Area: S:SNET-L
  Msg#: 2859                                         Date: 05-2895  08:06
  From: Searchnet Mailing List                       Read: Yes    Replied: No
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  Subj: LAKOTA ELDER ON "GREYS"

From: ur-valhalla!ixc.ixc.net!bteague (Bill Teague)
Subject: Lakota Elder on "greys"  2/2
Message-ID: <9505281109.AB12109@ixc>
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 07:06:03 -0400
 excerpt from  "Lakota Star Knowledge - Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology"
 by Ronald Goodman.

Quote:

        "We begin the exposition about Lakota constellations with a few
stories from Lokota sacred Oral Tradition essential to this presentation.
The central figure in these stories is a personage named "Fallen Star", who
the Left Heron family calls "a Messiah" and Black Elk named "Saviour" and
"Holy One".
        The stories of the Lakota Oral Tradition are sacred literature.
Therefore they must like other scriptures be understood on four levels of
consciousness. These levels correspond, the Lakota say,  to our physical,
emotional, intellectual, and spiritual natures, and these are related to the
unfolding of the four stages of life: childhood, youth, adulthood, and old
age. The first three levels of understanding can come eventually to any
earnest seeker, as he or she grows and matures. But the spirits alone can
give us the last and highest comprehension. All four levels are true and
those four truths are one truth. The medicine men say that how deeply each
of us understands the stories tells us about the level we have attained in
our own lives. the following are paraphrases of several Fallen Star stories.


        "Long, long ago, two young Lakota women were out one night looking
at the stars. One young woman said "See that big beautiful star. I wish I
could marry it." The other woman said the same about another star. Suddenly
they are transported into the star world and there these two star's become
their husbands. The wives become pregnant. They are told this star world is
theirs, but also warned not to dig any wild turnips."

        "Eventually one of them does and as she pulls out the turnip a hole
opens in the star world. She is able look down and see the earth and even
her own village. She becomes homesick and decides to return to earth. She
braids more and more trunips to make a rope and lets herself down through
the hole. But the braid doesn't reach the earth and she falls. The crash
kills her, but her baby is born. The baby is raised by a meadowlark. Since
meadowlarks speak Lakota the baby now named "Fallen Star" grows up speaking
it too."

        "Fallen Star matures rapidly - in days rather than years. he is
taller than normal and a light emanates from him. The meadowlark grows old
and takes him to a Lakota band where he settles for awhile."

        "Fallen Star the protector the bringer of light and higher
consciousness, travels from one Lakota band to another, and everywhere he is
recognized, expected, and revered."

        "At one point a band is camped near Harney Peak in the Black Hills.
Every day a "red eagle" swoops down and steals a girl-child, carries her to
the mountain tip and kills her. the men try to shoot the "red eagle" but
fail. They pray for Fallen Star and after seven days (and after seven girls
have been killed), he arrives. He shoots the eagle and places the spirits of
the seven girls in the sky as a constellation - the pleiedes - in Lakota
.... seven little girls."


end of quoted material


I think I'll be lookin'  for some wild turnips to dig this summer.

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