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One is the Sun
Surviving a massacre of wise Mayan priestesses, Earth Thunder flees her temple and journeys north to teach those who wish to know Mother Earth and Her great circles of life. A European noblewoman sends her family across the ocean to renew a spiritual link with Native America. To her grandniece, Helle, she entrusts a special mission. Along the way, in her quest to share her ancient knowledge, Earth Thunder meets River Singing, a slave girl who becomes her apprentice, as does Helle. They build a new temple of learning in the Deer Lodge Valley of Montana Territory. There they live by the old wisdom of one is the Sun, two is the Earth… five is the human self. When enemies threaten to destroy them all, the Deer Lodge people will fight bravely and leave their mark in time. A brilliant historical novel that was ten years in the research and writing – back in print by popular demand!
433 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
2 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Patricia Nell Warren
15 books119 followersPatricia Nell Warren (pen-name Patricia Kylyna) was a Ukrainian and American poet and novelist. She wrote her works in Ukrainian and English.
In 1957 she married a Ukrainian emigre writer Yuriy Tarnawsky and subsequently learned Ukrainian language. Under Tarnawsky's influence she started socializing in Ukrainian emigre writers' circles and soon started writing her own poems, which culminated in her publishing several well-received Ukrainian poetry collections: Trahediya dzhmeliv (New-York: Vydavnytstvo New Yorkskoyi hrypy, 1960), Legendy i sny (New-York: Vydavnytstvo New Yorkskoyi hrypy, 1964), and Rozhevi mista (Munich: Suchasnist, 1969). She published her Ukrainian poetry collections under the pen-name Patricia Kylyna.
After Nell Warren divorced Tarnawsky in 1973, she left Ukrainian literature and never wrote another book in Ukrainian until her death. Instead Nell Warren switched to American literature and tried her best as an American novelist. In 1972 she published her first book in English, a novel The Last Centennial, still under her pen-name Patricia Kylyna (Kilina). Her breakthrough came in 1974 when she published a gay-themed novel The Front Runner. This was the first time she published any of her books under her real name Patricia Nell Warren, and it paid off: the book sold more than 10 mil. copies and was subsequently translated into multiple languages.
For her Ukrainian-language profile see Патриція Килина
In 1957 she married a Ukrainian emigre writer Yuriy Tarnawsky and subsequently learned Ukrainian language. Under Tarnawsky's influence she started socializing in Ukrainian emigre writers' circles and soon started writing her own poems, which culminated in her publishing several well-received Ukrainian poetry collections: Trahediya dzhmeliv (New-York: Vydavnytstvo New Yorkskoyi hrypy, 1960), Legendy i sny (New-York: Vydavnytstvo New Yorkskoyi hrypy, 1964), and Rozhevi mista (Munich: Suchasnist, 1969). She published her Ukrainian poetry collections under the pen-name Patricia Kylyna.
After Nell Warren divorced Tarnawsky in 1973, she left Ukrainian literature and never wrote another book in Ukrainian until her death. Instead Nell Warren switched to American literature and tried her best as an American novelist. In 1972 she published her first book in English, a novel The Last Centennial, still under her pen-name Patricia Kylyna (Kilina). Her breakthrough came in 1974 when she published a gay-themed novel The Front Runner. This was the first time she published any of her books under her real name Patricia Nell Warren, and it paid off: the book sold more than 10 mil. copies and was subsequently translated into multiple languages.
For her Ukrainian-language profile see Патриція Килина
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 28, 2013
This is a big book. It's big in volume, concept, scope, and historical accuracy. The author also illustrated her own book with lovely ink drawings.
The author takes us back in history, to the mid 1800's, when the North American continent was being further invaded by bloodthirsty, greedy, ignorant invaders from Europe. These people disregarded the fact that there were many advanced civilizations already living there, and proceded to ravage the land and natives. This book is also very much about how the patriarchal religions subjugate women (as the U.S. Republican party is increasingly trying to do), and reclaiming female spirituality.
