Thunder Being Medicine

This photo is a Thunder Being in full array showing who and what he is… magnificent! There’s a Native American saying that it is “a medicine,” which means a skill or talent of healing capability for all our relations here on Mother Earth.

There are many stories about young Native American men wanting Thunder Being power. This is why as you look at this photo of an unveiled Thunder Being, you begin to understand the phenomenal power they wield.

Thunder Beings are born from the fire element. According to my Cherokee medicine man teacher, Sam, of the four elements, earth, air, water, and fire, it is fire that you never pursue.

Fire must come to you. Not the other way around. Why? Because you do not choose it, it chooses you.

These young men know this, but they pursue it anyway for the want of power. Sam told me stories where young men did not receive the invitation to carry or hold thunder being medicine, and they would go out to an approaching thunderstorm, throw up their hands, and call or pray to the thunder being spirit that they wanted to be like them; to carry one of the most important and critical powers that we have on Mom Earth.

Thunder Beings are 4D spirits. They are the largest and most powerful spirits in our world. Their responsibility is to shape and move the currents that flow around Mom Earth, to create weather of all kinds, from meek and mild up to and including destructive to humankind, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms.

TB’s (Thunder Beings) do not indiscriminately bring destructive or lifesaving rain and storms on their own. Thunder Beings are under the guidance of the Great Spirit, and are given orders where to go and what to give back to Mother Earth in that area: rain, snow, drought, etc.

A person who is invited to receive TB medicine, their energy, is struck by lightning. The person who survives it becomes one with the TB family of spirits. They are charged with the power that TB’s have, and to make wise use of it. They should never be selfish or egotistical or brag about it.

Unfortunately, these young men who have already been warned by their medicine woman or man not to pursue TB medicine don’t listen. And every year, there are young men struck by lightning and killed. For they are not worthy, they are immature, they do not listen to the wisdom of the Elders, and they don’t honor the Thunder Being spirits.

I was struck twice by lightning; once at age 9 when a thunderstorm as huge as the one you see in the above photo came racing toward us. I had always loved the TB’s. They did not scare me, and I always felt a kinship with them, that they loved me in return. On that hot afternoon in Ontario, Oregon, I felt such an incredible thrill seeing the thunderstorm approaching, coming straight for me, that I ran up on a dried pile of manure that was probably 8 to 10 feet tall. It was like a small mountain in the flat country.

The wind was whipping around me, my hair flying like the mane of a wild mustang as I raced up the slope of that manmade mountain. The wind was circulating in a counterclockwise direction around me, the skirt of the dress I wore lifting like a parachute. But I didn’t care because my heart was so filled with the joy for this dark, malevolent-looking storm that covered a quarter of the entire sky and was racing directly at me. I was never as happy as in that moment.

I threw my hands skyward and instantly, I felt the strong tingling sensation coming through my outstretched fingers skyward, wrapped in a swirl of wind tearing at me so strongly that I kept moving to keep my balance atop the hill. That tingling sensation went from my fingers and head straight down throughout my entire body to my toes, making me laugh because the tingling was so alive and making my toes itch!

The thunder sounded at the same time the tingling electricity moved through my body and out my feet, the vibration like being inside a bass drum, the reverberation of sound rippling through me, through every cell in my body. In that moment, I felt light, filled with ecstasy and joy, and I closed my eyes and absorbed it all into my thin, skinny 9-year-old body.

I felt loved, I felt the Thunder Being’s loving embrace and I felt as if I were floating within his massive, beautiful, churning body so filled with light and energy and love. To feel the love of a Thunder Being can’t be fully described in human terms, but in that moment, I felt melded fully into their mighty spiritual energy form and I became one of them. I had never felt anything since then to match this moment where my spirit melted into his spirit and vice-versa.

Over the years as I grew up and matured, I came to understand more and more what it meant to carry such a power within me. There are other stories tied to this one, but this is enough to masticate today. I found out very few humans carried such energy, but those that did carry it were chosen because of their soul, their heart, and their love of all our relations.

I began to understand the energy expression of the TB’s and how it was flowing through me. More than anything, I understood I was nothing more than a catalyst to show change to another being. I would bring this energy to a person, an organization (publishing for one), or to an area that needed what I could share with them via the TB’s.

TB energy is global energy. For a person who has earned the right to carry it, who possesses the right heart intent of love, gratitude, kindness, and compassion for all, it rewards them, and they become a catalyst for all our relations.

That is why, as I began to understand it in my 20’s, why so many young Native American men wanted this power. But they wanted it for the wrong reasons: it was about possessing raw power and using it in a selfish way to help themselves, not all our relations. There was no heart, no love in what they were pursuing when they would run out into an approaching thunderstorm, crying and shouting and praying to be chosen.

Because of my TB brethren gifted me to become a catalyst, I have been able to create change for all my relations. I continue to do that to this day. And that change is local, regional, and global.

