Medicine wheel

In some Native American cultures, the medicine wheel is a metaphor for a variety of spiritual concepts. A medicine wheel may also be a stone monument that illustrates this metaphor.

Historically, the monuments were constructed by laying stones in a particular pattern on the ground oriented to the four directions. Most medicine wheels follow the basic pattern of having a center of stone, and surrounding that is an outer ring of stones with "spokes" (lines of rocks) radiating from the center to the cardinal directions (East, South, West and North). These stone structures may or may not be called "medicine wheels" by the people whose ancestors built them, but may be called by more specific terms in that nation's language.

Physical medicine wheels made of stone have been constructed by several different Indigenous peoples in North America, especially those of the Plains nations. They are associated with religious ceremonies. As a metaphor, they may be used in healing work or to illustrate other cultural concepts.

The medicine wheel has been adopted as a symbol by a number of pan-Indian groups, or other Native groups whose ancestors did not traditionally use it as a symbol or structure. It has also been appropriated by non-Indigenous people, usually those associated with the hippie, New Age or Neopagan communities.

The Royal Alberta Museum (2005) holds that the term "medicine wheel" was first applied to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, the southernmost archeological wheel still extant. The term "medicine" was not applied because of any healing that was associated with the medicine wheel, but denotes that the sacred site and rock formations were of central importance and attributed with religious, hallowed, and spiritual significance.

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