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Jesse Wolf Hardin's Earth Magic |
Gaia Eros
Kindred Spirits
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Bear Magic beartooth set in silver It comes not to silence but to
awaken. To consume distraction and
illusion, to put an end to the irrelevant and trivial, to draw our attention to
what matters most in us and around us.
To lead us to the ways and plants that can help us heal. To deliver us back to our whole, primal,
magical, responsive selves. Some of us
may feel the bear inside, raising up and helping us stand strong and straight,
driving our hungers and feeding the growth of our insight and wisdom. Some may claim the bear totem as their own,
as though the bear had claimed and inhabited them. And for all of us, it is a potential teacher
that we would be unwise to ignore. Grizzly! The sound of their name is enough to pass a
charge, like electricity through our bones,
enough to cast a long and deep shadow across our rapidly shrinking
arrogance, illusory sense of omnipotence and fragile certainty. One glance at a grizz's unmistakable claw
marks eight foot up the side of his scratching-tree and every nerve comes
instantly to attention. Every sense is
alerted, every light turned on at once in the mortal housing of the soul. Enlivened!
Every cell open-eyed and open-mouthed, every molecule on tip-toes,
straining to perceive. Awakeness. Intensified perception. These are the first gifts of the great
bear. With their slow lumbering thunder,
comes the excitement and clarity of lightning bolts: sudden, penetrating,
en-lightening! Truly, one perceives more
in grizzly country. Sees further. Hears more acutely. Smells deeper. Notices more.
Our senses honed to a fine, irreconcilable edge. Without ever actually seeing a bear, the mere
thought of it is as a claw stripping the opaque film from our perceptual
lens. The civilized traits of
inattention and indifference are swiftly gutted like fish, and left to curl and
dry on hot river rocks. Sloth joins
nonchalance, pawed into a carrion pile beneath a layer of sticks and dirt. More people are hurt in California
shower stalls each year than are hurt by wild animals in the entire
country. The fact is that there's a
greater probability of being hit by lightning than attacked by a bear. Our heightened awareness in grizzly country
results from the possibility of a bear attack, not by its likelihood. Systematic and almost complete removal of
this wilderness potential allows for us to sleep-walk through most wilderness
experiences on "automatic pilot," the way we may be used to functioning
in the "work-a-day" world.
Reduction in any wilderness potential reduces our own ability to
experience. Since our Paleolithic ancestors
first contested proprietorship of a cave, the great bear has been a reminder
that humans are not at the top of the "food chain." Ask any grizzly you meet. Or, if you're below a certain size, ask a
starving mountain lion. If anything,
soil is at the top, since it gets to eat everybody . Civilized cultures fear dirt for this very
reason, fighting back with soaps, detergents, and above-ground mausoleums. But they fear the bear most of all. At its worst, civilized human
existence can be unnatural, reduced, confined, insulated like a padded cell,
buffered from danger and thus from adventure, heightened sensation, spontaneity
and awe. A great effort is made to
ensure the urban environment is the opposite of grizzly country: constrained,
predictable, metered, pacified, and inflexibly scheduled. There's a singular lucidity to grizzly
country, a brilliance and clarity like sunlight dancing on a curved tooth. Time
spent in grizzly country is infinitely and necessarily flexible. Spontaneity and attentiveness are traits that
contribute to both our capacity to survive and to enjoy. But the grizzly, and in fact all
species of bear, have more to teach us than merely being alert. They are intuitives, seers, shamans,
travelers of the soul and instinctual healers that have influenced our
development and psychology for ages. Our
species evolved in close relationship with Ursus, serving alternately as the
bears' food and prey, as their destroyers, their fawning bards... and their
rapt students. The earliest physical evidence of
human reverence for animal spirits was discovered in various grottoes high in the mountains of Franconia,
Switzerland and Germany. Along with
numerous tools and fauna remains, they discovered purposeful collections of
cave bear skulls stacked neatly on shelves, or protected inside stone cabinets
protected by slab "doors."
Some were encircled by a formation of small rocks, while another held a
leg bone in its mouth. Here were not
only the tools for killing and fleshing these powerful animals, but proof of
their veneration by what must have been a bear cult. It seems that from earliest times the bear
was seen as the "Animal Master," the strongest of all. Right relationship with the bear, however
each tribe defined that, would determine what other animals made themselves
available. I once came upon some Pueblo Indian
friends of mine way back on a dirt road, north of Taos. Hung upside down next to them was a young
black bear carcass. I'd read how human
they look with their baggy hide removed, but nothing prepared me for what
looked like a skinned man with his chest opened, the pink muscles layered like
a teen wrestler with a size #18 neck. They salted and rolled up the skin, fur side
in, while I watched the flies probe the exposed body. The hide would be carefully tanned, and the
meat left for the coyotes. For them,
eating a bear would be like cannibalism.
