Moon Dancer and the Embrace of Owl
What Women and the Earth Need Right Now...An Owl Medicine Teaching
In my last post, I acknowledged to you that the shamanic East was the landscape with which I was the least comfortable. Being a North Woman, I have had to work very hard to learn the diplomacy that is one of the accomplishments of the shamanic East, not having a single diplomatic bone in my entire body. If you're in a fight, you'd want me on your side. However, if diplomacy is required to solve a dilemma, you'd probably want to lock me in my room until others more gifted in that area had worked their magic. This being the case, you'll begin to understand why this post is late coming out. I resisted doing it, because it's so difficult a direction for me to feel comfortable with.
My East shortcomings have now been acknowledged, and I've finished sulking about having to go East in order to write this post. It's been an interesting sulk, though, because it has forced me to reconsider my prejudices about this illuminating direction, and two things about the East that I want to share with you have come into consciousness.
The first is prejudice about Owl Medicine, which I'll share with you in this post. The second is the hidden power of She Who Walks in Beauty, a shamanic East feminine archetype, which I'll address in my next post.
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Owl Medicine is feared and demonized by patriarchal cultures, whether indigenous or otherwise, either as a harbinger of death or as a sorcerer's or a witch's medicine. While it's true that Owl will sometimes appear when death is approaching, and that some unethical people may misuse its medicine, Owl is neither feared nor demonized in feminist shamanic practice. On the contrary, it is honored as a highly valued feminine medicine due to its ability to see in the dark far better than humans can. In feminist shamanic practice, this translates into being able to call on this potent medicine to help us see what is hidden. Not only does Owl help us to see what we're hiding from ourselves and from others, but it can help us to see what others are hiding from themselves and others, and invaluable skill when seeking to discover the sources of client's issues.
I suspect that this trait of Owl medicine, a trait that's akin to feminine intuition, is what has made it feared and reviled by some. Those who do not want their dark or hidden thoughts to be discovered or known by others, and especially not by women, will be very uncomfortable in the presence of Owl medicine. You cannot hide such things from the gaze of a woman who has this medicine.
As for Owl's reputation as a harbinger of death, there are two things you should know about this. The first is that in feminist shamanic practice, as in ancient pre-patriarchal women's spiritual practices, death is seen as part of the natural cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. While our everyday consciousness fears losing its existence, at a certain level it's understood that although the body dies, consciousness does not, and may be reborn in new physical form. Related to this understanding is knowledge that Owl is one of four bird medicines that are active participants in preparing one's soul, or spirit, or consciousness to inhabit another physical body. When the physical body dies, the consciousness that once inhabited it begins a clockwise journey around the medicine wheel mandala at a very different level from its journeys during its physical existence. This journey begins in the shamanic West, and concludes in the shamanic South, the place from which new life is born into physical existence. Owl's role in this process occurs in the shamanic East, where it takes the form of the Owl Goddess, who invests the soul/spirit/consciousness about to be reborn with the "spark of illumination," the potential for continued spiritual growth in its next incarnation.
As a way of describing how relationship with Owl can be nurtured over the course of one's shamanic practice, I'm going to share with you a teaching from Owl that was given to the shaman woman Moon Dancer, who has generously agreed to my doing so, even though I'll be telling you the story of her encounter with Owl in my own words.
Moon Dancer and the Embrace of Owl
Moon Dancer walked east along driveway to her farm, which is located on the broad slope of a steep hill in central Appalachia's Endless Mountains. She walked slowly, gratefully breathing deeply of air made fragrant with the scent of the wild roses that grew in tumbled masses all along one side of it. She was dressed in yellow, as she was about to undertake a journey into the shamanic East, which she would begin at a medicine wheel she had created in the forest east of the farm. She left the drive and turned onto the gravel road that led to the farm, walking slowly through the dappled light of the tress whose upper branches met high above the road, creating a natural forest cathedral. Birdsong followed her as she went, and from deep within the forest came the call of a barred owl. At a certain point, she left the road and walked into the forest, where she began her approach to the medicine wheel on the path that wound its way beneath the dense forest canopy...a path nobody would be able to discern did they not know it was there. Once at the medicine wheel, she made offerings of sacred herbs at the directional stones, then climbed up onto the large central stone, and faced east, asking that she be given permission to enter the shamanic east. In response, an opening appeared in the towering wall of golden light that barred entry into the shamanic East to all but the initiated. She then sat down upon the stone, which became Sea Turtle, and her journey began in earnest.
Moon Dancer's Journey
I sit quietly on Turtle's back for some time, listening to the peaceful sound of the sea in which she floats gently lapping against her enormous shell, then ask to be transported to the shamanic East. In response to my request, Sea Turtle turns east and begins swimming slowly through the emerald water of the sea of the shamanic Center, her home. This sea is very calm and clear, and I can see all the way to its sandy bottom, where schools of small, sparkling fish swim from one place to another. We then pass over a kelp forest that extends into the golden sea of the shamanic east, which has now appeared in the near distance. As we cross the yellow-green boundary that separates the two seas, and enter fully into the golden sea of the East, I see several otters floating serenely above the kelp, some of them holding their pups on their stomachs. All is well here.
Eventually we reach the golden sand beach of the coast of the East landscape in shamanic reality. I ask Turtle to wait for me, and venture into this land, which is one of eternal springtime, illuminated by the soft rainbow light of the sun rising on the distant horizon beyond the golden valley at its center. All the plants and trees in this peaceful landscape are bursting with buds, tiny insects buzz and butterflies flutter through the fragrant air, feeding on the early blooming wildflowers that add bright patches of color the East's ever greening meadows. The air is sweet with the scent of all this new growth.
Standing in the meadow above the Golden Valley, I call for Owl, for Owl has been calling to me in physical reality for several days now, always at dawn, the time of the rising sun. I know she has a message for me. After a brief wait, a shadow moves across the field. I look up to see Owl flying towards me. As soon as I look up at her, she glides to earth, landing directly in front of me. This is no Owl that one might see in physical reality, for it is huge, and stands taller than I, its delicate feathers vibrating with energy, limned by the soft light of the sun rising behind it,. She reaches out her wings and takes me in her embrace.
"Right now," she says, "the earth is like an abused woman who cannot escape her abuser. The first thing one must do to help a women to escape from an abusive situation is to put one's arms around her, to embrace her in all her sorrow and fear; to reawaken self love within her by loving her from without. Only then will she grow strong enough to free herself from her abuser.
"When you return to ordinary consciousness, walk lovingly upon the earth at all times, embracing her woundedness, transferring your love to her, exactly as you would do to help a wounded woman to regain her strength and a kinder inner vision of herself.
"Transmit that same kind of love to all other women in your life. You must do so with no sense that you are ultimately responsible for saving anyone or anything, but simply for projecting love towards all that is wounded upon this earth.
"Visit me often to receive my embrace, which will strengthen you and increase your visionary capacities, so that you may be a source of strength and inspiration for others. Share this teaching with others as well, so that they, too, may join you in the simple practice of loving women and the earth back into a powerful vision of who they are and what they are capable of."
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I hope this small teaching about Owl medicine has inspired you to think of it in a positive way. Please contact me with any questions you may have about this or any other of my posts. You can also subscribe to these free weekly posts and get them delivered directly to you inbox, which will eventually open more doors into the world of shamanic adventure for you.