the teachings of all our cultural activities, you must first free ourselves of all concepts or methodologies which we have learned so far in our lifetime and leave your minds free of any thoughts and reasoning.
It is not through memory that the knowledge of spiritual reading is acquired. We must first learn how to make contact with the spiritual world and to recognize it, with the help of the ceremonies that were left to us by the Star people and are used under the guidance and direction of our special Elders. Vision Quests and Sweat Lodges are a good start. Meditation, Pipe Ceremonies, Sun Dances, special ceremonies, spiritual Songs and Shaking Tents are also part of this process. Traditional teaching with words helps us to be aware and to understand all of the elements that are intricately part of it.
Vision of the mind does not require good vision with our eyes, a good memory, or a university degree. There are things in our lives that are registered daily in our brain cells, but we are not aware of their presence, because they have not necessarily registered in our mind through our visual, audio, smelling, tasting, and touching memory.
Knowing to read the Wampum belts with your mind will help you to understand better their uses, who we are and what our role is in this universe. Knowing also the physical composition of your brain cells, your own perfect personal and universal computer, will also help you in your spiritual reading and understanding of the Wampum belts. You will then be prepared to explore the connection of spiritual reading and yourself, the natural force, the universe, the gifts of life, all living things, spiritual objects, the trees, the past, the water, the present, the air, the future, the earth, the languages, the values, the customs, the sciences, the world, the ceremonies, the rocks, the natural energy, the animals, the sun, the stars, the moon, travelling, prophecies ,visions, dreams, and connection with the spiritual world and the Star People.
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THE ARECIBO MESSAGE
In an attempt to make contact with other intelligent form in the universe, a message was send in 1974 by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. To decode the message, the 1679 binary bits they used randomly are to be arranging on a grid 23 bits across by 73 bits down, just like the parallel and vertical rows of a Wampum belt. When the 1s and the 0s are so arranged and translated into dark square and light spaces, each dark square being a 1 and a light square being 0, just like the 2 colors of the Wampum belts, the result being the pictorial message shown here.
(must place the message in the centre and built text around it printing of the text could also be in 14 points)
Across the top is a sample of our counting system, the numbers 1 through 10, below which are the atomic numbers of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphor, five important elements making up earth life. Below that are bands specifying how those elements are put together to form the sugars and bases composing the nucleotides of DNA. Is this why we use sweat berries, candies and maple sugar in our ceremonies?
The long vertical bar shows the number of nucleotides in DNA while the curved pattern to either side represents the double helix shape of a DNA molecule. Directly beneath the DNA bar is a human shape, with its real life height of 175 centimeters given at the right and earth's human population of 4 billions given at the left. Beneath the human figure is a plan of the solar system wit the earth slightly out of line toward the human figure to indicate
that the third planet is inhabited by intelligent Beings. At the bottom is a curve representing the dish of the Arecibo telescope along with a row of numbers giving its diameter of 305 meters.
How interesting would it be for the maker of that message if only they would use holography and the knowledge of the spiritual science of the Wampum belts and the right vibration frequency, to communicate with Being in the universe and the Star people. First they must recognize the Wabanaki scientific knowledge and technology. It would removed their fear and their paranoia of being invaded and abducted by other civilizations out there who might find earth just the right king of planet to colonize. There is no need for such paranoia as they are already there.
These electromagnetic signals have been going for millions of years in all directions and at the speed of light announcing and communicating with people in the universe, also inhabited in other layer of the universe. It is too late to hide or disguise the fact that we are here and they are over there every where. We must first start to accept them as a reality if they want to understand.