黃爸爸糖果屋秉持手作與用心，將糖果視為藝術品。我們追求完美味道，讓您陶醉於甜蜜旅程，享受無限驚喜。
The Earth Gaia and the World Tree Aurora
Exploring Wyoming's Devils Tower through Indigenous sacred stories, geological science, and a spiritual narrative of a seven-dimensional World Tree. This piece invites readers to approach an ancient presence bridging heaven and earth with open hearts, weaving together multiple ways of knowing this extraordinary formation.
Exploring the many facets behind Wyoming’s Devils Tower—from the sacred stories of Indigenous peoples and the scientific accounts of geology to a spiritual narrative of a seven-dimensional World Tree—this piece invites you to approach an ancient presence that bridges heaven and earth with an open heart.
Before We Begin
Standing upon the plains of Wyoming, the first sight of Devils Tower rising from the grasslands is beyond words. This colossal pillar of rock, soaring 264 metres high, points skyward like a giant finger—the highest presence for many miles around. On clear days, people say its silhouette can be seen from 160 kilometres away.
Yet what modern visitors call “Devils Tower” has long borne different names. The Lakota call it Matȟó Thípila—Bear Lodge. In my own spiritual experience, I prefer to call it Mother Tree.
The Story of the Name: From “Bear Lodge” to “Devils Tower”
Before sharing my experience, let’s trace how this place came to be named as it is.
A Sacred Place for Indigenous Nations
Long before settlers arrived, this was a holy site for many Native nations—the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Sioux among others. Each community had its own name for this great rock and its own stories. Most share a common motif: the claw marks of a great bear.
In one tale, children being chased by a giant bear pray to the Great Spirit. The rock lifts them to safety; the enraged bear rakes the rising stone, leaving the vertical grooves we see today.
The Cost of a Mistranslation
In 1875, U.S. Army Colonel Richard Irving Dodge led a survey here in search of gold. A translation error rendered the Indigenous name as “Bad God’s Tower,” which later hardened into “Devils Tower.”
This was more than a linguistic slip—it signalled a shift in worldview: from Indigenous reverence for the living earth to a colonial impulse to conquer it. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt—an ardent outdoorsman—designated Devils Tower as the United States’ first National Monument. It was a landmark act of protection, yet Indigenous names and stories were gradually pushed to the margins of public memory.
Devils Tower Through the Geologist’s Lens
Let us, for a moment, set aside the spiritual and consider the scientific account of this singular formation.
Secrets Beneath the Earth, Fifty Million Years Ago
Geologists identify the Tower’s rock as phonolite porphyry, rich in orthoclase feldspar crystals. About 50 million years ago (some studies say 40.5 million years), when this region lay buried underground, repeated tectonic activity drove magma upward into the crust.
The magma never erupted at the surface; instead, it cooled slowly below ground. As it cooled, thermal contraction created a network of fractures that formed polygonal columns—much like the way drying mud cracks into geometric patterns, only on a truly monumental scale.
The Sculpture of Time
Over millions of years, seas rose into land, and then wind and water carved the landscape. Because igneous rock is far harder than the surrounding sedimentary rock, erosion removed the softer layers and left the Tower standing free.
Water seeps between the columns and, with temperature changes, expands and contracts, levering some columns away from the core. These fallen prisms now cloak the base as a dramatic talus slope.
A curious fact: The base is roughly 305 metres in diameter, narrowing upward to a summit only 84 metres across. The top measures about 91 by 55 metres—ample space for a football pitch.
My Encounter with Mother Tree: A Seven-Dimensional World
What follows is a spiritual remembrance. It is neither science nor history, but an inner sensing—a memory of the heart.
When the Earth Was a Half-Sphere
In this vision, Earth was not always the full globe we know. In the farthest past, it appeared as a hemispheric world, and at the centre stood a vast Tree—the Mother Tree, the World Tree.
It was no timbered tree of our three-dimensional forests. If I must use language of the visible world, its substance was akin to stone and crystal, radiant with light, growing ceaselessly, towering into space. What we see today in Wyoming is but a residual trunk segment—a three-dimensional after-image of that greater being.
The Inhabitants of Seven Dimensions
In that era the Earth was a seven-dimensional reality. The Mother Tree sheltered many kinds of beings:
Dwellers of the air
- Birds and winged animals
- Winged luminous beings
- Wingless sprites who nevertheless could fly—one of whom was “me,” a blue-green light-spirit
- Flying unicorns
- Dragons who wove through the ether
Dwellers of the ground
- Mountains and rivers of crystal
- People of moving crystal
- A white tiger
- A golden lion
- A silver rhinoceros
- Rainbow fish drifting in mid-air
I Was Born from the Mother Tree’s Blossom
I emerged from one of the Mother Tree’s flowers, a blue-green ray of light. My calling was to care for the flying beings—especially the birds.
Within the Mother Tree we had libraries, with students and teachers. Our teachers were unusual: luminous beads, like night-pearls, who understood each learner’s gifts and truly taught according to the soul’s nature.