Powerful, well-researched, this tome follows a period of a few years of a group of people doing their best to grow spiritually in a balanced way, including a Bavarian family who remember and honor Freya and have traveled for the express purpose of relearning the path of the Goddess.
This is decided pagan, and a tremendous breath of fresh air. There are not enough pagan novels being written, and the Islamojudeochristian tradition is murdering our spirits, and especially women and children (yes, there are some traditions and individuals in this group that don't do this, but far too few). This book will open a few eyes about what was actually done to people in the "name of the Lord", and is still being done today in various ways and places in the world.
Ho!
The author takes us back in history, to the mid 1800's, when the North American continent was being further invaded by bloodthirsty, greedy, ignorant invaders from Europe. These people disregarded the fact that there were many advanced civilizations already living there, and proceded to ravage the land and natives. This book is also very much about how the patriarchal religions subjugate women (as the U.S. Republican party is increasingly trying to do), and reclaiming female spirituality.
Powerful, well-researched, this tome follows a period of a few years of a group of people doing their best to grow spiritually in a balanced way, including a Bavarian family who remember and honor Freya and have traveled for the express purpose of relearning the path of the Goddess.
This is decided pagan, and a tremendous breath of fresh air. There are not enough pagan novels being written, and the Islamojudeochristian tradition is murdering our spirits, and especially women and children (yes, there are some traditions and individuals in this group that don't do this, but far too few). This book will open a few eyes about what was actually done to people in the "name of the Lord", and is still being done today in various ways and places in the world.
Ho!
November 18, 2021
One Is The Sun is informative as well as enjoyable. The book is rich, colorful, and drew me into a strong sense of place – nature, and what it offers.
One Is The Sun also captures a place in time, the transition from one era to another. Currency exists, but isn’t yet a “household item” for Indian communities living off the land; the trading of goods is still their practice. Gold rushes are starting, and bring violence. The contrast between the lives of Indians living off the land to those of people in American towns, and also Europe, was particularly interesting. I found myself wondering why people would choose to live in camps with little or no money, instead of going into town or a nearby ranch and “getting a job” and “earning a living.”
In this place and time, Indians were resourceful – the only housing, supplies, and tools available are those they made, or for which they traded. Nature, and their own creativity were their main resources. Imagine using the thinnest animal bones for sewing needles, horns for gardening tools, boiling deer hooves to make glue, and crude lighting from tallow (animal fat) with a piece of cloth for a wick. Goods produced by an Indian community became its “currency” to trade for for other supplies, such as salt.
Patricia Nell Warren wrote that she had to undo years of Christian conditioning and thinking to complete the book. My thinking, too, was broadened. While reading, I realized just how much American society and behaviors have been shaped, and narrowed, by that single system/set of beliefs called Christianity. One Is The Sun expanded my mind to see the Christian system as just one option in a bigger world.
From building a community, to learning to live as a community, settling differences, experiencing first loves and violent battles – One Is The Sun is rich in life and learning.
Recommended reading.
One Is The Sun also captures a place in time, the transition from one era to another. Currency exists, but isn’t yet a “household item” for Indian communities living off the land; the trading of goods is still their practice. Gold rushes are starting, and bring violence. The contrast between the lives of Indians living off the land to those of people in American towns, and also Europe, was particularly interesting. I found myself wondering why people would choose to live in camps with little or no money, instead of going into town or a nearby ranch and “getting a job” and “earning a living.”
In this place and time, Indians were resourceful – the only housing, supplies, and tools available are those they made, or for which they traded. Nature, and their own creativity were their main resources. Imagine using the thinnest animal bones for sewing needles, horns for gardening tools, boiling deer hooves to make glue, and crude lighting from tallow (animal fat) with a piece of cloth for a wick. Goods produced by an Indian community became its “currency” to trade for for other supplies, such as salt.
