By Melinda Morris Perrin.
Where Circles of Friends go to Experience Ancient Teachings
ISBN: 0-9-976108-1-6
There is power in friendship circles and experiential learning. Whirling Rainbows is a guide to creating the lodge experience and to study the Seneca teachings of the Rainbow Wheel of Peace and the Cycles of Truth. It is designed to companion Jamie Sams' book, The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers.
Melinda Morris Perrin is a student of Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, a certified teacher of the Seneca Indian Historical Society and the Wolf Clan Clan Teaching lodge as well as a T.E.A.M. (NEIU Teachers of Experiential and Adventure Methodology) teacher and founder of the Whirling Rainbow Lodges. In Whirling Rainbows she passes along over twenty years of study to help others enjoy the teachings that have shaped her life.
"I was working with Grandmother Twylah Nitsch to format a model for teaching lodges at the same time Jamie Sams was working with Grandmother and writing The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers. Once I read what Jamie was writing, it was obvious to use the book as a tool for each Clan Mother in the circle My goal was to empower women to independently teach and to inculcate the traditional learning embodied in a Moon Lodge. Unlike contemporary, erroneous perceptions of women being ostracized when they were "on their Moon" , this was a gift given them, allowing them a time to come together, rest, and acquire knowledge. When we started, I gathered a group of women from 20 to 70 and taught them the Seneca material before we 'became a Clanmother'. These women stayed together for many years, each going deeper into the teachings each had to share. It never got old. The material is rich. These Clanmothers seeded new lodges as they moved away and taught the model to friends. There have been couples lodges of all sexual orientations. As I now am in my 70s, I realize that for the lodges to continue a little more help and guidance is needed, hence I wrote Whirling Rainbows not to do away with the material in Jamie's wonderful book, but to enhance the lodge experience after my lifetime. Around 2000 there were 24 lodges on-going around the US. Since then the number has grown exponentially. This year I returned to the lodge experience myself and am still amazed at the new revelations being brought forward by these young and older women embodying the power of each Clanmother."
