Native American Lore

Long ago, when man was newly come into the world, there were days when he was the happiest creature of all. Those were the days when spring brushed across the willow tails, or when his children ripened with the blueberries in the sun of summer, or when the goldenrod bloomed in the autumn haze.
But always the mists of autumn evenings grew more chill, and the sun's strokes grew shorter. Then man saw winter moving near, and he became fearful and unhappy. He was afraid for his children, and for the grandfathers and grandmothers who carried in their heads the sacred tales of the tribe. Many of these, young and old, would die in the long, ice-bitter months of winter.
Coyote, like the rest of the People, had no need for fire. So he seldom concerned himself with it, until one spring day when he was passing a human village. There the women were singing a song of mourning for the babies and the old ones who had died in the winter. Their voices moaned like the west wind through a buffalo skull, prickling the hairs on Coyote's neck.
"Feel how the sun is now warm on our backs," one of the men was saying. "Feel how it warms the earth and makes these stones hot to the touch. If only we could have had a small piece of the sun in our teepees during the winter."
Coyote, overhearing this, felt sorry for the men and women. He also felt that there was something he could do to help them. He knew of a faraway mountain-top where the three Fire Beings lived. These Beings kept fire to themselves, guarding it carefully for fear that man might somehow acquire it and become as strong as they. Coyote saw that he could do a good turn for man at the expense of these selfish Fire Beings.
So Coyote went to the mountain of the Fire Beings and crept to its top, to watch the way that the Beings guarded their fire. As he came near, the Beings leaped to their feet and gazed searchingly round their camp. Their eyes glinted like bloodstones, and their hands were clawed like the talons of the great black vulture.
"What's that? What's that I hear?" hissed one of the Beings.
"A thief, skulking in the bushes!" screeched another.
The third looked more closely, and saw Coyote. But he had gone to the mountain-top on all fours, so the Being thought she saw only an ordinary coyote slinking among the trees.
"It is no one, it is nothing!" she cried, and the other two looked where she pointed and also saw only a grey coyote. They sat down again by their fire and paid Coyote no more attention.
So he watched all day and night as the Fire Beings guarded their fire. He saw how they fed it pine cones and dry branches from the sycamore trees. He saw how they stamped furiously on runaway rivulets of flame that sometimes nibbled outwards on edges of dry grass. He saw also how, at night, the Beings took turns to sit by the fire. Two would sleep while one was on guard; and at certain times the Being by the fire would get up and go into their teepee, and another would come out to sit by the fire.
Coyote saw that the Beings were always jealously watchful of their fire except during one part of the day. That was in the earliest morning, when the first winds of dawn arose on the mountains. Then the Being by the fire would hurry, shivering, into the teepee calling, "Sister, sister, go out and watch the fire." But the next Being would always be slow to go out for her turn, her head spinning with sleep and the thin dreams of dawn.
Coyote, seeing all this, went down the mountain and spoke to some of his friends among the People. He told them of hairless man, fearing the cold and death of winter. And he told them of the Fire Beings, and the warmth and brightness of the flame. They all agreed that man should have fire, and they all promised to help Coyote's undertaking.
Then Coyote sped again to the mountain-top. Again the Fire Beings leaped up when he came close, and one cried out, "What's that? A thief, a thief!"
But again the others looked closely, and saw only a grey coyote hunting among the bushes. So they sat down again and paid him no more attention.
Coyote waited through the day, and watched as night fell and two of the Beings went off to the teepee to sleep. He watched as they changed over at certain times all the night long, until at last the dawn winds rose.
Then the Being on guard called, "Sister, sister, get up and watch the fire."
And the Being whose turn it was climbed slow and sleepy from her bed, saying, "Yes, yes, I am coming. Do not shout so."
But before she could come out of the teepee, Coyote lunged from the bushes, snatched up a glowing portion of fire, and sprang away down the mountainside.
Screaming, the Fire Beings flew after him. Swift as Coyote ran, they caught up with him, and one of them reached out a clutching hand. Her fingers touched only the tip of the tail, but the touch was enough to turn the hairs white, and coyote tail-tips are white still. Coyote shouted, and flung the fire away from him. But the others of the People had gathered at the mountain's foot, in case they were needed. Squirrel saw the fire falling, and caught it, putting it on her back and fleeing away through the tree-tops. The fire scorched her back so painfully that her tail curled up and back, as squirrels' tails still do today.
The Fire Beings then pursued Squirrel, who threw the fire to Chipmunk. Chattering with fear, Chipmunk stood still as if rooted until the Beings were almost upon her. Then, as she turned to run, one Being clawed at her, tearing down the length of her back and leaving three stripes that are to be seen on chipmunks' backs even today. Chipmunk threw the fire to Frog, and the Beings turned towards him. One of the Beings grasped his tail, but Frog gave a mighty leap and tore himself free, leaving his tail behind in the Being's hand---which is why frogs have had no tails ever since.
As the Beings came after him again, Frog flung the fire on to Wood. And Wood swallowed it.
The Fire Beings gathered round, but they did not know how to get the fire out of Wood. They promised it gifts, sang to it and shouted at it. They twisted it and struck it and tore it with their knives. But Wood did not give up the fire. In the end, defeated, the Beings went back to their mountain-top and left the People alone.
But Coyote knew how to get fire out of Wood. And he went to the village of men and showed them how. He showed them the trick of rubbing two dry sticks together, and the trick of spinning a sharpened stick in a hole made in another piece of wood. So man was from then on warm and safe through the killing cold of winter.

