Lighting the Seventh Fire: The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American

Lighting the Seventh Fire: The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American by Peat, F. David. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781559722490.

Dr. F. David Peat, a theoretical physicist, spent much of his life trying to understand the universe through the means of western science. Then, in the 1980s, he began a series of encounters with Native Americans that gave him a profoundly different perception of reality - from their view of the creation of the world and birth itself to death and beyond. Often moving and always enlightening, Lighting the Seventh Fire describes a stress-free and inspiring way of life so very different from the harsh, complex world in which we live. Dr. Peat addresses such topics as: Healing and Disease, Science, Mathematics, History and Myth, Language, and Time. Everything is viewed in a different fashion from the way we see things. For example, physical healing can often be achieved through song, which Native Americans believe lives on long after the singer dies. In Ceremonies of Renewal, everything from the movement of the sun to the stability of society is in a state of flux. It is through negotiating compacts with the energies of the universe and carrying out periodic ceremonies of renewal that stability and balance can be ensured. Thus, the People of the Plains meet each year to celebrate the Sun Dance, which is performed for many days around the sacred cottonwood tree. They claim this ceremony plays its role in maintaining the harmony and balance of the cosmos. For the author, the Sun Dance became his introduction to the world of Native American science. In sacred mathematics, numbers are not abstract, static things, but living entities that transform one into the other. And history is not written down but passed on by storytellers who recount events of past generations, including migrations that took place before time as humans experienced it. The title Lighting the Seventh Fire prophesizes that when the seventh fire is lit, the Native American and the white man will become brothers. It bridges the world views of Blackfeet, Iroquois, Haida, Hopi, Ojibwaj, and Mayan peoples and our own scientific account of reality. It reveals a world in which time moves in a circle, rocks speak, animals transform, and songs bring about healing.