There are people around the world that the TB’s have chosen to carry and utilize their catalytic medicine. They are in every country. They understand their responsibility to carry such energy and because they are heart-centered, humble, and walk with humility, not Ego or selfish power, they quietly work behind the scenes wherever they live or are sent to.

Over the decades, I have utilized the gifts given to me by my Thunder Being family of spirits, of who I am one. My job and responsibility was to catalyze certain energies, not only in a person pr people, but to the land, the creeks and rivers, to all living beings who are our relations and relatives. Wherever I went around the world, a thunderstorm would always appear during or after the plane would land, they were my welcoming ceremony, recognizing me as their own kind. Without fail, this would happen.

When we lived thirty years in Arizona, I would respectfully ask the TB’s for rain in the area where we lived, thy will be done. I never demanded. I always humbly asked them if they could spare some of the rain for our area. And they always filled my request within 48 hours. There was one time when three storm fronts were stalled over Arizona in the winter where we lived in Oak Creek. The house we’d bought was fifty feet away from the creek. For three days and nights, it rained in downpours, and Oak Creek was flooding at record water levels.

I knew that our house could be destroyed fully in this flood. Our neighbor a quarter of a mile north of us woke us up at 1 am in the morning telling us there was 2 feet of water inside their house and 3 feet of water outside it. They asked how were we doing. Well! We heard the roar of the creek, a creek that was knee-deep in a lot of places when not flooding. When we went out on our sundeck, the roar and vibration through the canyon rippled through us. The only thing I could equate that experience to was standing close to jet engines that were full throttle for take-off. The roar was deafening. The water was six inches away from our sundeck and the entrance to our home. It had risen 20 feet in less than four hours that night and we hadn’t known about it.

I was panicked! We were putting what we thought were the most important papers and things into our pickup, getting ready to take my mother who lived two hundred feet away in a double-wide mobile home with us, and put Cody, our Golden Retriever, in the front of the truck with her. It was pouring rain in buckets to the point where you couldn’t see a few feet in front of us on that black, ebony night. I prayed to my Thunder Being Family not to destroy our house with the water cascading like Niagara Falls down past our home. About a mile south of us, Oak Creek poured into the Verde River. My poor mother, in her 70’s, was terribly frightened, and we finally got her into the pickup. We wanted to drive her 200 feet higher as our land sloped upward toward the dirt road that would lead us out of Echo Canyon.

Just as we jumped into the truck to leave, the rain stopped. By that time, it was four a.m. in the morning, and we could start to see grayness instead of darkness. Dave drove us up to the slope where my horse, Cinnamon was at, taking refuge in her barn. We stopped there, believing that whatever happened, there was no way that water would move another 200 feet upward to where we parked, and we watched and waited. When we had left our house, there was water under the house. If it rose any higher, it would flood the entire single-story home we loved so much.

This was the Great Flood of 1993 in Cottonwood, Arizona. Sixteen miles north of us was Sedona, Arizona, which got completely flooded out around where Oak Creek ran through it. It took out a trailer park in Oak Creek Canyon. I saw one of the trailers float by us, stunned by the unexpected ferocity of this triple weather system. People died in that flood.

The rain had stopped. Dawn came at five a.m., and Dave and I walked back down our road to our home, expecting the worst. As we approached, we saw that the water that had been flowing under our house was gone. I couldn’t believe it! Oak Creek still roared, the noise reverberating like invisible hands striking our bodies. The roar was so loud we had to shout in order to be heard by one another.

We entered our home. Everything was dry. The water did not rise. We went out in the yard to the north. Shocked, we saw that the flat plain between our neighbor’s home and ours was no longer a lake. It was gone. We also saw where there was a crescent shape in the tall grass of the field and it curved such, showing the path of the flooding waters. It was as if there was an invisible fence line north of our home and the major flood waters moved around it, not through to us and our home. That was shocking and amazing. The spirit beings of this canyon made that happen. Two times a year, I would go down to Oak Creek and give trout to the spirit of the creek, to honor her. We also had a family of Louisiana otters who lived right across the creek from us. I know they would come over and eat the offering with great gusto.

I had, when I was jolted awake and saw what was happening, asked my TB kin to stop the rain. And they did.

That morning, as light came to reveal the damage of this savage, sudden gully washer that had flooded part of Sedona and moved down Oak Creek, we saw more than one mobile home float by us in front of our house. The Verde River was beside Cottonwood and a horse farm had been flooded out. The horses were rescued by a lot of good townspeople; otherwise, the Arabians would have drowned in their stalls. Every house along the Verde River was flooded out and destroyed. This was a hundred-year flood, and it took no prisoners.

Our home was the only home along Oak Creek that night that was not flooded out or touched. Our neighbor’s home was at the same sea level as ours and you have to ask why his was flooded out and ours was not. I sincerely believe it was because my TB family stopped the rain. And I also believe the spirit who took care of Oak Creek guided her waters around our home, and that is what saved us from the same destruction that everyone else that night experienced.