{Coyote, Rabbit, Prometheus, light-bringer.}
 

From the Arcadian Journal:

Spiders, Strings, Nets, Community:
Been thinking about spiders. In the Fall here at Arcadia we get a lot of writing spiders. At some life stages these ladies are huge and black and yellow. They build intricately geometrical webs, often enough across the paths. They are called writing spiders because some people think the patterns of their webs resemble language, or perhaps seem to carry messages. The idea of associating spiders with storytelling seems to be everywhere at once. I could not speculate on where it started.
But there is something else. Last year I read an article in Discover magazine (I admit it) about some new archeological discoveries having to do with textiles. It seems archeologists in the past downplayed the importance of traces of decayed fibrous material. These traces were harder to find and study than say, stone spear points or other gross artifacts, and so although they had been found again and again, archeologists had not really tried to explain them. Until now. New analysis technology (doesn't technology always save the day in these articles?) made it possible to determine that these fibers had once been nets, almost certainly used for trapping and snaring game.
A new paradigm emerged. Gone were macho men going off to spear mammoths while women folk smashed seeds with rocks. Now we see whole communities taking part in making nets, stretching them, and then flushing or driving mainly small animals into them. Think of it: everyone working together on a project to feed them all, complex division of labor without the necessity of rigid hierarchy (unlike previous notions of cooperative hunting.)
The article gave me hope. Naturally, the article did not tie these nets in with spiders, but I do. Just as proto-humans are thought to have learned pack hunting behaviors from imitating wolves, I suggest they learned this net making and hunting behavior from watching and imitating spiders. This would make the spider as important a totem as the wolf in terms of the importance of its contribution to humanity.
 

