Forward

"This is what I tell my children: I believe all come from the same source. If you look down in history you can see that for around 30.000 years ago maybe longer, some man, woman and children wandered from the east of Siberia over the small isthmus that at that time connected Alaska and Siberia.  It was a dangerous journey and they didn't know what they would find on the other side of the small isthmus. They didn't know that the continent we to day call America was lying ahead of them. The people wandered and did find new places to live.  More and more groups of people found their way down through the new continent and settled down. The groups were often call " nation " in the new continent and each " nation " had their own language, way of living and name: Blackfoot, Lakota, Seneca, Sioux, Creek, Crow, Navajo, Tsimshian, Micmac, Iroquois, Susquehanna, Papago, Pawnee, Inuit, Tlingit, and many many more!! One thing all the "nations” did have in common was the story telling. 
For a hundred or maybe a thousand years ago when the day was falling into the night,  man, woman and children sat around the fire and listened to the stories about Coyote, Raven, Bluebird and Glooscap, stories about why the beavers tail is wide and flat or about why there is death. A the time the stories were told the first time, there was no kind of written language, so the stories were passed on from father to son or from mother to daughter, like how to make good medicine or how to hunt a deer and Wapiti. There were also stories tellers that would go from tribe to tribe and share the wisdom the stories and that way the stories were kept alive so both you and I can read them to day and share them with our children.  The stories tellers in Siberia and the rest of the world also had stories to tell, maybe they no longer sound like the same stories, but if you listen very carefully you can hear that it is the same stories just with an other dialect, told a different way, but it still with the same meaning. "
 

The Four Goddesses

     One day the shaman in the east (Siberia) told the children of the tribe about the four goddess.  One of the smallest children did ask the names of the four goddess 

     And the Shaman told her, "My child look at them and tell me the names of the four goddess."

     The child looked at the goddess and saw the first beautiful women all dressed in the colors of the Earth, her cloak was so bright and wonderful .  The child called her Mother Earth.  Then the child looked a the next beautiful woman all dress in the colors of the Sea, her cloak was just as wonderful and bright as the first goddess cloak.   The child called her, Goddess of the Waters.   The next beautiful woman the child saw was all dress in the colors of the sky.   And her cloak was just as bright and beautiful as the two other goddess cloaks.   The child called her Goddess of the Air.   The last beautiful women the child did see was all dress in the colors of the fire.   And her cloak was bright and wonderful as the entire goddesses cloak as been.   The child called her Goddess of the Fire. 

     The shaman told the children that the little child was right by giving the goddess those names and told the children that the Four Goddesses were Earth, Air, Water and Fire and if they would treat the Four Goddess,  right their cloaks always would be beautiful and bright and the goddess would take good care of the people on earth. 

    Mother Earth would give them all the things they ever could think of.  And they should never be hungry.

     The Goddess of the Air would help mother earth by making rain and give the birds a place to fly. 

     The Goddess of the Waters would make fish they could eat and give them a way to travel to far away places 

     The Goddess of the Fire would give them fire so they never should be cold and so they would have at place to cook the gifts from the others goddess.


     But time past by and the children forgot the words of the shaman. They forgot to take care of the Four Goddess.  The children thought they were wiser then the shaman.   The children thought that they just could take the things they needed with out asking the four goddess. 

     More time past by and the Four Goddess were forgotten. 

     The children just kept on taking from Earth, Water, Air and Fire with out thinking about the consequence, so if the small child would see the Four Goddess today what do you think the child would see??  Would the child still see Four Goddesses all dress in beautiful and bright cloaks or will the four goddess now be dress in cloaks there no longer is bright and beautiful but instead their cloaks will be bleached and full of holes?


     But the Four Goddess are still around they are just waiting for the children to remember the words of the shaman. And waiting for the children to take each other’s hands around the world and start treating the Four Goddesses with dignity so theirs cloaks can ones again be bright and beautiful.

by Marjoram