after offering the mouthpiece of the lit pipe to each of the four winds, the shaman should move the pipe in the same manner until the mouthpiece again points toward the west, and say: 'Circling, I complete the four quarters and the time.'
The pipe, circled toward the four winds, enacts a cosmological rite of temporal and spatial totality, functioning as the ritual axis that unites all directions, all times, and all gods within a single gesture.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996thesis