The Fourth World was a name used to describe the fourth age of mankind. It was also used as an informal proper name attributed to the planet, Earth.
History
The term originated with the animal totem power beings of the spirit plane and was handed down to the Hopi tribes of North America. The Fourth World represented the modern era of Earth's history, wherein the planet was overrun with soulless greed, crime and pollution. The spirituality and harmony with nature that once replenished the land was gone.
In the late 1960s, the power being known as White-Buffalo-Woman took human form and came to Earth in the region known as California. She acted as a spiritual advisor to a musician known as Snake (Fred Kominsky) and helped him to enlighten others through music and through a mystical narcotic known as Ghostdancing. White-Buffalo-Woman and her Ghostdancing inspired a counterculture resurgence in spirituality commonly regarded as the Hippie movement.
As societal norms began to evolve, the static reality of the Fourth World began to recede. The enlightenment of the Fifth World gained momentum, but quickly died out with the disappearance of White-Buffalo-Woman in 1973.
Another source sought to stymie the growth of the Fifth World – this was the secret society known as the Mammonites. The Mammonites represented sanitized order and labored for over five centuries to suppress the naturist primitivism of other cultures.
In 1995, White-Buffalo-Woman re-emerged in the public consciousness and the spiritual strength of the Ghostdancing was reborn. The mystical barriers separating the physical planes of existence from the spirit world were torn asunder and the animal totem of the Thunderbird released the power of nature upon the Earth. Animal spirits bonded with their corporeal counterparts and wrought untold devastation across the western United States. From the ashes of mankind's pollution, the Fifth World was born.
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