Smoking the Pipe

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                             

 

When we begin to smoke the Pipe, the Pipe holder asks the Spirits to come and join in the smoking of the Pipe. Just like us, the Spirits enjoy smoking tobacco. When they inhale the fumes and our smoke, which holds our prayers and beseechments, they carry these messages to the Great Spirit. The Pipe holder inhales our messages of prayer and calls for help and blows them towards the Four Directions to ask them to join our ceremony.
The two main parts of the pipe that hold special symbolic value as do the materials used in their construction, Pipe-stone (bowl) and the wooden portion of the Pipe (stem). The joining of the two is considered a metaphorical marriage of Mother Earth and the creatures that inhabit the Earth. This is the main ideology behind the two materials joining and becoming one. The Pipe cup is referred to as female because of the symbolism between Mother Earth and the Pipe-stone itself. In reflection, the male portion is symbolized as the wood used in the stem. The wood symbolizes the connection between all the living things that inhabit the Earth. The wooden portion joins the stone portion similar to a male joining with the female.

 

The Pipes themselves are adorned with elaborately shaped bowls resembling the Pipe holders Totem and Spirit guides. They are painted with colors depicting special meanings and feathers, adding an animal presence. Beads are mainly used for decoration but the colors have symbolic value.
The tobacco used in the Pipe is brought by the people who asked for the ceremony. It is their gift for the Spirits to come and guide the Medicine Man throughout the ceremony. Even the placement of the offering (commonly called the tobacco) has significance. Exactly four pinches of tobacco are used and must fill up the bowl at the end of the fourth pinch. These pinches of the tobacco are held out to the Four Directions to call forth the Spirits to accept the offering and hear their plea for guidance.

 

Only men smoke the Pipe during the ceremony because women are not allowed to smoke from the same Pipe. Instead, women are touched upon the brow, and this is how they send their messages to the creator. Women in the Ojibway culture are considered to be more powerful then men. Women on their time are considered at their most powerful and cannot even be touched upon the brow. They are not even allowed to participate in the ceremony and must remove themselves from the ceremonial grounds or stand on the outside of the ceremony (most ceremonies are formed into a circle).
 Women do not inhale or smoke from the Pipe because they are so powerful that anyone smoking after them will get sick or a sickness will fall upon them. This is why there are Medicine Women. They have their own Pipes and rituals that men cannot perform. Men may not smoke or even touch a woman's pipe. In fact, women are so coveted that they form a balance in every single ceremony preformed.


                                                                                                                                                              



Pipe Dreams
Siyu,

There are many styles of pipes for ceremony. The first Blackfoot pipes were straight.
The straight pipe is the oldest form of the tobacco pipe bowl known to Blackfoot traditions. Its relative antiquity is attested by the facts that the straight pipe is the only form referred to in tribal mythology, that it could have been made with stone tools more easily than other known Blackfoot pipe bowl forms, and that it has survived only in the ceremonial contexts of sacred bundles. Probably the straight pipe bowl was smoked most commonly while fitted to a fairly short willow or rosewood stem, which was split longitudinally, the pith removed, and the two pieces glued together and tightly bound with sinew.
The two known examples of Blackfoot straight pipes differ markedly from each other in form. One has a rather bulbous bowl with a constricted neck at the stem. The other has slightly curved sides with a collar at the stem end. Both forms were found among other tribes, the former among the Shoshone as early as 1805 (as demonstrated by Lewis and Clark data), and the latter among the Crow Indians in the 19th century (as illustrated by the specimens from pipe-holder's bundles). Data are insufficient to indicate that the Blackfoot favored either form of straight pipe, or to make possible the positive identification of straight pipes found archeologically as of Blackfoot origin.
The Modified Micmac pipe bowl appears to have been made by Blackfoot pipe makers only within the period that metal tools have been available to them.
Homentocweasa Oho
Wado,  Desert Wolf
                                                                                                                                     pipe

O Hon-ga , I have a pipe that I have made to be my body:
If you also make it to be your body,
You shall have a body that is free from all cause of death.
Behold the joint of the neck, they said,
That I have made to be the joint of my own neck.
Behold the mouth of the pipe,                                                                                                     
That I have made to be my mouth.
Behold the right side of the pipe,
That I have made to be the right side of my body.
Behold the spine of the pipe,
That I have made to be my own spine.
Behold the left side of the pipe,
That I have made to be the left side of my own body.
Behold the hollow of the pipe,
That I have made to be the hollow of my own body.
Behold the thong that holds together the pipe and stem;
That I have made to be my own windpipe.
... use the pipe as an offering in your supplications,
Your prayers shall be readily granted.