The Furious Spinner

CHAPTER TEN

Day of the Bear

You who seek to know Me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.
—-Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk

Day Seven (Tuesday, September 28))

The Eleusian Mysteries
According to Keller, the seventh day was “a final day of preparation, of resting, purification, fasting and sacrifice. To sacrifice, literally ‘to make holy,’ meant giving up, offering over to the Goddess whatever was hindering the soul’s journey along its path.”41

The Salmon Mysteries
In The Salmon Mysteries, Demeter walks and walks and walks, without eating or sleeping. Her grief and rage drops away. She can go on no longer. She asks Bear for help. Bear tells her she must eat, sleep, and drink. Demeter doesn’t have time for such things, she says. Bear insists. Demeter eats, sleeps, and drinks. After she is rested, after she is fully embodied, she has a dream and realizes the map is in her body. She knows the way.

Nowadays, it seems everyone is “too busy.” You give up time with family and friends to work, work, work. You over-schedule yourself and your children so that you go, go, go. You say you don’t have time to meditate, exercise, take a hike, sit and do nothing. No time, no time, no time.

At the end of your life are you going to want to remember all the times you spent in the car shuffling people back and forth? Do you want to remember how many hours you spent at work?

Working too hard and running back and forth is easier than having quality time with our family and friends. Admit it. It just is. As a culture we are relationship-starved. We are so stressed that the idea of making friends and nurturing those friendships seems like too much work—everyone gets on your nerves anyway, don’t they? Being on the go and working too hard is certainly easier than sitting with ourselves, quietly, and discovering the hard truths about our lives.

Yet if we neglect ourselves, we get sick or become impatient, irritable, and exhausted. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if we did take the time to nourish ourselves? Just as Demeter did. Once she takes care of herself, she is able to sleep and dream. She gets in touch with her true inner self: the Goddess who knows.

Not only does Demeter rest at this point, she lets go of her grief and rage. She has felt it. She has not ignored it. She has acted upon it by looking for her daughter, but now she lets it go. Her exhaustion acts as a catalyst for this sacrifice—this letting go. Then she is able to comply with Bear’s request that she take care of herself. She is ready for the next part of her journey.

Humans have revered the bear for as long as we have been on this planet. “Neanderthals of 100,000 years ago placed skulls of the giant cave bear in a shrinelike manner near their dwellings,”42 Laura C. Martin says. Indigenous people in North America and Siberia believed the bear was a shapeshifter and that humans were descendants of the bear. Siberians hunters employed elaborate hunting rituals when going after the bear to protect themselves and the bear.
The bear, the biggest mammal in North America, is often associated with the goddess—and with women. The bear is a symbol of strength, protection, and healing. She is a fierce mother, who will go after anyone who gets in the way of her and her cubs. She knows when to eat and how and when to rest and take care of herself. She stores food in her body for the long winter and understands the value of sleep and dreaming.

Nordic followers of the Goddess Ursel donned bear-skins which transformed them into fierce warriors: berserkers. Buffie Johnson says “the bear inspires awe and fascination, embodying as it does the spirit of the wild and of the Goddess as Mother….Celts venerated Dea Artia, a bear goddess. The name of the Celtic Fire Goddess, Bridgit, stems from the word for bear.”43 Artemis, goddess of the wild, was called the Bear Goddess. Bears were often powerful allies for shamans and other healers.

Demeter listens to Bear. She rests her head in the lap of the wild and dreams the wild dream. Demeter has crossed over into the world of the wild, but it is not the wild caused by uncontrolled grief. She is no longer Bigfoot or a representative of life out of balance. She is inhabiting her authentic wild Nature. It is in this wild state, with the wild, that she will find answers. And so she sleeps.

Mystai Task
For you on this seventh day, eat, drink, rest, and dream.

Footnotes:
41. Keller, p. 52
42. Laura C. Martin, Wildlife Folklore (Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Globe Pequot Press, 1994) p. 11
43. Johnson, p. 344.

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.