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Anyone know, what a moose might stand for?
you are awesome. i totally feel like i can go back to the topic that involves me now, instead of this great stuff the rest of you have been doing. sometimes im tempted to start a temple thread called 'me'. but thats because i have some kind of brain disorder.
i can talk about a moose a bit, but i have more experience with deer. luckily, they have a fair bit in common. this will also expand a bit on my idea of animal spirits. deer can actually be encountered in my city. its incredibly powerful to see deer wandering the streets on a foggy morning. deer arent an urban animal like cats and crows. they are ecotone species: they exist at the boundary of two ecosystems. they are also crepuscular: they are most active at twilight. as are moose-- who are much less ecotone, and thus more wild and dangerous. some friends of mine hit a moose with their suv and barely lived to tell the tale. deer are mediators between ecosystems: they bring the wild into the city, but not so much as to damage it. imagine a moose or a bear wandering the streets; its a threat, while a dear is a joyous thrill (although they manage to live with bears in whistler and other smallish canadian cities.)
think of how disneys bambi is one of our most impactful modern myths on the theme of humanitys carelessness with the natural world. the deer is a diplomat, an ambassador, maybe even a spy. theres an american aboriginal (wish i could be more specific) myth about the deer woman, who seduces men with her attractive human torso, then tramples them with her deer feet (or maybe this is just the hbo version). but in bambi, the deer is also the king of the forest, which has something to do with deer gender differences and something to do with the bipolar complexity of the deer symbol.
apart from these encounters, i came to deer through frogs. a nodal experience for me was nearly stepping on a frog on the road, after living beside a swamp for a few months and hearing them every night and not really thinking about it. i studied this frog intently (and it studied me). it was unconcerned with me, although i could kill it easily. death is change, and a frog is not afraid of change because physical metamorphosis is such a major part of its lifestyle. the frogs body is also quite human-like. its rear legs are equal in size to its body, its front legs can be splayed to the side...its easy to imagine a frog walking upright, wearing clothes, etc. a dog, for instance, couldnt do it because its legs stick out perpendicular to its trunk. theres also the frog prince myth, where a frog undergoes further metamorphosis into a man. and peter gabriel has a clever song about oral sex called 'kiss that frog'.
the deer wears the frog on its head. the general morphology of the animal doesnt change, but it grows and sheds an amazing visual display as a seasonal routine. and its not just a display. the antlers are functional according to the deers different behaviours in different seasons. we all recapitulate frogs as embryos: sperm tadpoles, gills and tail grow and disappear (i know this is a discredited theory scientifically speaking, but its 'true' as a symbol, says upg). deer recapitulate this process yearly, growing first vulnerable velvety nubs and then majestic branches, like trees or lightning bolts. we all have daily and monthly and yearly cycles, but few of us wear them as prominently as the deer. of course, only male deer do this, which is something i havent worked out yet, but it is an intraspecies sexuality thing, similar to the more obvious monthly cycles of human females.
the deer spirit teaches us that change is real, but so is constancy. change is adaptation, and it serves the greater whole. the frog is more invested in change, as it alters its whole body, but it isnt dissociated from it like the deer. the deer is at one metamorphical (hm) and consistent. once again a mediator.
deer are also closely related to trees, since they seem to have trees on their heads. trees and antlers are related to hands, a human feature. i use a particular stump on a mountainside as an altar of crepuscularity because it resembles a deers head with antlers.
i think mediators are useful to me because i often deal with abraxas, who demands that categories be differentiated and opposites be synthesized. and also loki, who is a mediator himself, but is often too much to drink straight.
moose are also a symbol of canadas wild north. often they are used humourously, and they are a bit funny-lookin (think bullwinkle), far more so than deer. moose are also one of the more solitary of the cervidae. the moose is also known as the wapiti, and 'elk' in europe, while elk in north america refers to another large cervidae, one that travels in huge herds like wildebeest.
i hope that was interesting, and illustrative of how i use scientific, mythic, and popular literature in conjunction with field study in order to learn about animals spirits. my methods are similar for other spirits, although GODS sometimes assault me unwanted, and ANGELS manifest in their own way, seemingly independent of my desires. they all do their own thing, thats why i differentiate them.
someone asked what i meant by some of my biology-related sesquipedalianism. im not going to try and fit it into what i wrote before because you lot have done a wonderful job of making me re-evaluate it.
life exists on a number of 'levels'. one level emerges from the other, but also informs it. ref: great chain of being, i think ken wilber is good on this.
relevence: we think with our brains (OBVIOUS is obvious, or is it?). brains have certain physical principles that provide a structure for their dynamic activity. for example, the chemical 'weather' is provided by the brainstem. the 'cognition' takes place in the cortex, which can be thought of as a folded sheet of hexes like you might use in a role-playing or battle game. each hex represents a circle, the circle is the extent of a single neurons dendrites (think tree branches). and yes, it is largely two-dimensional here, although there are six (or something) layers (i imagine it varies by lobe). to see how the circles become hexes, think of the seed of life. anyhow, a particular idea, concept, symbol, melody, image, whatever, is represented in the brain by a 'line drawing' between these hexes. this line drawing can appear anywhere on the cortex (actually there are different territories where certain patterns are limited or favoured). the line drawing is dynamic, not static: its only meaningful when the lines are actually being drawn. for a more formal treatment of this idea, read the works of william h calvin, a gainfully employed neuroscientist.
these dynamic patterns are what some people call 'memes' because they can be passed on to another brain by communication. the pattern is not necessarily the same in the other brain, as its consensual meaning is acquired through different associations. some of these patterns are important or powerful or enduring or something, and thats what GODS are (in my fantasy novel of a life). loki was my first, he does not appear visually, but rather as laughter. sometimes i share the joke and sometimes im the butt. abraxas was my second, ze usually appears in the sky, surrounded by dragons. in other words, fractal fields. abraxas is armed with a spear and has the head of an insect. old pictures say its a rooster, but i saw those mouthparts and theyre a lot scarier than a beak (upg qualification). both these GODS only appear when they want something, which none of the other spirit types do. DEMONS want things, but they dont appear-- they sneak around instead. maybe demons are just sneaky gods, i dont know.
wow, that was epic. im missing valuable beer-drinking time for this! ciao! |
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