THE STORY OF TEMPLE DOORS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE EARLY CIVILIZATIONS OF THE SOUTHWEST

Hyemeyohsts Storm

Some people have said that a Representative government is what we know to
be a Democracy.  Others say that Freedom is what makes a Democracy.  Others
will insist that Democracy is a balance between State and Church.  There
are also those who say that Democracy is a balance between the rich and the
poor.  And there are those who will claim that Democracy is the balance
between the learned and the unschooled.  The bold say that Democracy is
tolerance and the acceptance of all races and peoples as being equal. 

The woman known as Temple Doors said all this and more about Democracy
many hundreds of years ago.  She said that in actuality the founding
principle of a true Democracy was a Representative government that was
perfectly balanced between female and male, because this Balance is the
Source of all that is Living and Natural.

She never used the words Democracy or Democratic, but she did use the
words Circle of Law.

By the time Temple Doors was born the great Circles of Democracy - the
Circle of Law - had been outlawed and forbidden by the new feudalistic
governing powers.  She is the human responsible for the preservation and
renewal of the Circle of Law throughout the Americas.

It is important to speak of how the Medicine Wheels came to North America
from South and Central America, and were kept by the Zero Chiefs.
According to the records kept by the Flower Soldiers, the weather patterns
of Mother Earth went through incredible changes.  Places that were once
beautiful plains filled with animals and grass changed over a period of a
thousand years to become jungles or deserts.

Five great migrations of people left Central America and settled the
North; these were called the Great Webs or Spider Roads by the record
keepers.  These large migrations occurred between one thousand and three
thousand years ago.

The Spider Woman Keepers are responsible for the information we have of
these migrations.  For simplicity's sake, the name Spider Woman can be
translated as "Guardian Keeper" or "Corn Carrier."  The reason for this is
because the tradition grew up out of the Gardeners.  These women not only
kept the Gardens, they also kept the history.

Temple Doors was the Priestess-General responsible for one of the largest
of the great migrations.  She led her people north, out of Central America,
into what we presently know as our Southwest.  This great migration took
place between two thousand and twenty-five hundred years ago.  During this
journey, half of her people perished from war, disease, and hunger.
It was this woman General who brought the Great Circle of Law and all the
Medicine Wheels to the North.  She also brought corn, squash, beans, and turkeys.
Temple Doors was born to the Butterfly People.  At this time these people
controlled the tribal city-states south of Mexico City.

The hundreds of city-states of the Yucatán had been founded by Tribes of
many diverse groups and languages.  Each city-state had its Great Temple.
The Center Temple, or Great Temple, was everything to its people because it
held the distinction of "possessing the Name of the Divine."  This meant
that the Temple was known by the name of the Goddess and God of the
city-state.  Each Temple was the seat of the law, the university, the place
of records, the treasury, the place of information, the hospital, the war
academy, and the place of prayer.

At the time of the birth of Temple Doors, the Mayan city-states had been
in constant war with each other for nearly three hundred years.  The wars
had started in the aftermath of horrible earthquakes and exploding
volcanoes that had leveled hundreds of cities and Temples.
The Lords of the land were brutal men who would stop at nothing to get
their way.  The sacrifice priests taught these Feudal Lords that people
could be ruled only by fear.

The Lords, in their turn, taught that only the fang and the tooth of
experience were understood by "the common people," who were "incapable of
learning."

However, the Flower Soldiers taught that human sacrifice and slavery were
forbidden, and that every human possessed the natural right to have a Voice
in government.  Democracy-the Circle of Law-had been discovered by the Zero
Chiefs thousands of years before this time and was held to be Sacred by
every Flower Soldier.

By the time Temple Doors became the commander of the Flower Soldiers, she
violently opposed the sacrifice priests of the Temples and Lords who held
their people in perpetual slavery.  A bloody war ensued that lasted five
years.

After yet another bitter struggle and more useless bloodshed, the
courageous Temple Doors decided to lead the Flower Soldiers and any of her
people who wanted to go with them, north into the "Land of the Wild
People."  In the new land, they could find Freedom and rebuild their
civilization based on the balance and teachings of the Medicine Wheels.
Temple Doors led twenty-four thousand people or more, overland, north out
from the Mayan peninsula, through the length of Mexico and into the
Southwest of the present-day United States.  On this great migration, she
fought and won many battles and helped her people survive every kind of
privation and disease.

Temple Doors was a Priestess and a General.  However, her most important
contribution to the world was the reordering and rebuilding of the
Discipline of the Flower Soldiers.

Temple Doors was a very important person in human history.  Volumes could
be written about her by the people of Mexico and we Northerners, and still
there would be more to say.  But time is needed before this will be done.
The Temple known as Desert Flower is the source of our information
concerning the early migrations to the North from the Yucatán.  This Temple
is now known as the ruins of Chaco Canyon.  The woman who began the
building of the Desert Flower was the Zero Chief Temple Doors.

The cities of Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly were built by the people
who took on the name of their Chief, calling themselves the Temple Doors.
The sophisticated network of roads, cisterns, forts, Kivas, buildings,
farms, and pueblos were all built by the people of Temple Doors.

Temple Doors originally settled many of her armies and peoples at Canyon
de Chelly.  They began building immediately.  However, at this same time, a
dedicated group of highly disciplined and skilled Medicine Soldiers, with
their General, Temple Doors, began the construction of their Schools and
Temples at the Desert Flower in Chaco Canyon.  Her dream and the dream of
her apprentices was to build a new civilization based on the teaching of
the Medicine Wheels and the Circle of Law.  The Desert Flower was designed
to be their first main Center of Teaching and Healing.

The General lived for many years.  It is thought that she was over
eighty-three at the time of her death.

Hyemeyohsts Storm is the legendary and world renowned author and teacher who first introduced the knowledge of the Medicine Wheels to the modern world in his best selling classic Seven Arrows, published in 1972, and now in its 46th printing. He is a Northern Cheyenne and German mixed blood, who was born and raised on Indian reservations in Montana. In his latest book Lightningbolt, Storm continues to reveal for the first time new, compelling information of the Legacy of the Zero Chiefs and their Sacred Medicine Wheel Teachings.