The Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe
The White Buffalo Calf Woman's gift of the Sacred Pipe to the Lakota encodes the deepest teaching: every act of breath, speech, and offering connects the human being to the whole of creation.
The Sacred Pipe (Chanupa Wakan) was brought to the Lakota by White Buffalo Calf Woman, a sacred being who appeared as both woman and white buffalo. She taught that the bowl of the pipe represents the earth and all living beings upon it; the stem represents all that grows from the earth; the smoke is the living breath of Wakan Tanka. When you smoke the pipe, you are joined with all creation. The pipe ceremony is therefore not a ritual of petition but of unification — a physical act that enacts the metaphysical truth that all things are one. Twelve specific sacred rituals were taught with the pipe, seven of which are still practiced today.
With this sacred pipe you will walk upon the Earth, for the Earth is your Grandmother and Mother, and She is sacred.
Religious scholar Joseph Epes Brown documents the pipe as a unifying symbol containing the entirety of Lakota cosmology, ethics, and ritual in a single sacred object.
The Sacred Pipe