Balance

The concept of balance is important to Cherokee spiritual traditions as well as everyday life. Cherokees see the world as made up of complimentary elements, all of which are interconnected and in need of one another. For example, men and women are opposite, but not in opposition. They both need one another, and both have different strengths and weaknesses that work cooperatively (Awiakta 23). All complementary elements, like male/female, are tied together so that if something affects one it affects the other. Cherokee poet and essayist, Marilou Awiakta, uses the symbolism of a web to describe the interconnectedness. She writes:

The Creator made the Web of Life and into each strand put the law to govern it. Everything in the universe is part of the web. Stars, trees, oceans, creatures, humans, stones: we are all related. One family. What happens to one will happen to all, for the Creator’s laws function this way. They teach us to cooperate and live in harmony, in balance. (196)

Therefore, maintaining balance involves following the “law” associated with each strand of the web, to use Awiakta’s words.

Exactly what is meant by following the “law” differs with each complementary pairing. One example is the complementary pair of human beings and animals. Humans need animals for survival, but tension arises because in order to survive, humans must kill animals. There is a Cherokee story that tells of the law that governs the relationship between humans and animals. Long ago, animals and human beings coexisted peacefully. Then, human population increased, and human beings began hunting animals for food. Alarmed that so many of their kind were being killed, the animals held a council meeting. They decided to inflict human beings with diseases when they didn’t treat the animals they hunted with respect. Hunting deer without asking pardon for the animal’s sacrifice and performing the appropriate ceremonies would result in the hunter being stricken with rheumatism by Awi Usdi, Little Deer, the Chief of the Deer Tribe (Mooney 320-321).

The plants, being friendly to humans, offered their help, and Cherokee healers learned to use them to help cure sickness. Disease was caused whenever the balance between human beings and animals was upset, and the balance was usually upset by human error, such as hunting an animal without showing the proper respect, or over-hunting. The offending human would then become ill, and go to a healer. The healer, with the appropriate plants and ceremonies, would help restore the balance, making the person well again (Mooney 320-321).

The idea of balance affects more than the physical body. The intellect also must remain in balance, according to Cherokee traditions. Contrary to European notions of logic which prioritize logos-based knowledge and tend to view pathos-based knowledge with suspicion, Cherokees view three kinds of knowledge: knowledge of the mind, the heart, and the soul. There is a complementary relationship among these three portions of the intellect. In order to really understand, to really possess true knowledge, a person must think in balance, using not only the mind, but the heart and soul (Awiakta 235).

If one of the laws is broken, then the balance is disrupted. Balance must be restored by spiritual techniques, and these techniques aim at restoring harmony “from the inside out,” beginning with the soul of one person, and extending outward to the entire community (Awiakta 283). This is a vitally important concept, because it is central to the way Cherokees view language. If a person is healed, if balance is restored from the inside, if a person believes and thinks as though he or she is in balance, that balance is manifested. Essentially, this means we are what we think we are. If one person thinks in balance, his or her balance radiates out to others, because the person is part of the whole which is the community; what affects one person, affects all.