Patricia Nell Warren wrote that she had to undo years of Christian conditioning and thinking to complete the book. My thinking, too, was broadened. While reading, I realized just how much American society and behaviors have been shaped, and narrowed, by that single system/set of beliefs called Christianity. One Is The Sun expanded my mind to see the Christian system as just one option in a bigger world.
From building a community, to learning to live as a community, settling differences, experiencing first loves and violent battles – One Is The Sun is rich in life and learning.
Recommended reading.
January 1, 2014
A beautiful way to start the new year. This story of a difficult time and struggle is told with amazing clarity of the joyous gift that is life.
December 20, 2023
“One Is the Sun” by Patricia Nell Warren is a book from my personal library that I’ve chosen to re-read and review. I am pleased to see that it is still available in the paperback edition, as well as in audible, though not in e-book format. It was published in 1991, and definitely belongs in the category of classic feminist historical novels.
The basic narrative deals with what might be called the last gasp of traditional earth-goddess thought in the 19th Century, before it was in fact reawakened as a result of the feminist resurgence in the 20th Century. Although it doesn’t deal in any way with the modern-day revisiting of Wicca, it definitely resonates with other aspects of planet-focused non-Christian teaching and mysticism as they are currently understood and practiced.
As the story begins, a group of aristocratic Bavarian neopagans are commissioned by the matriarch of their family, Oma, to go to America and try to make contact with a rumored female “Medicine Chief”, or at least to try and discover if there is, in fact, any surviving vestige of belief in the earlier “Mother-centered” religion among the native tribes of that continent, as there still is in Europe. The group includes the brothers Klaus and Fredi, Klaus’ wife Christine and daughter Helle, and two retainers, Bärbl and Siegrund, and they arrive in San Francisco in the autumn of 1857. From there, guided by trader Richard de Garcy, also known as “East Deer”, they launch their expedition into the Deer Lodge Valley in the Idaho Territory to meet up with Earth Thunder, a wise woman and healer originally from Mexico, who has escaped from the final destruction of the Mayan Water Temple by the occupying Spaniards and has connected with various tribes in North America during decades of wandering.
Other major characters include Earth Thunder, her apprentice River Singing whom she rescued from slavery by trading axes for her, and numerous other individuals and families who come to the Deer Lodge Valley to be cured of illnesses and join the ceremonial and teaching circle at the Mother Wheel they construct. The narrative is powerfully descriptive, the characterizations vivid, and the plot gripping as the peace-and-life-loving people struggle to survive the greed and cruelty of the gold rush and the violent territorial life during the western expansion, slaughter of the buffalo, and suppression of the native people during the run-up to the Civil War.
Other marvelous aspects of this book include extraordinary illustrations by Warren herself, helpful maps, meticulous attention to history, and a sensitive touch with respect to the cultural and racial tensions resulting from the drastic changes brought on as colonization, land acquisition, and industrialization rapidly replaced free range and free trade in commodities with a gold-based economy. We are now aware of the way in which missionary efforts by both the Catholic and Protestants added to the extreme disruption of Indian culture, not only killing untold thousands but also forcing survivors onto Reservations and brainwashing their children into forced assimilation. Warren, herself a native of Montana, is both honest and sensitive in dealing with all these issues, meanwhile providing extraordinary insight into the most important key issue, which is the divide between those who cherish the Earth and care for other beings, and those who exercise an ethos of racist and misogynistic domination and destruction, creating a wasteland in the wake of their profit-mongering exploitation.
The basic narrative deals with what might be called the last gasp of traditional earth-goddess thought in the 19th Century, before it was in fact reawakened as a result of the feminist resurgence in the 20th Century. Although it doesn’t deal in any way with the modern-day revisiting of Wicca, it definitely resonates with other aspects of planet-focused non-Christian teaching and mysticism as they are currently understood and practiced.
