Dear Nicole,
Your post was part of a real synchronous event. These are strange happenings when things that seem unrelated suddenly come together at the same time and show that there was a hidden and mysterious connection.
At almost the very time that you were sending the information about the origin of the word NEWS, I was considering the further development of a piece of art work I made about twenty years ago. It is a circular sculptural piece, with the four cardinal points indicated by their Chinese symbols in the I Ching.
That very day I had read that the "Golden Horde" who came from Mongolia under the Khans and invaded Europe from the East for a second time used what is known as
the Steppe Colour System for the four cardinal directions. In that system, North is Black. East is Blue, but in another part of the information it said that
East is White so I want to check to find out which is correct.) West is therefore either White or Blue and South is Red. The centre is Gold.
The centre point signified the original home of "The Golden Horde" and that'showthey got their group name.
Many years ago in one of my mother's photo albums I saw a photograph
of three girls seated on a log. It was an original photograph from Bukovina, andtwo of the girls were clearly oriental. I asked my mother about it and she said
that they were some "cousins." Whether cousins by blood or by marriage, I don'
t know. I would like to think that they were blood cousins. :-) She said that
their oriental ancestry dated from the time of "The Golden Horde" when they swept through that region long ago. None of her family or mine look as
though we have any oriental ancestry. Coincidentally, when a nurse at the hospital showed Ben his newborn son for the first time Ben thought they were showing
him the wrong child, that they mistakenly were showing hima Chinese baby. It should be explained that our baby was jaundiced, and his eyes, which are dark and deep-set, were swollen. I wish I had that photograph of the "cousins." I must check with the rest of the family to see if any of them have it.
One of our daughters decided to give her baby daughter the name of Ghenghis Khan
's mother. She was already the mother of two little boys herself, and she was deeply moved by the courage and enterprise of this woman, Hoelune, so long ago, who was abandoned together with her children by their tribe, after her husband died. The brave mother of two little sons the same age as my daughter's boys managed to feed them and herself on what they could all glean in the way of berries
and herbs, and she successfully raised them through great hardships to become fierce, proud, strong, wise and capable warriors. One of those sons became the great Ghenghis Khan. Our daughter learned about this from a library book she borrowed to read to her little boys. She decided to give her newborn daughter the name of this strong, courageous woman: Hoelune.
That's how a Canadian child whose father is from Central America and whose mother is half German and a combination of Bukovinian, Polish, Walloon, Scottish, Irish, and possibly from ancient times, Mohawk, on the other side --(most of those very old American settler families dating back to the early
1600's have some native ancestry and I hope some day to find if we have some in
ours.( My ancient 1700 hundreds German immigrant great-grandmother in was adopted as a child into the Mohawk Nation, and became a wise and respected Matriarch of the nation. Her name was Sarah Kast, and she had to do with her adopted people coming to Canada and escaping the devastation that came upon other native people there after the American Revolutary War.
This was well before David, my brother Canuck and Lui Li Ping were married. We
didn't even know Li Ping then.
About 1975 I had become deeply interested in Carl Jung's writings. He was interested in the I Ching, so I looked into it and began to use it on rareoccasions when I wanted more insight into some problem. I found that when used correctly and respectfully, and only occasionally, its guidance was helpful to my thinking. It could be very accurate in its appraisal of a situation.
Once I had a dream of The Sage of the I Ching. In it I went very deep underground through constructed passages and finally arrived at the end, where there was
a small Chinese gentleman barefoot, but dressed in a grey business suit. He was
reclining, with beautiful, chubby little bare feet stretched forward toward me.
His feet seemed charming and lovable and looked like the fresh little yet unused feet of a baby. He was laughing merrily with his mouth wide open. I could see to the back of his throat where there was an open eye. A seeing eye.
I concluded that this was the symbolic appearance my dream gave to "theSage" of the I Ching. I remember the dream vividly to this day, and that is said to be the sign of a significant dream.
It was due to interest in the I Ching that I made that sculptural piece. There
are cowrie shells at the cardinal points. (Cowrie shells are the sign ofwomen in many cultures.)
Around that time I made another sculptural piece of work. It was an altar,
and I wanted it to have a North American native theme. It was four-sided and about chest high with the dimensions of an ancient Hebrew altar. I wanted it
to have some feeling around it, and to be symbolic of the deep underlying unity
of all religions in their basic original teachings. The native people had their
divinely inspired Teachers, too.
I was told by an Inuit Shaman from the high Arctic, that his people have the spoken history that they came over and through the ice bridge that joined
Asia with North America many millenia ago. A group of them went down far south
into what is now the USA. At a certain point which is known, but which I have forgotten. They consulted and decided that they should divide themselves into four groups and each group should follow one of the four bent arms of theirholy symbol the Swastika. This would lead a group each outward toward the north
, south, east or west and then along the bend into a right angle direction from
the original. You probably know that the Swastika is a bent cross and an ancient holy symbol for people from India, too. Adolf Hitler stole it, turned it backwards and set it crookedly on one of its points to be the symbol of the Third Reich. This pure religious symbol was reversed. Reversing it went symbolically well with his unholy evil Nazi rule.
The Inuit Shaman who travelled from Little Diomede Island in the high Arctic near Siberia and stayed with us on his journey told me that there is a place in Canada near US border and far inland from the Pacific Coast where the language of
the native people is very similar to his people's language. There is another place much deeper down in the USA which is also linguistically related. This seems to indicate that the parting of the four groups really happened.
The Okanagan native people of my valley here use the four directions, too. Eachdirection has a colour, as it does for the Steppe people. Each direction has an animal symbol. Each animal is related to a certain type of person. There is
more depth to the symbols, but I only know a little. I want to compare the Steppe colours for the cardinal points with those used by the native people.
Nicole, it was a tremendous synchronous coincidence for me that the day I was thinking about this and about adding some of the Steppe colours to my circular piece, that you wrote about the word NEWS and its relationship to North, East, West
and South.
How do you think this kind of thing happens? Is it because we, the human race,
are all one organism, linked at deeper levels than we yet understand? What do you think about this story? You have interesting views and insights and I am interested.
Warmly, Mary
