Symbolism

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The North American Indian is by nature a symbolist, a mystic and a philosopher. They peopled the forests,rivers and sky with many superphisical and invisible beings. They also considered the earth-The Great Mother-to be an intermediate plane,bounded above by a heavenly sphere (the dwelling place of the Great Spirit) and bellow by a dark and terryfing subterranean world ( the abode of the shadows and submundane powers). Like the Chaldeans, they divided the interval between the surface of the earth and heaven into various layers, one consisting of clouds, another of the paths of the heavenly bodies ,and so on. The underworld was similarly divided and like the Greek system represented to the initiated the House of the Lesser Mysteries. Those creatures capable of functioning in two or more elements were considered as messengers between the spirits of these various planes. The abode of the dead was presumed to be in a distant place: in the heavens above, the earth below, the distant corners of the world , or across the wide seas. Sometimes a river flows between the world of the dead and that of the living. The number 4 has a peculiar sanctity, presumably because the Great Spirit created His universe in a square frame. The Indian does not worship the sun ; he rather regards this shinning orb as an appropiate symbol of the Great and Good Spirit who forever radiates life to his red children. In Indian symbolism the serpent-especially the Great Serpent-corroborates other evidence pointing to the presence of the Mysteries on the North American Continent.The flying serpent is the Atlantean token of the initiate; the seven -headded snake represents the seven great Atlantean islands and also the seven great prehistoric schools of esoteric philosophy. Many Ameriacan Indian tribes are reincarnationists,some are transmigrationists. They even called their children by the names supposed to have been norne by them in a former life. The belief in reincarnation is also prevalent among the Eskimos. The American Indians recognize the difference between the ghost and the actual soul of a dead person,a knowledge restricted to initiates of the Mysteries. The outstanding hero of the North American Indian folklore is Hiawatha=he who seeks the wampum belt. He was the chief of the Iroquois and managed to succeed in uniting the five great nations of the Iroquois into the League of the Five Nations.