Many magickal traditions work their sacred space around and around in circles. We could write a lot about that, but the great Holy Man Black Elk speaks of it so completely and so much more eloquently than we could, that we will quote him at length here. This seems most appropriate since we now live and steward a bit of Mother Earth that was inhabited and used by American Natives many years ago.

"After the heyoka ceremony, I came to live here where I am now between Wounded Knee Creek and Grass Creek. Others came too, and we made these little grey houses of logs that you see, and they are square. It is a bad way to live, for there can be no power in a square."

"You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The East gave peace and light, the South gave warmth, the West gave rain, and the North with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world of our religion."

"Everything the Power of the World does is in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children."

"But the Wasichus (white men) have put us in these square boxes. Our power is gone and we are dying, for the power is not in us anymore. You can look at our boys and see how it is with us. When we were living by the power of the circle in the way we should, boys were men at 12 or 13 years of age. But now it takes them very much longer to mature."

from Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt (Flaming Rainbow)