Category: Animals

A Most Persistent Tree Climber

March 25, 2016
Photo: Dick Daniels.
Photo: Dick Daniels.

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This is the Pileated Woodpecker, in my opinion the most handsome of a very beautiful group of birds. Both males and females have this striking red crown.

Fannie Hardy Eckstorm writes in her 1901 woodpecker treatise:

… one of the most persistent of our tree-climbers and more than any other woodpecker I ever observed given to scratching rapidly round and round a tree-trunk, clinging at ease in almost any position except head-downward, and drilling incessantly and at all seasons for grubs; he is a typical woodpecker of the largest size …

Source: Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, The Woodpeckers. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.: 1901.

The Crow Goddess in Ancient Greece

March 4, 2016
Apollo with Crow.
Apollo with Crow.

Another excerpt from my book-in-progress. Crows and ravens are conflated in ancient Greek myth.

A less familiar goddess who has a link with crows is Coronis. She is one of the Hyades, the seven sisters of light who are rain-makers. Olympic genealogy has her the parent with Apollo of the healing god Asclepius. She is also tied to Apollo in a story where the mistrustful Apollo sends a crow to spy on the goddess, and she does indeed cheat on him with another god. Apollo has Coronis bumped off by his sister and punishes his crow for not halting the liaison by changing him from white to black. This story accomplishes three things: 1) it solidifies Apollo’s ownership of the crow while denigrating the crow at the same time; 2) it explains why the god of light would have a black emblem; and 3) it justifies usurpation of the goddess’s cult by making her demise a result of her own betrayal. Reading into this story a bit, I would guess the unruly priestesses of Coronis resisted the cult of Apollo effectively for awhile.

The goddess Athena is believed to have turned Coronis herself from a white crow into a black crow. This is why the raven rests on the bust of Pallas in the Edgar Allan Poe narrative “The Raven.” Pallas is another name for Athena. The story goes that Coronis brought Athena some bad news, and the goddess in a rage changed the feathers of Coronis from white to black and banished her from the Acropolis. I disagree with those who categorize the crow as a familiar of Athena on the basis of this story. I think crows and ravens were banished from Athena’s temples because her priests wanted owls to nest there. Crows like to nest in high places (hence the term “crow’s nest”), and they mob owls. The purpose in the mobbing is to defend chicks and eggs from owl predation, and yet crows seem from our perspective to pursue owls with an unnecessary vehemence, seeming to attack them on principle. At any rate the two birds could not have cohabitated, so crows would have to be banished from Athena’s domain. In addition to firmly linking Coronis with the crow, this story again makes the crow an oracular bird.

Germanic Raven Goddesses

February 26, 2016

corvus_corax_(NPS)

The following is an excerpt from my book-in-progress about animal divination.

Despite being extremely social, ravens and crows squabble quite a bit between themselves, fighting over food and territory. They even, rarely, perform “executions,” a practice poorly understood though well documented. Corvids do not routinely harm members of their posse who are ailing and will even protect the disabled and bring them food. The dominant theory is that solitary birds with no allies eventually excite territorial instincts. Whatever the reason, the flock becomes very noisy as a number of birds execute the offender. Once killed, the cacophony abates suddenly and the birds abscond, leaving behind the corpse.

More common than executions of their own kind is mobbing of raptors. Any songbird might take part in a mobbing, but jays and crows are the most enthusiastic, while the larger and less vulnerable ravens seldom bother. Ravens do buzz and snap at eagles, perhaps to draw eagles away from nest sites (although this does not totally explain things). Some ravens hang out around wolf packs, waiting to devour leftovers from a carcass. In the meantime they enjoy teasing the wolves, pulling their tails and scampering off.

The raven-wolf pairing is more conspicuous in Germanic lore than the raven-horse, although both can be found. Two wolves sit at the feet of the god Odin, while two ravens flank his shoulders. The names of these ravens are Huginn and Muninn. usually translated as “thought” and “memory.” Odin the Allfather “sends them out at daybreak to fly over the whole world, and they come back at breakfast-time; by this means he comes to know a great deal about what is going on, and on account of this men call him the god-of-ravens.” There is some controversy over the meaning of “Muninn,” who is mentioned less frequently than his sidekick in extant Germanic lore. Two questions not entertained, to my knowledge, would be 1) Are these ravens really guy-ravens or is this a case of default male bias? and 2) Why two ravens?

