Working With The Animal Totems
DESERT HARE
Spirit of the Desert Hare: Fertility / Quick Thinking / Moving Through Fear / Clairaudience
LINKS:
http://www.lilytherese.com/POWER1.HTM#Black-tailed Jackrabbit
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrRabbits4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-tailed_Jackrabbit
Desert Hare's Wisdom Includes:
*Fertility
*Magical
*Associated with transformation
*The receiving of hidden teachings and intuitive messages
*The power of listening/hearing/clairaudience
*Fertility
*Quick Thinking
*Moving Through Fear
Black-tailed Jackrabbit / Desert Hare
The black-tailed jackrabbit is a member of the hare family and is commonly found in the desert. Its fur is a dark buff color that is peppered with black. Jackrabbit’s have the biggest ears in proportion to their body, than any other animal. The ears are tipped with black and a prominent black stripe runs from its rump to the top of its tail. Jackrabbit has large eyes and excellent hearing. This animal is alert for the slightest sound of an approaching enemy. It relies on its speed to elude predators. At the first hint of danger their long powerful legs carry them with leaps and bounds to safety. Jack- rabbit makes his home in small hollows at the base of shrubs, or in tall grasses, to protect itself from the hot sun. Their diet consist of a variety of vegetation. Jackrabbit is known for its fertility and mates year round. Hawks, coyotes, badgers, bobcats, and weasels are the predators that hunt jackrabbit.
If jackrabbit is your power animal you are alert and you never box yourself into a corner. You always plan for an escape exit, should the need arise. You are quick-witted, peaceful, talented and a survivor. The role of the victim is not appropriate in your business or personal relationships. Jackrabbit’s message is, always be alert. When walking in a strange neighborhood pay attention to your surroundings . Keep away from your enemies; you know who they are. Change your fears into faith. Learn to "freeze" when you want to avoid detection. Develop clairaudience to hear psychic messages. You are fertile with new ideas and now is the time to act on them.
Desert Hare in Myth, Legend and Folklore
In many mythic traditions, these animals were archetypal symbols of femininity, associated with the lunar cycle, fertility, longevity, and rebirth. But if we dig a little deeper into their stories we find that they are also contradictory, paradoxical creatures: symbols of both cleverness and foolishness, of femininity and androgny, of cowardice and courage, of rampant sexuality and virginal purity. In some lands, Hare is the messenger of the Great Goddess, moving by moonlight between the human world and the realm of the gods; in other lands he is a god himself, wily deceiver and sacred world creator rolled into one.
In a Buddhist legend from India, Lord Buddha was a hare in an early incarnation, traveling in the company of an ape and a fox. The god Indra, disguised as a hungry beggar, decided to test their hospitality. Each animal went in search of food, and only the hare returned empty handed. Determined to be hospitable, the hare built a fire and jumped into it himself, feeding Indra with his own flesh. The god rewarded this sacrifice by transforming him into the Hare in the Moon.
Carvings of rabbits eating grapes and figs appear on both Greek and Roman tombs, where they symbolize the transformative cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
In Ireland, it was said that eating a hare was like eating one’s own grandmother — perhaps due to the sacred connection between hares and various goddesses, warrior queens, and female faeries, or else due to the belief that old "wise women" could shape–shift into hares by moonlight. The Celts used rabbits and hares for divination and other shamanic practices by studying the patterns of their tracks, the rituals of their mating dances, and mystic signs within their entrails. It was believed that rabbits burrowed underground in order to better commune with the spirit world, and that they could carry messages from the living to the dead and from humankind to the faeries.
Numerous folk tales tell of men led astray by hares who are really witches in disguise, or of old women revealed as witches when they are wounded in their animal shape. In one well–known story from Dartmoor, a mighty hunter named Bowerman disturbed a coven of witches practicing their rites, and so one young witch determined to take revenge upon the man. She shape–shifted into a hare, led Bowerman through a deadly bog, then turned the hunter and his hounds into piles of stones, which can still be seen today. (The stone formations are known by the names Hound Tor and Bowerman’s Nose.)
Despite this suspicious view of rabbits and their association with fertility and sexuality, Renaissance painters used the symbol of a white rabbit to convey a different meaning altogether: one of chastity and purity. It was generally believed that female rabbits could conceive and give birth without contact with the male of the species, and thus virginal white rabbits appear in biblical pictures of the Madonna and Child. The gentle timidity of rabbits also represented unquestioning faith in Christ’s Holy Church in paintings such as Titian’s Madonna with Rabbit (1530).
Whether hovering above us in the arms of a moon goddess or carrying messages from the Netherworld below, whether clever or clownish, hero or rascal, whether portent of good tidings or ill, rabbits and hares have leapt through myths, legends, and folk tales all around the world – forever elusive, refusing to be caught and bound by a single definition. The precise meaning, then, of the ancient Three Hares symbol carved into my village church is bound to be just as elusive and mutable as the myths behind it. It is a goddess symbol, a trickster symbol, a symbol of the Holy Trinity, a symbol of death, redemption and rebirth…all these and so much more.
In the black furror of a field
I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled of the green;
And I whispered "Whsst! witch-hare,"
Away like a ghostie o’er the field
She fled, and left the moonlight there.
