Rebirth

Resting in a sunny spot in the woods.

… Because it sheds its skin, the snake has long been a symbol of death and rebirth.  It sheds its skin as it outgrows the old.  This death and rebirth cycle is part of what snake represents.  It has ties and significance to the ancient alchemists and their symbolic transmutation of lead into gold.  This is associated with higher wisdom that comes with the passing of time.  This cycle of death and rebirth is often symbolized by the ouroborus, the ancient image of a snake swallowing its own tail.  It is the symbol of eternity.

Before the snake begins to shed its skin, its eyes will begin to cloud over.  It gives the snake a trancelike appearance.  To many mystics and shamans this indicated the ability of the snake to move between the realms of the living and the dead, of crossing over from life to death and then back to life again.  As the skin begins to shed, the eyes begin to clear as if they will see the world anew.  For this reason, alchemists often believed that wisdom and new knowledge would lead to death and rebirth, enabling the individual to see the world from an entirely new perspective.

… Anytime a snake shows up as a totem, you can expect death and rebirth to occur in some area of your life.  This rarely reflects an actual death, but rather a transition.  Look for a change in conditions and a movement to new life.  Examine what is going on around you.  Are you needing to make changes but aren’t for some reason?  Are you trying to force change too quickly?  Are you striking out at people and shouldn’t?  Are you not striking and should?  Remember that a snake not only uses its venom and bite to overcome prey, but also for defense.  What is needing to be healed?  What new opportunities are surfacing that you need to strike out for and take advantage of?

… Snakes are symbols of change and healing.  They have speed and agility, so those who have snakes come into their life will usually find the changes and shifts occur quickly and are soon recognized and defined.  When snake comes into your life you can look for a rebirth into new powers of creativity and wisdom.

~ Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

Deer medicine

Little Doe, mama of the twins.

When deer show up in your life it is time to be gentle with yourself and others.  A new innocence and freshness is about to be awakened or born.  There is going to be a gentle, enticing lure of new adventures.  Ask yourself important questions.  Are you trying to force things?  Are others?  Are you being too critical and uncaring of yourself?  When deer show up there is an opportunity to express gentle love that will open new doors to adventure for you.

~ Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

When you have the deer as spirit animal, you are able to bring gentleness and grace in every aspects of your life, even in the most challenging moments. By inspiration from the deer’s qualities, you can achieve ambitious goals and tackle difficult situation smoothly with a touch of gentleness and grace.

The deer spirit animal will remind you to be gentle with yourself and others. The grace and gentleness characteristic of this spirit animal echo the qualities brought forth when living from the heart. For example, the traditional symbol used for the heart chakra has the deer (sometimes also represented as an antelope) as emblematic animal of the energy of love and harmony with oneself and others.

~ Elena Harris

A Wednesday wander: Dharma

In the magnolia.

In the first movement, our infancy as a species, we felt no separation from the natural world around us. Trees, rocks, and plants surrounded us with a living presence as intimate and pulsing as our own bodies. In that primal intimacy, which anthropologists call “participation mystique,” we were as one with our world as a child in the mother’s womb.

Then self-consciousness arose and gave us distance on our world. We needed that distance in order to make decisions and strategies, in order to measure, judge and to monitor our judgments. With the emergence of free-will, the fall out of the Garden of Eden, the second movement began — the lonely and heroic journey of the ego. Nowadays, yearning to reclaim a sense of wholeness, some of us tend to disparage that movement of separation from nature, but it brought us great gains for which we can be grateful. The distanced and observing eye brought us tools of science, and a priceless view of the vast, orderly intricacy of our world. The recognition of our individuality brought us trial by jury and the Bill of Rights.

Now, harvesting these gains, we are ready to return. The third movement begins. Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again — and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.”

~Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self

A Monday meander: Grace

Grace draped softly in the cherry tree.

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

.. along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.

~ David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

Fox

Where the red fox wanders.

When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

~ Mary Oliver

Everything that is in the heavens, on earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.

~ Hildegard of Bingen

Another blustery day

Shall we take a walk?

If sequestered pain made a sound, the atmosphere would be humming all the time.

~ Stephen Levine

This is part of being human, this knowing that we are all part of one another, inextricably involved; and at the same time alone, irrevocably alone.

~ Madeleine L’Engle

Through the window

Rainy day.

What I know is that it’s going to be better. If it’s bad, it might get worse, but I know that it’s going to be better. And you have to know that. There’s a country song out now, which I wish I’d written, that says, ‘Every storm runs out of rain.’ I’d make a sign of that if I were you. Put that on your writing pad. No matter how dull and seemingly unpromising life is right now, it’s going to change. It’s going to be better. But you have to keep working.

~ Maya Angelou