The gender of the ravens does matter, since ravens are Odin’s servants and the Valkyries called the daughters of Odin, serve him on the battlefield as well as in Valhalla. In the Poetic Edda the battlefield is referred to as “Huginn’s grove,” so one or both of these same ravens are hovering alongside the fight like the Valkyries. Perhaps Huginn and Muninn are the culmination of a process from a dominant raven-goddess to a raven-goddess subsumed under rule of the Allfather to a subordinate raven deity stripped of feminine association.

That two wolves and two ravens flank Odin is curious. Why not one raven-wolf pair? Why not nine ravens? Two is not an automatically recurring number in Norse lore; nine, and occasionally three, are the most prominent numbers. If this were a story of Semitic origin I would attribute the pair of ravens to cultural emphasis on complementary halves, but that is not the case here. When Odin says he has two ravens, he means that the ravens are two, and we do have to ask, why two?

The idea that the mind of the God is divided into thought and memory is suspect, since this is a dualistic concept that, if it existed at all, would most probably have arisen through Christian influence. The translation of Muninn’s name as “memory” is contested anyway. There are marriages between gods and goddesses, which might explain the raven-pair, though marriages are often ways of blending the pantheons of conquerors with those of indigenous people, so a marriage might not fit with the idea of the ravens as vestiges of an earlier matriarchal cosmology. There are other deities that are commonly thought of in pairs, such as the goddess Frigga and her son Baldur, and the boar-goddess Freya with her boar-brother Freyr. Could Odin’s winged familiars be brother-sister raven deities?

Where the number two arises most frequently is in reference to the Aesir and Vanir, the two branches of pantheons that came together under the reign of the Odin. Feminist scholars theorize that these groups represent an indigenous Old European pantheon (the Vanir) linked to a conquering Indo-European pantheon (the Aesir) . We could also call them two allied Indo-European pantheons – the point is that they represent the confederation of two tribes. This would explain why Odin has two ravens and wolves at his command: they represent the raven-wolf totems of each of these tribes. This is supported by Odin’s revelation in the Prose Edda, “Over the world every day fly Hugin and Munin; I fear that Hugin will not come back, though I’m more concerned about Munin.” To me this speaks of a ruler trying to maintain control of an unruly alliance.

Sources

The Elder Eddas of Seamund Sigfusson, Benjamin Thorpe, trans, (London: Norroena Society) p. 143. Accessed at Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14726/14726-h/14726-h.htm February 22, 2016.

Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 191.

Snorri Sturlson, The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlson: Tales from Norse Mythology, Jean I. Young, trans. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), p. 64.

The Groundhog Lady

January 29, 2016
Woodchuck in a tree. Photo: Bamyers99.
Woodchuck in a tree. Photo: Bamyers99.

Animals that hibernate easily capture the imagination. What do they dream about during those long months? Groundhogs and other marmots are the queens of the long sleep, being some of the rare “true hibernators.” This means that unlike most creatures that sleep during the winter, they don’t wake up even once, surviving in suspended animation with vital signs like pulse, temperature and respiration becoming extremely low. They must remain in this state so their body fat will last until spring. Sometimes marmots starve during their hibernation and never wake at all.

Those who do come back carry messages from very far away. Groundhog power brings the ability to travel through the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead. Trance work and meditation come effortlessly to those who cultivate groundhog energy. They enjoy being alone and draw power from retreat. At the same time, they do not permanently dwell in the shadows and will take their place in the sun.

The groundhog is a fitting symbol for the sun festival Imbolc, since she loves to bask in the sun. Yet there’s no electricity and no candles down in that bunker, so she maintains a hidden life. Imbolc is the time for nighttime initiations, when new priestesses receive secret teachings as they embark on the Path of the Wise. Those already initiated choose this time to rededicate themselves to their path, in recognition of the sun’s fulfillment of her promise of return. If you are a groundhog lady, you carry the occult qualities of this special day.