Grapes, Dionysos, Alcohol, Civilization:
The wild grapes bear no fruit,
or if they do, it is so high up in a tree that you can't get it. In the wild, grapes colonize trees, virtually replacing the tree's foliage with their own, but using the trunk and branches of the "host" tree for support. This takes years, of course. The weakened tree becomes a host for other vines, and eventually it dies. Dying, the tree becomes a home to all kinds of forest creatures, like squirrels, bugs, woodpeckers, etc. The dead trunk gives food and shelter, and the vines become cover.
There is something sneaky and parasitic about a grape. Its life strategy depends on having a good strong host to support its weight, and in many cases it will eventually kill the host. Another part of its life strategy is to offer itself to humans as a source of wine. All domesticated plants and animals result from such an arrangement, where humans take care of some need of the plant or animal (cultivation, propagation, fertilization, feeding, whatever) and in exchange the plant or animal fills some need humans have, for food or silk or hides or whatever. (Back to this later. It is important.)
The grape is sacred to Dionysos, the god of wine. Of course Shamen were communing with the grape deva or spirit long before anyone thought of naming it Dionysos, or possibly even before anyone thought to make wine. It does not take a rocket scientist to notice the similarities between the life strategy of the grape vine and the life strategy of many alcoholics. They dart here and there looking for something to cling to and climb up. Then they climb very high, very fast, which they can do solely because they don't have to be strong enough to stand on their own. But they steal the sun from their hosts, and eventually pull them down in a windstorm or an ice storm.
    The earliest evidence of permanent human settlements, as opposed to temporary nomadic encampments, roughly corresponds to the earliest evidence of making alcoholic beverages. Some Anthropologists put two and two together and theorize that the discovery of how to make wine, and the time that it takes, were the main reasons why humans settled down in permanent settlements in the first place.) So I guess if you think civilization is a good thing, thank a drunk.
    One of the most important aspects of Dionysos is his unkillability.  There is a story where Dionysos is killed and cut up, and he magickally becomes whole again, not unlike Sir Gawain's Green Knight, and John Barleycorn, other images of the vegetative persistence.  Even Jesus made all kinds of vegetative references before he was 'planted' like a seed and rose up like a new sprout three days later.
    Another great lesson of vegetative life I associate more with the Hecate archetype: the dark mother of death.  And that is that everything that is poop or waste or poison to one thing is food to something else.  Everything you breathe out, the plants breathe in.  Everything they breathe out, you breathe in.  Everything you poop out makes great fertilizer for them, and they provide us with food, fuel, cover, shelter, and raw materials to make things out of.  That's the great Magick of the Earth Element: turning Shit into fertilizer.  The first gardens were just heaps of garbage from which volunteer food plants grew up.  They were compost heaps.  A compost heap is an altar to the Earth, to Hecate, and to our ancestors who first had to work out these mysteries.

