The dictionary recognizes that medicine is a synonym for magic, as applied to magical forms of healing. The Medicine Man or in this case Medicine Woman, is not necessarily only a healer, although healing is one of her duties. The Native Americans have long applied the word medicine to any mysterious force, which is beyond our understanding.
The Medicine Man/ Woman is one who possessed supernatural powers as prophet, seer, priestess/ priest, physician, or spiritual healer. She/ he might be any one of these or all combined. Primarily she is a holy woman or he, a holy man, one who can speak with the spirits and who know the ways of the Great Spirit. She has the ability to commune with all spirits dwelling on all levels of Creation.

 

When a person has this ability from an early age it can be severely misunderstood. A shaman or medicine person usually has had at least one major trauma, usually more, between the ages of one and seven. Severe trauma to a young child, causes the ego's boundaries to be destroyed and the sense of self no longer exist. Communication between the self and other voices begin. A small-traumatized child left alone in our modern culture today, would be given medication, locked up, or ignored and their abuse continues. The child then becomes lost and is not able to discern which voices are helpful and which are not.

In tribal cultures these children are taught with the guidance of trained healers or a medicine person of the tribe, how to listen and eliminate the bad influences and accept the good voices. With the continual guidance of the trained medicine person, the child must conquer several inner-battles and walk a learned path of discernment and strengthening the self. This eventually leads to an adulthood of a gifted medicine person. One who has learned to walk the path of death and rebirth destroying the shadows, facing their personal hell of self-created demons in fear, addictions, insanity, loneliness, and the ego.

 

The Medicine Mother has walked through the fire and faced the underworld successfully returning to us whole and complete. She has learned to confront her own shadows, as well as the evils of others. She has experienced the hard road to wholeness and can successfully diagnose similar darkness in others. She has learned to transform the need of feeling a false sense of self-importance into a true unconditional love of self. She assists us in looking at the light and the shadow showing each person that both sides are as equally contributing to the whole, into the process of awareness. Nothing ever ends without the process of a new beginning. She holds the world as a Tree of Life in her hands. Her roots are an anchor as she stands Holy, her medicine strong.