Product Description

This book and beautifully illustrated deck draw on the ancient Lakota ritual of healing and purification known as the sacred Inipi, or sweat lodge ceremony, which has existed in the Lakota culture for thousands of years. The cards and accompanying book comprise a self-contained and highly original system that will help you harness creative energies to deal with issues that are of concern in your life. Used for self-discovery rather than divination, the cards gently guide you toward inner growth and self-knowledge in the time-honored tradition of the Lakota people. 

Fifty cards, illustrated in vibrant color, access the powerful symbols and teachings of the Inipi, capturing the spirit of this ancient ceremony.

In a variety of spreads the authors show you how the cards can provide you with an expanded vision of your being and purpose, offering an intimate sense of walking in balance between the conscious world and the world of spirit. 

Publication coincides with the U.N. Year of Indigenous People.
Archie Fire Lame Deer is one of the leaders of the Native American spirituality movement. 

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #411835 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-01
• Released on: 1993-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
After many years of adventure and travel, Archie has returned to his native South Dakota to make his permanent home among the Sioux people with his wife, Sandy, and their three children, John, Josephine, and Sarah. He is bringing up John to be his successor as healer and teacher; already he runs sweats and has "pierced" in the Sundance. Thus, generations of Lame Deers have followed, and will continue to follow, the way of the Lakotas. -- About the Author

He has been instrumental in bringing Native religion into jails and in reforming laws so that medicine men can go into prisons to conduct ceremonies. He has also been very active in recovery programs for Native Americans who are alcoholics. Archie has joined the ranks of other spiritual leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, in the quest for world peace, while always remaining a traditional Sioux medicine man. He is the kuwa kiyapi, or intercessor, for the yearly Lakota Sundance and is the official representative for the Sacred Buffalo Calf Pipe at Crow Dog Sundance. -- From the Publisher

We are living in a time when 'medicine' people of diverse traditions are revealing many of their sacred ceremonies for the benefit of the larger world. In keeping with this spirit, these beautiful divination cards are offered to help us reestablish an empathetic with the Earth and all her inhabitants. -- Rochelle Gordon, Editor, Body Mind Spirit

Review
"We are living in a time when 'medicine' people of diverse traditions are revealing many of their sacred ceremonies for the benefit of the larger world. In keeping with this spirit, these beautiful divination cards are offered to help us reestablish an empathetic with the Earth and all her inhabitants."
(

Rochelle Gordon, Editor, Body Mind Spirit

)

". . . these cards are positive, uplifting, earth-centered snippets of Soul."
(Four Corners, Oct-Nov 2006 )

About the Author
A Lakota Sioux holy man and the son of medicine man John Fire Lame Deer, Archie Fire Lame Deer is the author, with Richard Erdoes, of Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man. Helene Sarkis is a designer currently working on numerous Native American projects, several of them with Archie Fire Lame Deer. Archie Fire Lame Deer is a full-blooded Sioux, a medicine man and the son and grandson of medicine men. A lecturer on Sioux religion and culture, he travels around the world teaching the ways of Native American spirituality, often by performing healing ceremonies.

He has been instrumental in bringing Native religion into jails and in reforming laws so that medicine men can go into prisons to conduct ceremonies. He has also been very active in recovery programs for Native Americans who are alcoholics. Archie has joined the ranks of other spiritual leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, in the quest for world peace, while always remaining a traditional Sioux medicine man. He is the kuwa kiyapi, or intercessor, for the yearly Lakota Sundance and is the official representative for the Sacred Buffalo Calf Pipe at Crow Dog Sundance.

After many years of adventure and travel, Archie has returned to his native South Dakota to make his permanent home among the Sioux people with his wife, Sandy, and their three children, John, Josephine, and Sarah. He is bringing up John to be his successor as healer and teacher; already he runs sweats and has "pierced" in the Sundance. Thus, generations of Lame Deers have followed, and will continue to follow, the way of the Lakotas. 

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Customer Reviews

lakota cards
I received the cards promptly. Am very satisfied with them. The coloring is very nice.

Divination in many forms. Creator knows his path.
As a follower of the Red Road, I rebuke the individuals claim that this is "Nativism (tarot with a feather on it)". As a matter of fact, if the individual owns the cards at all - there is hypocrisy abound.
Tarot is comprised of a Major Arcana and a Minor Arcana, with over 70 cards and more than twice the interpretations - as the cards have meanings when forward, reversed (upside-down), and even sideways.
The Lakota Sweat Lodge Deck - a deck I've been using for many years, consists of 50 cards that do NOT reverse (they only can be read in the forward position).
Tarot focuses on fortune telling, a path of gypsies and witches and mystics. Chief Lame Deer is focusing on Healing, and irregardless of the methods he chooses to employ in doing so - whether it be by piercing at the Sundance, or crafting these cards - he still is doing Wakan Tanka's work ...

These cards .... "speak" .... to me. I have never used the book as more than a nice fallback item in case their is no use for a reading and the message isn't clear. But the vibrance in the artwork, the messages it reveals, is beyond words. Simply holding the deck gives me a sense of the Chief's fullfilment in Creator's Gifts. I respect what The authors, illustrators, and publishers have allowed me to share with others.

This is THE BEST DECK I OWN. I own many and, quite simply, the energy from most "Tarot" type decks do not work with my own - they even seem to counter it. This energy ... flows.

As with Black Elk;

"I cured with the power that came through me.

"Of course, it was not I who cured, it was the power from the Outer World, the visions and the ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds.

"If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through.

"Then everything I could do would be foolish."



These cards help to create that hole from which the power flows.

Mitakuye Oyasin, Aho.

Oh, please! More wannabee new-age stuff.
People see the author's name and assume the book/cards have some sort of legitimacy as representatyions of American Indian traditions. But this EXACTLY the sort of cultural misappropriation that we have been resisting for decades--the endless charade of "shamans," hucksters, new-age "culture vultures" and mysticism-disguised-as-Indianism (tarot with a feather on it!).

Please, readers, understand that this is NOT a fair, accurate, useful, or even respectful representation of Lakota (or ANY Indian) traditions. Go read some Vine Deloria, jr. or James Treat instead.