Story:  Rabbit and Fox.
One winter Rabbit was going along through the snow when he saw Fox. It was too late to hide, for Fox had caught Rabbit's scent.
"I am Ongwe Ias, the one who eats you!" barked Fox. "Yon cannot escape me!"
Rabbit began to run for his life. He ran as fast as he could around trees and between rocks, making a great circle in the hope that he would lose Fox. But when he looked back he saw that Fox was gaining on him. "I am Ongwe Ias," Fox barked again. "You cannot escape."
Rabbit knew that he had to use his wits. He slipped off his moccasins and said, "Run on ahead of me." The moccasins began to run, leaving tracks in the snow. Then, using his magic power, Rabbit made himself look like a dead, half-rotten rabbit and lay down by the trail.
When Fox came to the dead rabbit, he did not even stop to sniff at it. "This meat has gone bad," he said. Then, seeing the tracks that led on through the snow he took up the chase again and finally caught up with Rabbit's old moccasins.
"Hah," Fox snarled, "this time he has fooled me. Next time I will eat the meat no matter how rotten it looks." He began to backtrack. Just as he expected when he came to the place where the dead rabbit had been, it was gone. There were tracks leading away through the bushes, and Fox began to follow them.
He hadn't gone far when he came upon an old woman sitting by the trail. In front of her was a pot, and she was making a stew.
"Sit down, grandson," she said. "Have some of this good stew."
Fox sat down. "Have you seen a rabbit go by?"
"Yes," said the old woman, handing him a beautifully carved wooden bowl filled with hot stew. "I saw a very skinny rabbit go by. There was no flesh on his bones, and he looked old and tough."
"I am going to eat that rabbit," said Fox.
"Indeed?" said the old woman. "You will surely do so, for the rabbit looked tired and frightened. He must have known you were close behind him. Now eat the good stew I have given you."
Fox began to eat and, as he did so, he looked at the old woman. "Why do you wear those two tall feathers on your head, old woman?" he asked.
"These feathers?" said the old woman. "I wear them to remind me of my son who is a hunter. Look behind you--here he comes now."
Fox turned to look and, as he did so, the old woman threw off her blankets and leaped high in the air. She went right over Fox's head and hit him hard with a big stick that had been hidden under the blankets.
When Fox woke up his head was sore. He looked for the stew pot, but all he could see was a hollow stump. He looked for the wooden soup bowl, but all he could find was a folded piece of bark with mud and dirty water in it. All around him were rabbit tracks. "So, he has fooled me again," Fox said. "It will be the last time." He jumped up and began to follow the tracks once more.
Before he had gone far he came to a man sitting by the trail. The man held a turtle-shell rattle in his hand and was dressed as a medicine man.
"Have you seen a rabbit go by?" asked Fox.
"Indeed," said the medicine man, "and he looked sick and weak."
"I am going to eat that rabbit," Fox said.
"Ah," said the medicine man, "that is why he looked so afraid. When a great warrior like you decides to catch someone, surely he cannot escape."
Fox was very pleased. "Yes," he said, "I am Ongwe Ias. No rabbit alive can escape me."
"But, Grandson," said the medicine man, shaking his turtle-shell rattle, "what has happened to your head? You are hurt."
"It is nothing," said the Fox. "A branch fell and struck me."
"Grandson," said the medicine man, "you must let me treat that wound, so that it heals quickly. Rabbit cannot go far. Come here and sit down."
Fox sat down, and the medicine man came close to him. He opened up his pouch and began to sprinkle something into the wound.
Fox looked closely at the medicine man. "Why are you wearing two feathers?" he asked.
"These two feathers," the medicine man answered, "show that I have great power. I just have to shake them like this, and an eagle will fly down. Look, over there! An eagle is flying down now."
Fox looked and, as he did so, the medicine man leaped high in the air over Fox's head and struck him hard with his turtle-shell rattle.
When Fox woke up, he was alone in a small clearing. The wound on his head was full of burrs and thorns, the medicine man was gone, and all around him were rabbit tracks.
"I will not be fooled again!" Fox snarled. He gave a loud and terrible war cry. "I am Ongwe Ias," he shouted. "I am Fox!"
Ahead of him on the trail, Rabbit heard Fox's war cry. He was still too tired to run and so he turned himself into an old dead tree.
When Fox came to the tree he stopped. "This tree must be Rabbit," he said, and he struck at one of the small dead limbs. It broke off and fell to the ground. "No," said Fox, "I am wrong.
This is indeed a tree." He ran on again, until he realized the tracks he was following were old ones. He had been going in a circle. "That tree!" he said.
He hurried back to the place where the tree had been. It was gone, but there were a few drops of blood on the ground where the small limb had fallen. Though Fox didn't know it, the branch he had struck had been the end of Rabbit's nose, and ever since then rabbits' noses have been quite short.
Leading away into the bushes were fresh rabbit tracks. "Now I shall catch you!" Fox shouted.
Rabbit was worn out. He had used all his tricks, and still Fox was after him. He came to a dead tree by the side of the trail. He ran around it four times and then, with one last great leap, lumped into the middle of some blackberry bushes close by. Then, holding his breath, he waited.
Fox came to the dead tree and looked at the rabbit tracks all around it. "Hah," Fox laughed, "you are trying to trick me again." He bit at the dead tree, and a piece of rotten wood came away in his mouth. "Hah," Fox said, "you have even made yourself taste like a dead tree. But I am Ongwe Ias, I am Fox. You cannot fool me again."
Then, coughing and choking, Fox ate the whole tree. From his hiding place in the blackberry bushes, Rabbit watched and tried not to laugh. When Fox had finished his meal he went away, still coughing and choking and not feeling well at all.
After a time, Rabbit came out of his hiding place and went on his way.

****
More Arcadian Journal
Bugs Bunny and Brer Rabbit,  Tricksters are for Kids.
So as a child I was pretty heavy into Bugs.  He had a depth and a resonance that was entirely missing from Speedy & the Chopper Bunch or (gack) the Super Friends.  I liked that it wasn't a straight-up good vs evil thing.  Oh, we were always on Bugs' side in the conflict, but not because he was always "right."

Later in life a friend turned me on to the notion that Brer Rabbit in the Uncle Remus stories was a kind of slave hero, surviving by stealth in a world where powerful enemies sought to make a meal of him.  These stories on one level are object lessons on how to behave in a peasant society, and on another level they are like Zen Koans.  For example, as R. A. Wilson & others have pointed out, the Tar Baby story illustrates the principle that you become attached to whatever you attack.

