Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.
BLACK ELKEach family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
More Black Elk Quotes
-
-
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
BLACK ELK -
When I got back to my father and mother and was sitting up there in our tepee, my face was still all puffed and my legs and arms were badly swollen; but I felt good all over and wanted to get right up and run around.
BLACK ELK -
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world….
BLACK ELK -
And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.
BLACK ELK -
The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.
BLACK ELK -
I saw more than I can tell / And I understood more than I saw.
BLACK ELK -
But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all.
BLACK ELK -
We should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples.
BLACK ELK -
Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
BLACK ELK -
But the Wasichus came, and they have made little islands for us and other little islands for the four-leggeds, and always these islands are becoming smaller, for around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed.
BLACK ELK -
Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
BLACK ELK -
You remember that my great vision came to me when I was only nine years old, and you have seen that I was not much good for anything until after I had performed the horse dance near the mouth of the Tongue River during my eighteenth summer.
BLACK ELK -
Know the Power that is Peace.
BLACK ELK -
They told me I had been sick twelve days, lying like dead all the while, and that Whirlwind Chaser, who was Standing Bear’s uncle and a medicine man, had brought me back to life.
BLACK ELK -
He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka, who is everything; then he knows that world which is real.
BLACK ELK -
The visions and ceremonies only made me like a whole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.
BLACK ELK -
Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.
BLACK ELK -
Grown men may learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure, and, therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss.
BLACK ELK -
It is not enough to have a vision. In order to have its power, you must enact your vision on earth for all to see. Only then do you have the power.
BLACK ELK -
It is in the darkness of their eyes that men lose their way.
BLACK ELK -
Everything tries to be round.
BLACK ELK -
The song and the drumming were like this: Behold, a sacred voice is calling you; All over the sky a sacred voice is calling.
BLACK ELK -
It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death.
BLACK ELK -
I was four years old then, and I think it must have been the next summer that I first heard the voices.
BLACK ELK -
Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers.
BLACK ELK -
Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth.
BLACK ELK