With their superb burrowing ability, groundhogs have the power to push past obstacles and remove stuck energy. The groundhog keeps a low profile, never bragging about her accomplishments, and as a result she is underappreciated. Gardeners bemoan the theft of vegetables without recognizing the role of burrowers in soil fertility. The masses of dirt are viewed as a nuisance without considering the how tunnels channel snow and water more efficiently. In the world of magic and psychic healing, where the major work is generally about moving blocked energies, the groundhog is a powerful ally that is usually overlooked, perhaps because she is small and unimpressive looking—cute rather than glamorous.

Some key words for groundhog magic are: elimination of obstacles, fulfillment of promises, communication with the dead, initiation, hidden meanings, meditation, vision, discernment, balanced view, change-making, earth moving.

Cultivating the Power of the Burrowing Rodent

January 22, 2016
Olympic Marmot. Photo: US National Park Service.
Olympic Marmot. Photo: US National Park Service.

I can still remember my uncle sitting on his porch with a shotgun, determined to get the woodchuck that was decimating his garden. As I was very young, I marveled that he could sit quiet and still for such a long time. One man against one woodchuck. My money was on the woodchuck.

A woodchuck is a ground squirrel of the marmot family, also known as a groundhog and sometimes lumped into the catchall term for burrowing rodents, gopher, though technically a gopher refers to the Pocket Gopher of the northern Plains states. Whatever it is that answers to the name “gopher,” whether it’s a Pocket Gopher or a prairie dog or a groundhog or some other marmot, it’s still a vegetarian with a voracious appetite. Gophers decimate crops, compete with livestock for vegetation, and ruin vegetable gardens. They interfere with human engineering by piling up dirt where it isn’t wanted. Like all rodents, they sometimes carry diseases.

Gophers play an important role in the ecology, however, and eliminating gophers as pests causes many more problems than it solves. Their tunneling serves to channel snow and heavy rain back underground, reducing flash floods and standing water. They also aerate and enrich the soil, eliminating their waste underground and bringing deep soil to the surface. Foxes, snakes, skunks and many other small predators make their homes in abandoned groundhog houses, and these animals pray on mice and rats. (Foxes eat the groundhogs, too.) While prairie dogs do eat some of the same grasses as cattle or sheep, their foraging habits tend to diversify grassland, which actually benefits domestic animals. It’s only when prairie dog colonies explode that they cause a problem: prairie dog towns have been known to house several thousand pups over many acres of grassland. The rancher brought the prairie dog dilemma on himself, though, by exterminating the wolf and reducing coyote populations.

Prairie dogs live in “coteries” that will include a male and several females with their young, with the pups taking up residence close by. Quickly the town grows. Prairie dogs need to be highly social to manage life in a small town, and they communicate with a collection of chatter, whistles, clucks and barks that some linguists consider a true language. They also communicate by what looks like a kiss.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Pocket Gopher. Like most individuals who spend their free time in their apartments, the Pocket Gopher is a solitary creature. Mother kicks dad out of house soon after mating, and the youngsters mature quickly, then wander off.

Marmots are somewhere in between in sociability. The groundhog is monogamous, at least for a season, while the Western marmots live in harems. The youngsters like to box and wrestle. Marmot communication includes chatter, squeals, barks and a whistle that sounds a lot like a bird song. This gives marmots their other nickname of “whistle pigs.”

But marmots are not pigs and groundhogs are not hogs and prairie dogs are not dogs and, as mentioned before, it’s a bone of contention what is and isn’t a gopher. Even the word “woodchuck,” derived from an Algonquian word for another animal, is a misnomer, since they don’t chuck any wood. If you are allied with the burrowing squirrels, people will be confused about who you are or think they know who you are when they don’t.

The groundhog, like the snake, inhabits all three sections of the World Tree: the roots, the trunk, and the upper branches. Yes, groundhogs climb trees. They also swim. The ability to travel comfortably in many environments gives the groundhog, and women who cultivate groundhog energy, the power of discernment. They can understand the implication of events on many levels.