Later still, I learned that the rabbit is a very powerful totem animal in many Native American systems, a trickster no less in power than the coyote, but also with fecundity as a major part of its survival strategy, so you get the sex energy in there too.

That's when I started to decode Bugs, see him as a kind of a stripped down Hayoke, or trickster figure, and I have compiled a list of characteristics linking Bugs to traditional trickster mythos.
 

1.  Plays tricks on other characters out of boredom.
1a  Usual pattern: boredom+potential victim {maybe justification?} -->  trick --> success  --> Pride --> trick--> failure  --> caught inn his own machinations  -->  pulls sex-change act to escape --> no longer bored.

2.  Lives in the earth, in his hole.  If this were dream imagery, we might say it was symbolic of the womb of the mother.

3.  Wins against stronger characters by using their strength, lust, pride, greed against them.

4.  Can easily shape-shift into the form of an irresistible female of the species of his pursuer, causing him to stop chasing Bugs for food, and begin chasing Bugs for sex, culminating in the inevitable wedding scene...

5.  Cannot resist sex himself with a female of his own species (they all look good to him,) even when he knows the pink bunny is really a warty old "witch"  (sorry friends)  and still laughs like one...
5a  Cannot resist "Carrots" either.

6.  The name Bugs, confirmed bachelorhood, constant references to the film Casablanca ("This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship;") cross dressing, and the oral thing with the carrot all suggest bisexuality.
 

Deer and the White Oaks
Deer have a special relationship with white oaks.  They eat the acorns of white oaks to get the protein to make their antlers.  If the white oak acorns are many and large, then the antler racks the following season will be large.  If the acorns have a bad year, then the antlers are smaller.

Deer rut in the Fall.  Evolution has favored male deer that have enough testosterone to fight off the other males and still 'do it,' and at the same time, sense enough to avoid getting shot or run over.

This is one of the reasons deer don't work as captive livestock.  It's not that they have not been tried.  But part of their mating cycle means they go absolutely nuts during the rutting season, and the males try to kill one another.  You probably know that there's the same problem with cattle, goats, chickens, even dogs, but it is less extreme in these more domesticatable animals.  Deer go Nuts.

This is why deer are associated with male potency.  Now imagine, if you will, you wake up one day, and you know as soon as you open your eyes, you NEED to chase something down and jump on it.  You know the woods are full of people with guns, waiting to blow you away.  But the deer who were too cautious to come out of hiding when the hunters were out, they died out long ago.  Evolution has favored the ones for whom it's just a driving sex fever that makes them do whatever they have to do to get some, and where native intelligence only interferes enough to help dodge the Most dangerous situations.

And when you eat venison, you should know this is a Pagan Communion.  This Really Is the Body of our God, just as Wine really is the Blood of Dionysos.
 

BAAR SARK
The most feared Viking warriors were the Berserkers.  These men entered a trance state in which they possessed incredible strength and would kill anyone they saw, friend or foe. They were kept chained, literally, until the moment they were released into battle, where they would kill like crazed demons.
The word berserker comes from the old Nordic words Baar Sark, which means bear shirt.  Apparently, wearing a shirt made of bear skin was one of the symbols of the cult.  It seems reasonable to conclude that the Berserker energy is at least an aspect of the Bear Spirit energy, and that the trance state the Berserkers entered was at least in part a heavy identification with the Bear Spirit, thus receiving the strength and desperation with which a bear will fight.

This is a feminine thing, and not a masculine one.  The masculine spirit of combat, whether among dogs, lions, humans, whatever, is filled with symbols and gestures and territorial drama.  There is a lot of sniffing and poking and seeing who can pee higher up the tree, but usually nobody gets hurt.  The feminine spirit of combat in all mammals kicks in mainly when the young are threatened. Then the mama dog, wolf, bear, human, or mouse goes into battle like a fury. She has no thought for survival, since her survival instinct is all about species survival: protecting the young.

Story:
The Buffalo and the Mouse
Once upon a time, when the Field-Mouse was out
gathering wild beans for the winter, his neighbor, the
Buffalo, came down to graze in the meadow. This the
little Mouse did not like, for he knew that the other
would mow down all the long grass with his prickly
tongue, and there would be no place in which to hide.
He made up his mind to offer battle like a man.

