Corn Planting Moon – Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel: May 21 to June 20
- Lorraine
- 2 minutes ago
- 7 min read
What if the most beautiful germination was the one we didn't decide?
From May 21 to June 20, Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel enters the Corn Planting Moon. The time when the Earth sows, when prayers germinate in silence, and when what we have entrusted to life with love always ends up giving birth.
That Morning
It was an ordinary morning. I was watering my Tobacco plants, as I have done for two years, with that simple and repeated gesture of caring. And there, at the foot of the mother stems, I saw something I no longer expected. Tiny shoots. The plant had sown itself. I stopped. I looked for a moment. And a joy passed through me — not an ordinary joy. The kind one feels when one understands that one has been heard.
A Prayer Put Into the Earth
Two years ago, Grandmother Medicine Song had given me counsel: to sow Tobacco. Not to make use of it, but to weave a new relationship with it. A right, conscious, sacred bond. You can read that story in my article From Cigarette to Sacred Pipe.
I had sown this Tobacco with love, with care, with the deep respect and sacredness that this master plant teaches me. Never before had I cultivated a plant. And I knew that this gesture was a prayer put into the earth.
Two plants grew. They have been with me since. In December, in the heart of winter, when the light was at its lowest and everything outside slept, my Tobacco plants flowered. Flowered in December. Tobacco is a plant that normally flowers when the days grow longer, from summer onward. Not in winter. Not in the dark. And yet. For months, the flowers held. The seeds accumulated everywhere around the mother stems. I watched them. And slowly, over the weeks, a wish began to be born in me: what if some of them sowed themselves? What if life perpetuated itself, without me needing to intervene? It was not a request. It was an intention born from observation, offered to the Creator. And that morning, while watering, I discovered that some seeds had joined the earth alone. Without my hand. The cycle had accomplished itself outside of me, according to a wisdom I had not planned.
Corn Planting Moon: A Moon of Putting Into the Earth
From May 21 to June 20, Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel brings us into the Corn Planting Moon — the last moon of spring. In the Hopi tradition, corn is never a simple crop. It is a living prayer. Each grain put into the earth is an act of faith, an offering to the Creator, a renewed alliance with Mother Earth.
The Sacred Corn of the Hopis: A Living Prayer
For the Hopis, corn is not a simple crop. It is identity, it is life — "the people are corn", "corn is a young girl", "corn is our mother". Every act related to corn — sowing, weeding, harvesting, preparing the flour — is a ritual act, a prayer in motion.
In this living and interconnected world, the Kachinas watch over us. These ancestral spirits, guardians of clouds and rain, descend each year from the San Francisco Peaks in December, during the sacred Soyal ceremony at the winter solstice, to accompany the Hopi people until the corn reaches maturity in July. You can discover the depth of these ceremonies in my articles Soyal, the Hopi Winter Solstice and Journey into Hopi Land: the Kachinas.
Among them, Kachin Mana is one of the most sacred figures. She embodies life, fertility, growth and harmony, around corn as a sacred gift and symbol of survival. Her presence is a prayer for the corn. She honors Mother Earth and her continuous capacity to nourish her children.
To be born under the Corn Planting Moon is to be born under the sign of this primordial feminine figure for the Hopis, who holds life between her hands.
The Totems of This Moon
The Deer watches over this moon — with lightness, vivacity and effortless grace. It moves forward with senses alert without ever losing its connection to the Earth.
Moss Agate, mineral of this moon, is the stone of the plant world. It carries within it the memory of roots, the patience of what grows in silence before being seen.
Yarrow is the plant of this moon. A plant of healing and soft boundaries, resilient and generous. It teaches one thing: knowing what one is, without needing to defend it.
The Butterfly Clan accompanies this moon — transformation, Air, passage. The butterfly does not force its metamorphosis. It surrenders to it, in the darkness of the cocoon.
And the Air itself reminds us that seeds travel without our hands.
Tobacco and the East: When the Plant Flowers in the Dark
In Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel, Tobacco is the plant of the East direction — associated with dawn, with beginnings, with what is born for the first time. The East is the point of the Wheel where light returns after the longest night. Where what was invisible begins to be seen.
A plant of the East that flowers in the dark of winter. Precisely at the moment of Soyal, when the Kachinas descend from the San Francisco Peaks to bring back the Sun.