LINKS:
http://www.lilytherese.com/POWER1.HTM#Black-tailed Jackrabbit
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrRabbits4.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-tailed_Jackrabbit
Desert Hare's Wisdom Includes:
*Fertility
*Magical
*Associated with transformation
*The receiving of hidden teachings and intuitive messages
*The power of listening/hearing/clairaudience
*Fertility
*Quick Thinking
*Moving Through Fear
Black-tailed Jackrabbit / Desert Hare
The black-tailed jackrabbit is a member of the hare family and is commonly found in the desert. Its fur is a dark buff color that is peppered with black. Jackrabbit’s have the biggest ears in proportion to their body, than any other animal. The ears are tipped with black and a prominent black stripe runs from its rump to the top of its tail. Jackrabbit has large eyes and excellent hearing. This animal is alert for the slightest sound of an approaching enemy. It relies on its speed to elude predators. At the first hint of danger their long powerful legs carry them with leaps and bounds to safety. Jack- rabbit makes his home in small hollows at the base of shrubs, or in tall grasses, to protect itself from the hot sun. Their diet consist of a variety of vegetation. Jackrabbit is known for its fertility and mates year round. Hawks, coyotes, badgers, bobcats, and weasels are the predators that hunt jackrabbit.
If jackrabbit is your power animal you are alert and you never box yourself into a corner. You always plan for an escape exit, should the need arise. You are quick-witted, peaceful, talented and a survivor. The role of the victim is not appropriate in your business or personal relationships. Jackrabbit’s message is, always be alert. When walking in a strange neighborhood pay attention to your surroundings . Keep away from your enemies; you know who they are. Change your fears into faith. Learn to "freeze" when you want to avoid detection. Develop clairaudience to hear psychic messages. You are fertile with new ideas and now is the time to act on them.
Desert Hare in Myth, Legend and Folklore
In many mythic traditions, these animals were archetypal symbols of femininity, associated with the lunar cycle, fertility, longevity, and rebirth. But if we dig a little deeper into their stories we find that they are also contradictory, paradoxical creatures: symbols of both cleverness and foolishness, of femininity and androgny, of cowardice and courage, of rampant sexuality and virginal purity. In some lands, Hare is the messenger of the Great Goddess, moving by moonlight between the human world and the realm of the gods; in other lands he is a god himself, wily deceiver and sacred world creator rolled into one.
In a Buddhist legend from India, Lord Buddha was a hare in an early incarnation, traveling in the company of an ape and a fox. The god Indra, disguised as a hungry beggar, decided to test their hospitality. Each animal went in search of food, and only the hare returned empty handed. Determined to be hospitable, the hare built a fire and jumped into it himself, feeding Indra with his own flesh. The god rewarded this sacrifice by transforming him into the Hare in the Moon.
Carvings of rabbits eating grapes and figs appear on both Greek and Roman tombs, where they symbolize the transformative cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
In Ireland, it was said that eating a hare was like eating one’s own grandmother — perhaps due to the sacred connection between hares and various goddesses, warrior queens, and female faeries, or else due to the belief that old "wise women" could shape–shift into hares by moonlight. The Celts used rabbits and hares for divination and other shamanic practices by studying the patterns of their tracks, the rituals of their mating dances, and mystic signs within their entrails. It was believed that rabbits burrowed underground in order to better commune with the spirit world, and that they could carry messages from the living to the dead and from humankind to the faeries.
Numerous folk tales tell of men led astray by hares who are really witches in disguise, or of old women revealed as witches when they are wounded in their animal shape. In one well–known story from Dartmoor, a mighty hunter named Bowerman disturbed a coven of witches practicing their rites, and so one young witch determined to take revenge upon the man. She shape–shifted into a hare, led Bowerman through a deadly bog, then turned the hunter and his hounds into piles of stones, which can still be seen today. (The stone formations are known by the names Hound Tor and Bowerman’s Nose.)
Despite this suspicious view of rabbits and their association with fertility and sexuality, Renaissance painters used the symbol of a white rabbit to convey a different meaning altogether: one of chastity and purity. It was generally believed that female rabbits could conceive and give birth without contact with the male of the species, and thus virginal white rabbits appear in biblical pictures of the Madonna and Child. The gentle timidity of rabbits also represented unquestioning faith in Christ’s Holy Church in paintings such as Titian’s Madonna with Rabbit (1530).
Whether hovering above us in the arms of a moon goddess or carrying messages from the Netherworld below, whether clever or clownish, hero or rascal, whether portent of good tidings or ill, rabbits and hares have leapt through myths, legends, and folk tales all around the world – forever elusive, refusing to be caught and bound by a single definition. The precise meaning, then, of the ancient Three Hares symbol carved into my village church is bound to be just as elusive and mutable as the myths behind it. It is a goddess symbol, a trickster symbol, a symbol of the Holy Trinity, a symbol of death, redemption and rebirth…all these and so much more.
In the black furror of a field
I saw an old witch-hare this night;
And she cocked a lissome ear,
And she eyed the moon so bright,
And she nibbled of the green;
And I whispered "Whsst! witch-hare,"
Away like a ghostie o’er the field
She fled, and left the moonlight there.
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Permalink Reply by Terri Benning on
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This page looks REALLY nice Janno! Thanks so much for moving this information over from the AW Class files! I very much appreciate it! Love and hugs, Terri
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