For they are the creatures most like us. The bear's fierce maternal devotion
helps explain her role as the Mother of All Animals. In her book Gods and Goddesses Marija
Gimbutas contemplates the hundreds of ancient terracotta "bear
nurses" that have been excavated from various Euro-neolithic sites. Many are enthroned female bears, or women
with bear masks on, and most are nursing a cub.
She sees these as the primordial animal goddess, the Great Mother, nurturing
the new gods and goddesses of vegetation and agriculture. The cub, then, becomes Zeus on the bear's
nipple, Zalmoxis and Dionysus, Artemis and Diana. Our ancestors in both the
"Old" and "New World"
watched the bear go into its den every winter and emerge every Spring—
an obvious herald of rebirth, the return of life to a hungry land and hungry
people. The people of civilizing Europe
harnessed the bear, and the bear's mythology, to the purposes of the field and
plow. In England they had the "strawbear,"
while in Germany he was called the Fastnachtshar: a man dressed up in a straw
bear costume who would be led in early Spring to each house of the
village. There the man-bear would dance
with all the women. The more
enthusiastically they danced, the richer the coming crop would be. Pieces of the straw costume would be snatched
by the young girls, and placed beneath their pillows to insure fertility, or
placed in the nests of their chickens to encourage the laying of eggs. The bear has forever represented as going
into the self, into the Earth in order to be refreshed, revitalized and reborn
again. Those who would be students of
the bear travel the discomforting trail into their inner self, only later
returning to the busy surface with the strength and secrets found within. They know that out of the icy sleep of winter
comes the regeneration of life. Entering into an initiation rite is
often like going into hibernation. The
initiate is likely placed in the dark and isolation of a secluded hut, pit or
cave. They may be further wrapped up,
blindfolded, or otherwise have their senses and mobility limited as it would be
in the womb. As with hibernation, the
initiate would seem to die inside, giving up one persona and climbing out in a
new, empowered form. For this reason,
the Dakota refer to a boy's rite of passage as "to make a bear." The coastal Pomo included both boys and girls
in an initiation where the children are symbolically "killed" by the
kuksu spirit, with the help of a costumed
grizzly bear. They were then removed to
the forest for four days and nights.
When they were "reborn" into the tribe, they brought with them
the secret medicine songs and plant knowledge learned in their travels to the
middle world. For the Ainu of northernmost Japan,
the bear was "The Divine One Who Rules the Mountains." To the Cree they are the "Angry
One" and "Chief's Son."
The Sami translation is roughly "Old Man With Fur Clothes,"
while the nearby Finns say "Old Lightfoot" or "Pride of the
Woods." Most often, wherever they
are found they're called "Grandmother" and "Grandfather"
out of respect. Long after the adoption
of firearms in both Europe and America the indigenous people continued to hunt
bears with their most primitive weapons, insisting on honoring their quarry
with the personal engagement and inherent fairness of hand to hand combat. The totemic energy of the bear was
invoked by both men and women of one of the select warrior classes of
"barbaric" Europe. They got
their name "Berserkers" from the bear ("ber") skins ("serks")
they wore instead of the uniforms and armor of their more civilized
antagonists. Men and women are said to
have fought together, biting at their shields, and raising such a tumultuous
animal roar that the earliest Roman invaders fled in a total panic. They were famous for their ability to ignore
pain, facing unfair odds with uncompromised ferocity. Their characteristic ability to continue
fighting in spite of numerous wounds may have been assisted by the consumption
of certain psychoactive mushrooms, no doubt showed to them by their rambling
bear guides. Among the Great Plains
tribes of America they were called "Bear Dreamers" and "Bear
Warriors." Known for running head
long at their foes, at times with no more than a bear-jaw knife. They believed the bear spirit would protect
them, inspiring incredible feats of courage. The Pueblo name for bear is often the same as for
doctor. The bear not only ushers in the
spring vegetation, but then shows those who watch close enough which plants and
roots to eat, and which herbal medicines to gather for their people. In this country the bear showed the people
where to find the kinnickinnick (also called Uva Ursi, or
"bearberry"), the yarrow and osha root. The Lakota emergence myth describes the
people being tricked into leaving the middle earth by the Trickster
Iktomi. For leaving the embrace of the
Earth Mother the people were subjected to disease, cold and hunger for the
first time— possibly an allegory for
humanity's progressive disenfranchisement from the rest of the living
planet. It was the bear, the doctor,
that felt sorry for the wayward humans and showed them the plant remedies they
would need to ease their self-inflicted suffering. In both America and Europe the bear spirit was considered
to be the ally of the shaman. Like the
medicine man, the bear could both heal you and kill you. Both are solitary travelers, garnering their
power from the lessons of Nature and the experience of solitude. Both are feared at the same time they are
revered. Like bears, those with bears
for guiding totems, typically make people uncomfortable. And to be fair, bears can be hard to live with! People with bear energies or traits are not
just strong willed but stubborn, sometimes to their own detriment. Uncooperative, unless something happens to
please them. Able to withdraw into
themselves, to the exclusion of others.