As the story begins, a group of aristocratic Bavarian neopagans are commissioned by the matriarch of their family, Oma, to go to America and try to make contact with a rumored female “Medicine Chief”, or at least to try and discover if there is, in fact, any surviving vestige of belief in the earlier “Mother-centered” religion among the native tribes of that continent, as there still is in Europe. The group includes the brothers Klaus and Fredi, Klaus’ wife Christine and daughter Helle, and two retainers, Bärbl and Siegrund, and they arrive in San Francisco in the autumn of 1857. From there, guided by trader Richard de Garcy, also known as “East Deer”, they launch their expedition into the Deer Lodge Valley in the Idaho Territory to meet up with Earth Thunder, a wise woman and healer originally from Mexico, who has escaped from the final destruction of the Mayan Water Temple by the occupying Spaniards and has connected with various tribes in North America during decades of wandering.
Other major characters include Earth Thunder, her apprentice River Singing whom she rescued from slavery by trading axes for her, and numerous other individuals and families who come to the Deer Lodge Valley to be cured of illnesses and join the ceremonial and teaching circle at the Mother Wheel they construct. The narrative is powerfully descriptive, the characterizations vivid, and the plot gripping as the peace-and-life-loving people struggle to survive the greed and cruelty of the gold rush and the violent territorial life during the western expansion, slaughter of the buffalo, and suppression of the native people during the run-up to the Civil War.
Other marvelous aspects of this book include extraordinary illustrations by Warren herself, helpful maps, meticulous attention to history, and a sensitive touch with respect to the cultural and racial tensions resulting from the drastic changes brought on as colonization, land acquisition, and industrialization rapidly replaced free range and free trade in commodities with a gold-based economy. We are now aware of the way in which missionary efforts by both the Catholic and Protestants added to the extreme disruption of Indian culture, not only killing untold thousands but also forcing survivors onto Reservations and brainwashing their children into forced assimilation. Warren, herself a native of Montana, is both honest and sensitive in dealing with all these issues, meanwhile providing extraordinary insight into the most important key issue, which is the divide between those who cherish the Earth and care for other beings, and those who exercise an ethos of racist and misogynistic domination and destruction, creating a wasteland in the wake of their profit-mongering exploitation.
June 2, 2023
I absolutely loved this book. Made me smile, made me think, and made me cry. Broke my heart in so many ways. A simple story, yet very detailed and beautiful and deep. I was able to see myself within the story while also learning more about a world I am not apart of.
May 10, 2024
I’m still finishing this book but it’s already one of the most astonishing books I’ve ever read about Turtle Island and Life in general. If you pay enough attention, this book will teach you everything you need to know about Life, Honesty, Truth and the Earth.
October 26, 2013
Probably historically somewhat correct, though presented as a story of a white woman seeking the knowledge from a Native woman healer. There are references to the men and situations that conspired to change what ancients believed - the worship of the Earth and what the Earth could offer if treated well. This is a book about healing and living a life of thought and caring, treating others right and learning.
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June 12, 2008If there were only one book on the planet this book would be enough!!!
Patrician Nell Warren, Wisdom Naked, is my SiStar!!! She is the Portal of knowledge. Teaching journeys for womyns. Re-read and re-read, pass on through generations.
Patrician Nell Warren, Wisdom Naked, is my SiStar!!! She is the Portal of knowledge. Teaching journeys for womyns. Re-read and re-read, pass on through generations.
January 30, 2017
I enjoyed this book as a glimpse into paths of teaching fundamental truths and defending personal traditions. It was a fun fictional read that captures the skunk ignorance of an earlier period. I have been working on my personal 5 points to teach my children.
April 5, 2007
If you want to know what fart-bird, butt-pillow, or earth thunder mean, read this book.
January 18, 2009
Listened to it on CD - very good story, tended to be a bit long winded and preachy but I enjoyed it.
July 22, 2014
Loved the Book. Would like to read More of her works.
April 5, 2015
One of my top favorites!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews