We should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples.
BLACK ELKWhen 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.
More Black Elk Quotes
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Hear me, four quarters of the world-a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.
BLACK ELK -
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.
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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 -
Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
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 -
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 -
As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.
BLACK ELK -
So I took the bright red stick and at the center of the nation’s hoop I thrust it in the earth.
BLACK ELK -
If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish.
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 -
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.
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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.
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I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured,it was the power from the Outer World.
BLACK ELK -
The center of the universe is everywhere.
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But if the Vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet;for such things are of Spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.
BLACK ELK