I did not try to understand. I simply received.
And what the Tobacco had begun to say in December, the tiny shoots of spring would confirm. The prayer had been heard. The bond was alive.
When the Creator Responds
There is something in Native American wisdom that I carry like a treasure. The idea that one can address a prayer to the Creator — not a request, not a wish — but an intention held in the heart, offered, released. And that sometimes, in the silence and time, this intention manifests in the visible world. That morning, seeing those tiny Tobacco shoots born alone, I knew. My prayer had been heard. And it is perhaps what makes me most happy in life — this feeling of being heard. Of being in relationship with the Whole of which we are part but which we so often forget. Of not being alone in the universe.
During Sacred Pipe ceremonies, I am each time moved to witness this connectedness — to see how the invisible, the elements, the Spirits manifest their presence in a tangible, real, indisputable way. But there, that ordinary morning, without ceremony, without particular intention, the plant itself had offered me that gift.
The Tobacco whose leaves I have been drying for two years, which I incorporate into my plant blends for Sacred Pipe ceremonies — that same Tobacco was offering me its descendants. Sown alone. Carried by its own movement of life.
Nature had done its work. In silence, in time, according to a wisdom more ancient than all our intentions.
Fifty Years Under the Corn Moon
In writing this article, I realize that I was born under this Corn Planting Moon. I was born under the moon of the most sacred plant of the Hopis. And for years, something in me that I would not have known how to name at the beginning led me to dedicate my life to transmitting their culture, their teachings, their wisdom. As if a seed had been put into the earth long before I understood what was growing.
This year, I celebrate my 50th birthday. Fifty years. I receive them differently than I would have imagined. I am in the position of the West on the Medicine Wheel — that place of deep introspection, of what is seen face to face, of what one can no longer pretend not to know. The West is not traversed lightly. It is lived. It asks something of us. And this decade that is opening will anchor me there more deeply still.
I feel the weight of what is coming. The passages that life reserves for each of us as we advance in age. The transformations of body, heart, inner space. The griefs. I do not name them. But I feel them there, on the horizon, like one senses a change of season before it arrives.
And for some weeks now, a question has been moving through me, slowly, deeply: what do I want to sow for this new decade? What do I choose to carry, to honor, to let go? How do I prepare to traverse what is coming with integrity and grace? I have no clear answer. But I have tiny Tobacco shoots that were born alone in my sacred space. And something in me recognizes in this silent gesture of nature a response I had not known how to formulate.
There is something I have not yet said. Grandmother Medicine Song left in January, one year ago. She laid down her earthly robe, as the Hopis say with such rightness, to join the world of spirits. It was she who had asked me to sow this Tobacco. And its flowers arrived in December, just before the anniversary of her departure. Its seeds germinated alone in spring. And I discover all of this at the threshold of my 50 years, under my birth moon.
In the Hopi tradition, those who leave do not truly disappear. They continue to watch over, to guide, to manifest through the elements and plants for those who know how to look. I do not know how to explain what I feel in writing these lines. But I know that these tiny Tobacco shoots born alone in my sacred space carry something of her presence. As if she had wanted to show me that what she transmitted to me continues to grow without her. As if, in her way, from the other side, she were celebrating with me.
ASKWALI, Grandmother.
The Medicine of This Moon for You
The Corn Planting Moon asks all of us this question, whatever stage of the Wheel you are at:
What do you choose to sow for the next season of your life?
Not what you must. Not what is expected of you. What you, yourself, want to entrust to the earth. With care. With love. With the trust that what is right will end up germinating — perhaps not as you had imagined, perhaps far more beautiful.
The Earth sows itself. Life continues its works in our silence. And sometimes, the most beautiful germination is the one we did not decide.
To Go Further
If you wish to deepen your relationship with Sun Bear's Medicine Wheel, the Hopi teachings and all that I transmit, I invite you to explore:
The online teaching and workshops I offer at the With You yoga studio. And if the story of Tobacco and the Sacred Pipe has touched you, you can read the complete series here. Sacred drum healings, to enter into relationship with the ancient rhythms of the Earth. And if you wish to join a community walking this path, the Hopi Way awaits you.
May this moon carry you gently toward what is germinating in you — what you sow with love, the Earth keeps, and she brings it to life when the moment is right.
ASKWALI
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