Distant and inaccessible, when they’re feeling either melancholy or
bored. Impatient about anything that
matters. Dangerous when they are
crossed. They are hardest on themselves
when they lack a purpose, and hardest on others when they are judged and
misunderstood. Unless and until they develop self discipline, such
people may gravitate to extremes of mood and behavior, giddy and playful one
moment and perturbed the next. They may
find themselves eating more sweets than are healthy, and sleeping more than
they need. They are not lazy people,
only extremely particular about what they commit their interest and energies
to. On the other hand,
these bear-folk have the ability to search the inner labyrinths of their
creature beings and wild souls, resulting in a deep understanding of self that
they can make use of if and when they decide to come back out. They have the inherent strength and
determination to accomplish great things, moving aside immense boulders in
order to get to a self-assigned goal.
They are self motivated and function well at solitary work of any
kind. At the same time, they can make
incredible mates, so long as they live with someone who not only truly knows
and understands them, but who also shares their preferences, desires,
intentions, missions, destinations and designs.
They are capable of being some of the very best teachers, authors and
parents... and the most dependable guardians of integrity and truth, spirit and
magic, land and home. They make the most
powerful healers, whenever they have first done the work of healing
themselves. Those who marry the bear,
never want to go back. It’s not a matter of physical size or shape. Being bear is in the way one walks flat-footed,
and swings their head from side to side.
In the deliberateness of motion, and the absence of frivolity. In great persistence and high intelligence. In playfulness that is as intense and focused
as hunting or sex. In the father’s force
of purpose, and the mother’s protectiveness.
In the earth-warrior’s devotion, and the inimitable bear-hug. In the Medicine Woman’s affinity with plants
and intuitive relationship to medicinal herbs.
In their huge hearts and berry-chomping smiles. It’s in the way that they dream of the
bear... and the way that bear, in turn, dreamed them into being. what is sacred, and Acceptance of the wild bear is
tantamount to acceptance of the untamed wilderness, of the untamed energies of
womanhood, of an untamed life. It means
acceptance of the dualities of nature, of all sides of the Earth Mother. I am reminded of Artemis, Greek daughter of
the original Animal Mother, grown into the Lady of The Beasts, the Lady of Wild
Nature, priestess of the moon. She was
Diana the huntress, but also served as the defender of wildlife. Her companion was a bear, and together they
ruled the plant kingdom and thus determined feast or fast. She served as protectress of thieves, slaves
and outlaws. She was at once the
destructive, all consuming "terrible mother" and the defender of the
children, guardian spirit of all pregnant women and "Opener of the
Womb." Artemis helps us understand
how our difficult embrace of the bear is actually an acceptance of the death
that must precede any planetary rebirth. For many thousands of years
humankind has looked to the bear as both reality and symbol, seeing many
different things in both. A few
land-based tribes in Siberia and North America continue to actively revere the
mighty grizzly as a worthy rival and invaluable guide. Conservationists and nature lovers may
continue to see them as important aspects of a healthy ecosystem, and some in
the Pagan and New Spirituality communities still draw on them for inspiration,
example and power. But for most people, the relationship has progressed to one
of estrangement, with all wildlife becoming distant curiosities or televised
entertainment. They are no longer even
trophies to "bag," let alone threats to avoid at all cost. To them, the bears are veritable historical
artifacts, barely breathing throwbacks to a wilder and more intensely realized
time. They're magic, and they are indeed
disappearing. But they're also as real
as we are. And in another way, they're
always here. Primal humans found something
distinctly familiar in the great bear.
In the way the mother gently plays with her cubs, and stiffly defends
them against all comers. The way she
gently sniffs the beckoning blossoms, or stretches in the sun. The bear appeals to that part of the human
psyche still pondering its own untamed nature— with perked ears and raised
hackles! It strokes the Paleolithic
sensibility that even now revolts against enforced civility. There is something like destiny,
like karma, climbing inexorably over the nearby ridge, heading unhurriedly but
deliberately our way. It is a playful
dream, a sensual overture, a fur-covered agent of the wild. It is awakeness, and it is healing. It promises, in silence, to take us into
itself... into its very center! It is the great bear. And it is us. Go ahead Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher of Animá earth-centered
practice, the author of five books including Gaia Eros (New Page 2004),
and performs on the GaiaTribe CD “Enchantment” <www.cdbaby.com/gaiatribe>. He and
his partners Loba and Kiva offer online Animá correspondence courses, as well as
host students and guests at their enchanted canyon and true ancient place of
power. Opportunities include weekend retreats, personal counsel, shamanic
vision quests, resident internships, and special Apprenticeships for the most
dedicated. Annual events include the Wild Womens Gathering, and the Medicine
Woman and Shaman Path intensives. Contact: The Animá Wilderness Learning Center
& Women’s Sanctuary, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 <www.animacenter.org> <mail@animacenter.org>. ©Jesse Wolf Hardin 2005-2006 Reproduction in any form is prohibited without express written permission from the author. |