Understanding Taku Skan Skan – What is the power that moves that which moves?

In the late eighteen nineties an Ogalala medicine man called Finger was interviewed by an anthropologist who wanted to know what Skan Skan was. Finger replied that Skan is the power that moves that which moves and is the fundamental essence of our reality. It is the power that makes a leaf unfold and a flower bloom and it is forever in motion.

I was fascinated to know more about Skan and one afternoon in 2003, Leonard Crow Dog, a spiritual leader and medicine man from Rosebud Reservation arrived at my house. He was looking for my husband who was in Rapid City at the time. Leonard had ‘stuff’ to sell but no money to buy gas to get back to Grass Mountain and consequently spent the afternoon with me until Harold got home.

I asked Leonard about Skan Skan and what it meant to him and he was very forthcoming. He explained Skan the moving power in relation to the four winds, the tree of life and the sacred circle of the Sundance ground.

 

The two roads

Crow Dog said that in this world there are two roads that a man may walk. He said visualize a horizontal line, on one end is the east wind and on the other the west wind. This is the black road of suffering where the heart(air) is in conflict with our desires and emotions(water).

Then think of a vertical line crossing the horizontal. The red road, the north/ south road of earth and fire, the path of initiation, truth and spiritual growth. Where the two lines cross the flowering tree of consciousness is born and the hoop of the nation becomes reality. A holy place where a two-dimensional construct becomes three. Its symbol is the cangleska wakan – the sacred medicine wheel that is found in every indigenous culture. The blueprint of Taku Skan Skan.

The moving power has five bands. He laughed and held up his hand. This is why you have five fingers and five toes. They are sensors of Taku Skan Skan that make up our reality.

He went onto explain that each of the five Skan fields have populated worlds connected to them that have a colour, phonetics, a musical note, a perfume and a geometric. It is here that the spirits live, the ones that help us in our ceremonies, the healers, those that can find lost people and objects, those that can warn us of danger and counsel us in time of need.

He said, be warned for just like our reality the Skan worlds are dualistic and two kinds of beings dwell there. Positive and negative….those that heal and those that destroy.

Tob Tob Kin

In Lakota philosophy we find the tob tob kin…the sacred 2 x 2 = 4 which aligns with the four elemental body types. Earth, Air, Fire and Water— each with its own signature pattern of metabolism, muscular build, weight distribution, strengths and weaknesses. While all four elements are present in any body, our elemental body type is determined by the element (or sometimes elements) which predominate at the time of birth. Each element is closely connected with a chakra, which dictate its energy patterns and harmonics.

In western spiritual understanding we see the Skan Skan fields as the element fields of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space or Ether.

The blooming tree of consciousness at the centre of our being corresponds to space or ether, the highest element which contains the other four and, at the etheric level only one sense exists but at the earth level there are five senses.

It is interesting to see how the Skan fields shape our lives. All of us exhibit Skan according to the astrological configurations present at our birth and it may be that the vibratory nature of the planetary bodies actually creates the Skan fields in our dimension. The source of the power that moves that which moves.

We are Skan Skan

Most people do not realise that Skan is not something outside of us. We are made up of the Skan fields. We are 70% water, our bones and flesh are earth. We breathe air and fire in our solar plexus keeps us warm, and there is space in our throats and nostrils. Therefore, it follows that we can with  heartfelt diligence and dedication to spiritual reality contact the powers of the Universe. We need no priest or middleman to contact the Supreme Source of all that is: future, past and present.

Spiritual Fuckery

When we look at the last 500 years of history on our planet, we see the worldwide destruction of aboriginal peoples, the keepers of the sacred knowledge of other realities has all but been destroyed. Sacred sonic languages have been taken from us and replaced by dead languages like English, Spanish and German to name a few. And, it is no accident that standard tuning A 432 hz, the music of the natural world, the voices of the buffalo and wolf, and Arguntila…the natural man was changed by the military industrial complex in the late nineteen forties to A 440hz. A dead musical scale that does not resonate on the moving powers. This was a deliberate act to close our consciousness and prevent spiritual contact with beings that can help us through the changes at the end of the processional Age.

It is our choice to live out our lives as sense bound humans or embrace our destiny as enlightened spiritual beings.

Love you much.