A World Without Night
This was a different order of time.
Nourished by Light
We did not need food; we were nourished directly by sun-light. When sunlight bathed one side of the Mother Tree, the other entered a gentle penumbra cast by the Tree’s vast shadow—that was our rhythm of rest. It was not darkness, but a soft half-light.
Doing What We Love, Every Day
We lived joyfully, doing what we loved—being with friends and kin, learning the arts of the cosmos, practising varied magics.
Our awareness was intimately linked with Gaia and the Mother Tree. This communion allowed us to:
- Wander easily upon the earth
- Rise with the Mother Tree into the endless sky
- Travel among dimensions through the Tree
- Explore within our capacities and share our learnings
It was a realm of harmony, delight, and living magic. Each life was honoured, and each honoured all.
The Invasion of Shadow and the Mother Tree's Sacrifice
Yet change came.
A Coveted World Tree
Because the Mother Tree opened pathways among dimensions, our world drew the attention of other civilisations—star-faring peoples I call the Nations of Shadow.
They coveted the Tree’s power, and they came in force.
The Cost of Loving Peace
We were lovers of peace and did not wish for war. When the attack came, we did not resist; many of our people were slain.
At the brink, the Mother Tree made a final choice.
The Last Guardianship
To save the remnant of us, the Mother Tree poured out all her life and power, and—in union with Gaia—completed the Earth from hemisphere to whole sphere, enclosing and sheltering us within.
Thus the seven-dimensional World Tree withdrew from sight.
Only a small length of trunk remained, becoming hard as stone, set upon the plains of what is now Wyoming. This is what we see today—the relic misnamed “Devils Tower.”
Two Ways of Telling, Interwoven
When we hold science and spirit side by side, certain harmonies appear.
A Coincidence of Time
- Geology: formation about 50 million years ago
- Spiritual narrative: the seven-dimensional era before Earth became a complete sphere
Might these time-marks be whispering to one another?
A Kinship of Form
- Geology: polygonal columns like vast crystal growth
- Spiritual: the Mother Tree as crystalline-stone in nature
Those vertical grooves—bear’s claw marks in Indigenous story—are, to my sensing, the grain of the Mother Tree’s trunk.
A Resonance of the Sacred
Whether Lakota Bear Lodge, my Mother Tree, or other nations’ holy names—cultures agree on one point:
This place is more than rock.
It carries depth of meaning. It is a threshold between realms, deserving reverence and care.
A Further Question: What Have We Lost?
When I stand before the Tower and watch climbers on its faces (about 4–5 thousand attempt the summit each year), I wonder:
In seeking to conquer nature, have we loosened our belonging to the earth?
Many Native communities treat this as sacred ground and refrain from climbing at certain times, as a gesture of respect. For most visitors, it is a “sight”—a backdrop for photos, a test of limits.
Around the Tower grow limber and ponderosa pines, junipers, lodgepole pines, sagebrush, wild crab apples, berry trees, and aspens. Some 400,000 visitors arrive annually—how many truly feel the sanctity of this land?
In 1977, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind portrayed Devils Tower as a landing site for beings from the stars, and fame followed overnight. Perhaps the choice was no accident—the place itself carries an aura not quite of this world.
An Invitation: Keep an Open Heart
I share the story of the Mother Tree not to persuade you that it is literal history.
Spiritual experience is subjective and personal; it neither asks nor requires scientific proof.
Instead, I offer a question:
When a place is held sacred by many cultures across many times—does that not, in itself, speak?
What some dismiss as “superstition” or “unscientific” may be another way of knowing—older, more intuitive, more intimate with the living earth.
If we speak only in the language of science—”a Tertiary igneous intrusion, c. 50 million years old”—we gain precision, yet may lose reverence.
If we speak only in the language of spirit—”the remnant of a World Tree”—we gain poetry, yet may lack evidence.
Perhaps the path is balance:
To look with the eyes of science, and to feel with the heart of spirit. To let reason and tenderness, knowledge and wisdom, analysis and intuition, dwell together in harmony within us.
If You Ever Go to Devils Tower
Should you one day stand on the Wyoming plains and look up at that pillar rising from the earth:
Close your eyes. Breathe.
Feel the energy of the land.
Do not rush to photograph, to climb, or to leave.
Simply be there, for a moment, with this ancient presence.
Perhaps you will hear a whisper in the wind.
Perhaps you will sense a holiness that words cannot hold.
Perhaps you will understand why the nations call it Bear Lodge, and why I call it Mother Tree.
For this has never been mere stone.
It is a keeper of memory, a path of connection, a witness to something vaster than ourselves.
Whether you lean towards geology, toward spirit, or toward the ancestral stories—may you meet the world’s wonder with an open, reverent heart.
Devils Tower National Monument
Location: Highway 110, Devils Tower, WY 82714
Height: 264 metres (from base) | Summit elevation: 1,558 metres
Summit area: approx. 91 m × 55 m
Established: 1906 — the first National Monument in the United States
