Several months ago, Adele Aldridge sent us a box of beautiful Origami Peace Cranes. These cranes came into being because of Sasaki Sadako, who was just two years old when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. In November of 1954, Sadako caught a cold and lumps developed in her neck. It wasn’t long before she was diagnosed with leukemia, which people in Japan called “the atom bomb” disease. In February of 1955, she entered the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.
While she was there, she was told an old Japanese legend: anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish. Sadako hoped that by folding the paper cranes, she would get well again. So she began making them and complete more than a thousand of them before she died on October 25, 1955, at the age of 12. While making the cranes, she also wished for world peace and vowed: I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.
Her classmates built a monument to Sadako and all the children killed by the bomb. They collected money for it and in 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. The children also made a wish that’s inscribed at the bottom of the statue: This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.
Since then, people all over the world fold paper cranes and send them to Sadako’s monument in Hiroshima, in memory of all the children who died. The crane is an interesting symbol for this peace effort. The Red-crowned Crane on which the origami crane and the Japanese legend are based is seriously threatened. Health of the crane population is often a good indicator about the health of the whole wetland ecosystem.
So this evening, Rob opened his final meditation class – shamanic meditation – by building a medicine wheel that included these beautiful origamis. The objects that create the outer border of the wheel are stones, bits of pottery, odds and ends we’ve collected in our travels. Then we meditated on each of the four directions.
The journey begins in the South, home of the archetypal serpent, where we learn to shed the past and begin to detach from our wounds and personal stories. We learn to released heavy energy accumulated in our bodies.
In the West, we learn about the Jaguar, who teaches us about life, death and rebirth. We face fears and family shadows, and step across the bridge to learn to walk as warriors, without enemies.
In the North, we meet the archetype Hummingbird and learn to taste knowledge directly, to manifest the impossible, and to receive ancestral knowledge.
In the final gathering we explore the East and the archetype of the Eagle, who demonstrates how to experience vision, destiny and the possibilities of becoming. We develop our vision of peace.
At the end of the class, Rob invited everyone to take one of the origami cranes with them. It was a powerful final class.
This is a very powerful post all by itself, and with the story of the beautiful girl and the cranes, it is even more so. I am saddened by the endangered cranes, but grateful that there are people in the world like you and Rob… and Sadako.
A beautiful story and a powerful meditation. I was fascinated by the directions and the powers in each because they’re so different from traditions I’ve studied, at least combined like this. What shamanic tradition was the meditation based on?
Rob will have to answer that, Adelita. I don’t know. But I do suspect this is the first Origami medicine wheel!
Love this story as I have a paper crane that I made a year or two ago sitting in front of me on my desk .
I was deciding the other day whether I should throw the crane out or not,in my effort to de-clutter my computer room.
I nearly did throw it out,but at the last moment felt that I shouldn’t as it was part of an assignment from a book I still haven’t finished called
“101 Things to Do Before You’re Old and Boring”
(maybe it’s too late for me?-)
I stopped reading it when it suggested I learn to play the harmonica,which I also have sitting in front of me on my desk.
Also funny was that Ailsa Piper did a post today about talismans –
https://ailsapiper.com/?p=1086
which also got me thinking about that paper crane,plus all the other trinkets on my desk and shelves,and how we are like bower birds collecting things for our own nests.
Great story and it’s inspired me to finish that book.
Now where’s that harmonica I have to learn how to play ?-)
Funny! But hey, why not learn to play the harmonica?! 🙂
I love when a tragic story transforms and spreads into such a beautiful one. Adding this meditation is highly appreciated!
We all need a talisman or two, right?
A lovely story about Sasaki Sadako and all from paper cranes – and a great theme for meditation.
what an interesting and beautiful story about this origami crane! loved reading about the directions and lessons from each – and what a great meditation class –
This is a lovely story about how the origami cranes began. I didn’t have any idea about the origins. I wish I could have been in that class.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this Rob. I wish I could have been there. I am suddenly in the process of moving – must be Uranus in Aries (my ascendent). I could use some peaceful meditation myself right now.
Uranus hitting your ascendant! Upheaval, but new stuff is headed in, Adele.