Atira Moon: The Native American Connection. Part 1

“Aitra” is the Pawnee Indian word for Earth. Tom came up with the name for the farm and I think I like it more each time I say or write the words. My husband often plays down how intuitive he is, but he cannot deny how spot on he has been when it comes to that name.

Today’s blog will focus on an event that I used to describe as a daydream or, an example of “my terrific imagination”, but have come to think, was a spontaneous past life memory. I don’t use that term lightly. I believe it to be the only waking and conscious spontaneous past life recall I have ever had in my nearly 50 years of life.

When I was 15 years old and living on the outskirts east of Wichita, I had a lovely sorrel mare named Money. I rode that horse every chance I could get and down every dirt road and into every neglected pasture or quiet piece of land I could find. Most everywhere I rode there was a road, a fence, a street, a house, a tree, a hedgerow, a pond nearby, something that marked the land and separated it from the grass, the prairie that I rode upon.

Except one place. Not far from a road named “Pawnee” east of 127th street, there was some unused, empty land that still supported a small amount of native praire grass that was of the “tall” variety. Just bits and pieces mind you. This small patch of grass was not at all like the Tallgrass Prairie that used to stretch for miles in Kansas, but it was something hinting at that.  It was all grass. There was no trees or bushes or anything at all but grass. There were a few patches of grass that grew so high, that even when I was on the back of my good mare, the grass heads would brush up against my thighs.

I thought this grassy world was the most beautiful place on the planet. There was this small rounded knoll, a tiny bit of ground just barely higher than the rest that I used to find within the sea of grass that I would ride to and then stop. I would turn Money in a circle and, if the day was just right, and no tall truck drove by on Pawnee, or there were no planes or contrails in the sky, and if no combine was working nearby, I could turn 360 degrees and see absolutely nothing but grass, and hear nothing but the wind.

It was like being on the ocean, where you can turn and see the curvature of the earth yet the waves were green, and dry and the breeze that blew past my face was sweet and not salty and I used to wonder, what it was like there on that very piece of earth, before humans concreted and asphalted and farmed or changed in some way that beautiful grass.

So one beautiful warm, late summer evening I was there on my mare, turning her in her circle, once again wondering what life used to be like on that bit of ground when POOF! I was transported.

Suddenly I was not on my horse but standing next to her, but she wasn’t even the same horse! I was standing by the left side of some horse, in the same tall grass, on the same small spot of land. My hands were busy braiding within the flaxen mane of the horse, small wooden and stone beads, right next to a feather that had already been braided there.

But they were not my hands. They were much browner, much redder than my own hands. They were the hands of a young girl, but that young girl was not the one who was living in Kansas in 1976. I was an Indian girl, and I knew, as that girl what I was doing there, on that spot in the prairie, braiding these items into the mane of this pony.

I had snuck away from the village and was hurriedly carrying out a plan in secret. I was braiding the feather and beads into the pony’s mane at great risk. I knew that these special, powerful objects were to be used only by the warrior and hunting men of my tribe on their horses. The feather I believe was to imbue the swiftness of a hawk or eagle to the horse, and the beads and stones had their own magical powers of protection or strength and all of these items were special, sacred, and nothing at all a woman, let alone a young girl should be braiding into a pony’s mane.

But I loved horses and loved to ride. I wanted to see for myself if the feather would make this horse run faster. I think the fact that I was ever even allowed to ride at all was remarkable and rare, and as I was getting older, this indulgence that was allowed me every once in a while, was about to end for good. I felt like it was my last chance to see if that feather was about to take me on the fastest run on a horse I had ever known.

Then POOF! There I was, once again on the back of my mare in my own body and in my own time.

The whole memory was very brief. It probably lasted only a minute. Maybe two. Certainly no longer.

It made a huge impression on me and I have never forgotten it. For most of my life I attributed the memory to my vast imagination. Yet, as I have begun to understand reality in another way, especially since doing regression work, I have wondered, if in fact, what had happened was a spontaneous past life memory.

This past Saturday, June 4, I had an opportunity to ask that very question and I got a very definite answer.

Stay tuned for more in Part 2.