"Ho, Friend Buffalo, I challenge you to a fight! "he
exclaimed in a small, squeaking voice.

The Buffalo paid no attention, thinking it only a joke.
The Mouse angrily repeated the challenge, and still his
enemy went on quietly grazing. Then the little Mouse
laughed with contempt as he offered his defiance. The
Buffalo at last looked at him and replied carelessly:

"You had better keep still, little one, or I shall come
over there and step on you, and there will be nothing
left! "

"You can't do it! "replied the Mouse.

"I tell you to keep still,"insisted the Buffalo, who was
getting angry. "If you speak to me again, I shall
certainly come and put an end to you! "

"I dare you to do it! "said the Mouse, provoking him.

Thereupon the other rushed upon him. He trampled thc
grass clumsily and tore up the earth with his front hoofs.
When he had ended, he looked for the Mouse, but he
could not see him anywhere.

"I told you I would step on you, and there would be
nothing left! "he muttered.

Just then he felt a scratching inside his right ear. He
shook his head as hard as he could, and twitched his
ears back and forth. The gnawing went deeper and
deeper until he was half wild with the pain. He pawed
with his hoofs and tore up the sod with his horns.
Bellowing madly, he ran as fast as he could, first straight
forward and then in circles, but at last he stopped and
stood trembling. Then the Mouse jumped out of his ear,
and said:

"Will you know now that I am master? "

"No! "bellowed the Buffalo, and again he started toward
the Mouse, as if to trample him under his feet. The little
fellow was nowhere to be seen, but in a minute the
Buffalo felt him in the other ear. Once more he became
wild with pain, and ran here and there over the prairie,
at times leaping high in the air. At last he fell to the
ground and lay quite still. The Mouse came out of his
ear, and stood proudly upon his dead body.

"Eho! "said he, "I have killed the greatest of all beasts.
This will show to all that I am master! "

Standing upon the body of the dead Buffalo, he called
loudly for a knife with which to dress his game.

In another part of the meadow, Red Fox, very hungry,
was hunting mice for his breakfast. He saw one and
jumped upon him with all four feet, but the little Mouse
got away, and he was terribly disappointed.

All at once he thought he heard a distant call: "Bring a
knife! Bring a knife ! "

When the second call came, Red Fox started in the
direction of the sound. At the first knoll he stopped and
listened, but hearing nothing more, he was about to go
back. Just then he heard the call plainly, but in a very
thin voice, "Bring a knife!"Red Fox immediately set out
again and ran as fast as he could.

By and by he came upon the huge body of the Buffalo
lying upon the ground. The little Mouse still stood upon
the body.

"I want you to dress this Buffalo for me and I will give
you some of the meat,"commanded the Mouse.

"Thank you, my friend, I shall be glad to do this for
you,"he replied, politely.

The Fox dressed the Buffalo, while the Mouse sat upon
a mound near by, looking on and giving his orders. "You
must cut the meat into small pieces," he said to the Fox.
When the Fox had finished his work, the Mouse paid
him with a small piece of liver. He swallowed it quickly
and smacked his lips.

"Please, may I have another piece?" he asked quite
humbly.

"Why, I gave you a very large piece! How greedy you
are!"exclaimed the Mouse. "You may have some of the
blood clots,"he sneered. So the poor Fox took the blood
clots and even licked off the grass. He was really very
hungry.

"Please may I take home a piece of the meat?"he
begged. "I have six little folks at home, and there is
nothing for them to eat."

"You can take the four feet of the Buffalo. That ought
to be enough for all of you!"

"Hi, hi! Thank you, thank you!" said the Fox. "But,
Mouse, I have a wife also, and we have had bad luck in
hunting. We are almost starved. Can't you spare me a
little more?"

"Why,"declared the Mouse, "I have already overpaid
you for the little work you have done. However, you
can take the head, too!"

Thereupon the Fox jumped upon the Mouse, who gave
one faint squeak and disappeared.

If you are proud and selfish you will lose all in the end.

Mouse and Buffalo, power of intimacy, limitations of short perspective.