April 20, 2003
Over at Shelley’s there was one of the best posts and affiliated comments I’ve come across on the soul of weblogging and telling – or not telling – the truth. At the end of her post, Shelley says: Sometimes to tell the truth, you have to lie a little…. Someday when I write a book, a real book, I'm going to start it off with "Assume everything you read from this point on, is a lie... "
Let me assure you that everything you read on this weblog is NOT a lie.
I don’t really celebrate Christian traditions; rather I celebrate the original intentions of the festivals that Christianity co-opted for is own purposes. In supporting the lore of the Easter Bunny, local columnist Diane Cameron writes this reminder:
This accusation that the Easter Bunny takes something away from Easter ignores the fact that the creators of Easter did a teensy bit of taking from previous holidays. The celebration of spring, of light returning from darkness, is ancient. It was part of Celtic and Mesopotamian cultures. The bunny -- well, then he was a rabbit -- was part of Phoenician festivals as early as 1100 B.C. Because rabbits are energetic and prolific, they were considered expressive of the power of life to wake from death in the spring.
While our Christian Easter celebrates Christ rising from the dead, the holiday is named after the dawn goddess Eastre and her celebration of the rebirth of the sun this time of year.
So, in celebration of the Vernal Equinox (and to try to get in a little relaxation/meditation), on Saturday night I sat in with a local drumming circle. (Oddly enough the day before, I caught a bit on CNN about drumming being used in therapy for addicts, but I couldn’t find a link to any story.)
The circle with which I drummed was based in a Native American tradition and overlaid with New Age mysticism. Not a problem for me; I look at it all as metaphor, poetry, sacred theater. After 20 minutes or so of drumming, I started hearing a strange hum in the background, sort of like the sound of a Jew’s Harp – except the only instruments in the place were drums and rattles. I figured it was just me – some strange aberration of my aging hearing mechanisms. But it turns out everyone else heard it too. The only thing I could figure that has any basis in the rational world is that the combined vibrations of all of our drums were somehow producing this separate non-percussive sound. Of course, others figured that it was the spirit world singing along with us. Oh well.
But that’s not the kicker. The kicker was my visit from the Eostre Skunk.
Let me digress a little.
Last week, as I was taking one of my walks around the new park that adjoins a cow pasture, I caught a strong whiff of cow manure – which started my mind on this strange olfactory journey, beginning with the sense that I don’t like the smell of cow manure but, unlike most other people, I don’t mind the smell of skunk.
That led me to remember when I was a toddler in the early 40s and my mom wore a skunk coat. (It was the rage then, I guess.) I remember burying my face into the fur, letting it stroke my face, smelling the vague lingering scent of skunk, especially when it got wet. With my face buried in my mother's skunk coat, I was safe.
My last apartment has a small storage space that adjoined my patio and living room. During the last spring I was there – after finally going in to find out what the scraping noises were that I had been hearing for weeks – I discovered a young skunk sleeping in the middle of the bed of insulation that he/she had created by pulling strands out from between the walls. The apartment management found someone to come and get the little critter out. I have to admit that, if I hadn’t already had a cat, I was considering getting the cute little thing de-odored and keeping him/her as a pet.
Back to the mystical New Age drumming circle.
After the drumming, we were asked to choose a card from a deck of Animal Medicine Cards to see what guidance our animal spirits had to offer.
As the person next to me began to spread out the deck so that I could pick a card, I asked her to please shuffle them first. As she began to shuffle them, two cards dropped out of the deck and fell on the floor in front of me. The one on top, face up, was a skunk. I didn't pick the skunk; the skunk picked me.
I pay close attention to those kinds of synchronicities. (While I don’t believe in any God-type Great Spirit, I am fascinated by the unified field theory, which might make a sense of synchronicities beyond the Jungian understanding of them. Who knows.)
And what can I learn from my new totem animal, the Eostre Skunk? Among other things:
The skunk is one of the most widely recognized mammals, but it is also one of the most misunderstood. It is a very powerful totem with mystical and magical associations. Just look at how people respond to it. They show great respect for it and what it can do. This is part of what skunk teaches. It teaches how to give respect, expect respect, and demand respect. It helps you to recognize your own qualities and to assert them
Skunks are fearless, but they are also very peaceful. They move slowly and calmly, and they only spray as a last resort. Because they are peaceable by nature, they always give warnings before spraying.
This morning, as I made the sacrifice and took my mother to Mass in a nearby Polish church, while she prayed for the forgiveness of my sins, I contemplated the meaningful messages of the Eostre Skunk. And I let the scent of incense carry me full circle back to my childhood and the safety of my mother's skunk coat.
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Old Comments (4)
myrln on 20 Apr 2003
According to Facts on File Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, "skunk" was called "seganku," an Algonquin dialect word meaning "he who squirts." The term was corrupted by settlers who couldn't manage the Indian pronunciation. Also, the spray is m-butyl mercaptain. The French called the skunk "fant du diable," i.e. child of the devil. The most common species is "Mephitis," which is loosely translated as "double stinky."
Now we know more than we ever wanted re the skunk.
Elaine on 21 Apr 2003
Double Stinky. I like that! Seganku Squirts. Now, there's a name for a weblog. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, too much is even worse. Heh.
Kate S. on 22 Apr 2003
Double stinky squirt! Cool link, Elaine, I enjoyed it very much. "The skunk hunts at night." Get out your ballroom slippers...s'time for a dance.
julie on 11 Oct 2004
Last night a skunk came up from the water to my left while I sat down like a cat it was on my lap. I take it's my totem animal? I was a little scared as I wasn't sure as I pet it, it was very content but I wasn't sure where it was ok to pet and I remember in the dream being afraid I'd pet it where it didn't like it. It came to me in the dream. Julie