The Celtic Raven Goddess

January 8, 2016
Photo: Greg Tally
Photo: Greg Tally

Possibly the most common Craft name among Witches with a Celtic bent (as well as many Witches who do not consider themselves Celtic) is Raven or some variant like Ravenwood or Ravenspring. At a Witch gathering when Raven’s name comes up, the most likely response is, “Which one”? Perhaps this is apropos, since ravens seldom travel alone and they are rather hard to tell apart.

In Celtic lore ravens and crows (who are often conflated) may be associated with heroes (Bran, Owin, Arthur), but are more often linked with frightening warrior goddesses. Badb Cath, whose name means “battle crow,” is a classic example. As her name implies, she waits at the edge of the battlefield to claim that the souls of the slain, like the ravens waiting to devour their flesh. Sometimes Badb appears as the soothsayer called The Washer at the Ford, a wailing pale woman with white-blonde hair who sits on the banks of a stream wringing out a bloody shirt that will not come clean.

Badb is not the only goddess linked with the Washer, nor is she the only goddess of the crows. Morrigan is another warrior who claims the dead. Like other Celtic corvid goddesses, she is not just a passive player who prophesies and accepts the dead: at times she actively challenges the hero, who can only parlay her attacks temporarily. This excerpt from The Ulster Cycle is illustrative:

One night while Cuchulainn was sleeping, during the time when he was still fighting the men of Connacht, during the time when the men of Ulster were still fighting their labor pangs, he was awoken by a piercing cry from the north. He scrambled from his tent to find his chariot driver yoking the horses, and the two drove out on the plain to investigate the sound. There they met a woman in a chariot pulled by a red mare. The woman had red eyebrows and red hair, a red dress and a red cloak. Tied to her back was a gray spear. “I hear you have performed heroic and wonderful deeds,” she told Cuchulainn, “and I have come to offer you my love.” “I have no time for lovemaking,” Cuchulainn replied emphatically, “for I am completely worn out. I have been fighting all day and must prepare for battle tomorrow. Your visit could not come at a more importunate time.” “I will help you in your struggle,” the woman countered. “I have already helped you greatly, Cuchulainn, and you have benefitted from my protection.” “It is not a lady’s help I need in this fight!” Cuchulainn argued hotly, “and I will not trust your protection.” “Very well,” she answered, “prepare to do battle with me as well as the others.” With that the lady in red, her mare and her chariot disappeared, and he and his driver were left completely alone, except for a crow sitting in the high branch of a tree. Cuchulainn felt his own pang of sickness then, because he realized he had been speaking to the warrior goddess Morrigan. [Quoted from Invoking Animal Magic: A guide for the pagan priestess]

Other Celtic raven/crow goddesses I am aware of (and this list is probably not exhaustive) are Macha, Nemain, Rhiannon, Branwen, Natosuelta, and Cathubodua. Like actual ravens, these goddesses are difficult to distinguish and debate continues over whether they are in fact different appellations for the same goddess. The inclusion of Macha and Rhiannon, who many know as horse goddesses, may be surprising, but ravens and horses appear together consistently in Celtic art.

Sources

Green, Miranda. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. London: Routledge, 1992.

Monaghan, Patricia. The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore. New York: Checkmark Books, 2008.

Gratitude

November 27, 2015

I want to thank my readers for dropping by, subscribing, commenting, sharing, and contemplating the material posted here. I have been posting weekly for almost four years now. Hard to believe. When I started in 2012, I had about three readers per month — and two them were me. Now this blog has over a thousand unique “hits” per month and it is read all over the world. A special hello to my followers in Brazil, Indonesia, France, South Africa, and Turkey.

Yes, Turkey. This large native of North America was exported and domesticated in the 16th century and confused in English with a type of fowl imported from the country Turkey. It is called puleew (poo-LA) in the Munsee Delaware language. In the U.S. the turkey is a symbol of gratitude, being the traditional meal on Thanksgiving. I’m a vegetarian, but I still appreciate this beautiful, highly social bird that has made an amazing comeback in the wild over the past twenty years. Ben Franklin wanted to make it the national bird, and in many ways it is.

Photo (adapted) Vince Pahkala.
Photo (adapted) Vince Pahkala.