Various Symbols
and Meaning for Breath / Spirit

• that which moves and infuses with life
• means of knowing and communicating with inner selves and with others and nature
• represents sacred places and acts of worship
• four points of heaven
• four points of the human figure (arms and legs)
• four directions
• represents deities worthy of worship
• that which protects, guides, and gives us direction in life

Breath / Great Spirit / Four Winds - all the labels fold into the system of pictographs that Native Americans used to represent the divinity of the universe surrounding us. What is most important to note in these pictographs is the repetition of "four" in the design, whether it's four points, four ears, or four heads.

Four is among the more sacred of numbers, as it has come to be represented pictorially in the cross design that appears prominently in the two bottom pictographs to the left. The cross design appeared in native pictography before English colonization, and its use across all religions in history speaks to a universal truth behind the design (Emerson, 1965).

Imagine the ruins archaeologists have studied and found to be oriented toward North, South, East and West. This design appears over and over in indigenous designs of any sort (pictoral, architectural, etc.). Native Americans believed that four gods ruled these four directions, and that the Great Spirit oversaw the four directions.

The four directions also represent the four races of man on the earth: red, yellow, black and white. While these races are separate, they are also interconnected, and, as in the third pictograph, form parts of the whole. The segments in the third pictograph have also evolved into a more complex representation of an individual's goal to understand what quadrant he or she is in and to learn from other quadrants of life.