This Liminal Time

December 27, 2019

I am fascinated by Roman mythology before the Greco-Roman period, partly because I find it so abstruse. Etruscan mythology, already influenced by the Greek, seems more accessible, despite the concerted destruction of the culture perpetrated by early Christians.

Photo: A. Davey

Roman deities tend to be abstract energies rather than developed personalities. Even when they take physical form, that form is often perceived as inanimate or at least non-biological. The goddess Cardea, she of the front door hinge to the family dwelling, is a good example. Together with the god Forculus (door) and Liminus (threshold), Cardea forms the energy around the entrance to the abode.

Cardea allows movement through a boundary, so she seems like a goddess to reflect upon for the New Year. We think of boundaries as forces to keep things out (evil spirits, troublesome people), but a functional boundary also allows energies to enter. Cardea filters out undesirable energies as the desirable energies pass the threshold.

Photo: Justjeffaz

Friday the 13th

December 13, 2019

Actually a perfectly fine day. It’s Friday! (Frigg’s Day) The planet for Friday is Venus, the planet of love and friendship. And 13 is a number associated with some lunar calendars.

But if you still want to be spooked, there’s this. I was walking along a dirt road earlier this week and saw this widow-maker. Don’t know if the photo conveys how huge it is. I took this as a divinatory sign to slow down and pay attention.

The Visitation

December 6, 2019
Photo: Jerry Segrave/USFWS

There is a 3-legged deer in the village that has attained almost mythical status. People who spot the deer limping around at night are alarmed, only to be reassured that, “Yeah, she’s missing part of a front leg, but she gets along okay. Been that way for a while.”

The other night I glanced up and saw the 3-legged deer peering in the window at me. Wildlife, mostly deer, do this, and I feel sometimes like my house is a zoo cage and I’m on display for the wildlife.

I learned last night that our gimpy deer is not a doe, but a buck. He has a small rack going. I don’t see many bucks around, because they are hunted and they don’t have antlers much of the year. The 3-legged buck stood awhile at the window and then limped away.

Happy Turkey Day!

November 28, 2019
Here comes a car. Let’s run out in the road! Photo: Tim Ross

Yes, the Bald Eagle is the US national bird, but I’ll bet you secretly like the Wild Turkey best.

Though once endangered, the Wild Turkey has made a comeback and is found in most US states (and in northern Mexico). In New England, she has become a bit of a nuisance, flocking onto roadways and chasing suburban children.

Turkeys are social animals, the females at least, and sisters sometimes raise their next brood together. They can be aggressive, which makes sense, since their chicks are grounded. Adult turkeys can fly and swim, though they usually choose to run and walk.

They are quite fast runners. Once a turkey challenged me to a race. I was riding my bicycle on a paved country road, and a turkey began trotting next to me. Just for fun, I sped up, and the turkey continued running alongside of me. Finally I broke loose and pedaled as fast as I could, and the turkey and I were in tied in a fiercely competitive race. Eventually we left farmland and passed into a copse of trees, and the turkey had to fly up into the branches.

The word for turkey in Munsee Delaware is puleew, and the turkey is the totem animal for one of the major clans. Delaware women would wear cloaks of turkey feathers during important ceremonies.

The turkey has been the downfall of many a vegetarian. Many have told me that they stayed away from animal flesh completely for a year or more until one day, when they were really hungry, there was turkey….

Eye of the Tiger Shark

November 8, 2019

I learned today that sharks have rather interesting vision. Many species have both rods and cones, and they demonstrate an excellent ability to detect contrast. Like cats and other night animals, sharks have a tapetum lucidum, a layer of mirror-like crystals behind the retina which enhances vision in very low light. Apparently sharks hunt primarily by sight, even though they are also sensitive to vibration, electromagnetic fields, and chemical changes in the water. Tiger Sharks have a clear membrane that can cover their eyes like a see-through eyelid while on the attack. Tiger Sharks, like tigers, are one of the few animals that view humans as food. (Great White Sharks will attack humans, but they haven’t actually acquired a taste for us.) They are predators with superb vision, particularly in the watery depths.

Shark cones register light in the blue range. Photo: Albert kok

In my book, Divining with Animal Guides, I write about the eyesight of many animals and how that applies to divination.

Samhain 2019

October 31, 2019

I must be the only person in my village who takes a broom to the front porch to tear down the spider webs on Halloween. I like the holiday, including the trick-or-treating, but for me it’s not about terror.

Ghost trees in a flooded field.

Trick-or-treating comes from an old custom of children dressing in rags to signify the poor departed souls who cannot find their way to the Otherworld. Householders would give the children treats to bless and mollify the spirits of the unhappy departed, reducing the chances that they would do troublesome things like emit strange knocking sounds or whisk things around in the wind. This was one aspect of the Celtic holiday, which was about remembering ancestors.

I sometimes wonder how mainline Christians would feel about Easter becoming a festival of terror and evil. After all, Jesus rises from the dead, so that’s a more plausible holiday for a zombie apocalypse. Keeping the spirit of the spirit of Halloween can be a challenge, because I certainly don’t want to be one of those Halloween Scrooges who turn off the lights and pretend they’re not home.

I’m looking forward to tonight. I do like seeing all the children. I get lots and lots of trick-or-treaters, so many that I wonder if some of the teenagers dare each other to come to my house on Halloween. But hey–this witch tore down the spider webs in front of the door.

Ghost Rabbit

October 25, 2019
Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service

Several years ago, I ran over a rabbit in the car on a lonely stretch of highway. I don’t remember what kind of rabbit; it wasn’t important at the time, probably not even to the rabbit. What mattered was that the rabbit was alive, and then it was dead.

As is typical of deserted roads in the Adirondacks, it was several miles before I could find a place to turn around, but I felt it was important to return, to take responsibility for my action, inadvertent as it was, and honor the life taken. When I returned I discovered the rabbit had hopped or been thrown to the side of the pavement, where it died. I was struck not with pity or regret or self-recrimination, but with confusion and then with wonder. Because the rabbit was not there. The body lay beside the road but the rabbit was gone gone gone. The rabbit had hopped away, with no attachment to the physical form or the place of death. Perhaps I could call its spirit back and ask forgiveness, but why do that, except to placate my own spirit? It happened. The rabbit had moved on. I needed to do the same.

I tend to think that the ease with which the rabbit slipped out the world had to do with the temporal nature of cornerstone species, their short lives making their foothold in this world a tentative one. I imagine that the long-lived elephant would leave with a long good-bye, especially from what I have read about elephant funerals and elephant graveyards. Then too, our North American leporidae are not social creatures, unlike elephants and Old World rabbits. A social hierarchy seems to anchor a species to the earth, creating as it does a more complex system of obligation.

Given the rabbit’s ease in slipping into the world of the dead, it is interesting that graveyards provide such a hospitable living environment for rabbits, hosting open grassy spaces in metropolitan or densely forested areas. While we usually think of bats and spiders at Halloween, the rabbit seems like a highly appropriate animal to meditate upon as the veil grows thin.

In my book, Invoking Animal Magic, I devote a whole chapter to folklore about rabbits and hares.