Brother Raven

Taken from Shades of Night

Raven as a Totem

Totems are a difficult concept to explain, but you need an understanding of what a totem is before you can understand what it means to follow Raven.

A totem is a spiritual creature, but it is not a god. You do not worship a totem, you follow it. A totem embodies a certain way of life - a representation of a set of ideals. The ideals are usually personified in the form of an animal, but can also be as abstract as the chinook wind, or grandfather thunder.

"You do not choose your totem. Your totem chooses you"

That is one of the most common phrases I've heard or read about totems. It reflects one of the basic principles of totems - You don't control them, and you can't explain them... but something deep inside you responds to the totem's call. When you follow the way of a totem, it just "feels right".

That isn't to say a totem's way is that of least resistance. Following a totem often puts certain demands or restrictions on you, and it isn't always easy. The Way of a totem is something you aspire to - rather like someone who aspires to live according to a code of honor.

The ideal which a totem calls you to pursue is reflected in the totem's nature. A hawk totem teaches watchfulness, patience, and alertness. A rat totem shows resourcefulness, ingenuity, and survival. Followers of Wolf learn honor, courage, and self-sufficency, as well as the importance of working within a pack. Rabbit shows its followers to listen to everything, watch carefully, and to never underestimate the little things. Raven... well, Raven teaches his children many things.

Raven is a very special totem. They're all special, of course, but Raven holds a unique place in many native myths. Raven is a creator - he is mankind's protector and sometimes saviour. He brought light and fire to the early people so they would not die. He gave them salmon so they wouldn't starve. In some stories, he even brough water to break a terrible drought. He is a cultural hero.

He is also a Trickster. Raven steals from man, and from other spirits. He plays jokes on us, and he laughs at mankind's expense. Sometimes his tricks go awry and he ends up the butt of his own joke, but even then, there is humor.

Raven is a juxtaposition of opposites: A provider and a thief. A hero and a fool. He brought light out of darkness, but he is himself cloaked in midnight black. He is a symbol of dark brooding sadness, and of death, yet he brings life, and unrivalled joy. He is credited with creating the earth and all its mysteries, but even the smallest secret attracts his attention. He is a silent spy, and an unstoppable chatterbox. He is many things.... And sometimes he is nothing.

That is Raven.

Raven's children must understand the value of humor. They need to see the joy which pervades all living things, and bring that joy to others. They also need to develop their sense of curiosity. So many fascinating things happen around us all the time - and raven's children want to know about all of them. They also want to bring things into the light. Some people might not want to see what Raven's brood expose to the bright light of day, though... since many people have secrets which they'd prefer to keep hidden. Those who follow Raven aren't always appreciated

for what they do, but they still share a certain satisfaction at a job well done when they make someone stop and reevaluate themselves or the world around them.

Does Raven call to you?

Shaun Ellis

I would like to do what Shaun does. It is amazing and phenomenal how has integrated himself into his wolf pack and dedicated his life to the research and education of wolves.

Here's a little about the main man himself.

Shaun Ellis (wolf researcher)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shaun Ellis
Born: England
Occupation: Animal researcher
Years active: 19??-present
Known for: Research of wolves
Partner: Helen Jeffs
Children: 4
Website :http://www.wolfpack-management.com/

Shaun Ellis is an English animal researcher who is notable for living among wolves, and for adopting a pack of abandoned North American timber wolf cubs. He is the founder of Wolf Pack Management and is involved in a number of research projects in Poland and at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

He has worked with wolves since 1990, and before that he studied the red fox in the UK, and then coyote in Canada.

Background

Brought up on a farm in Norfolk, he began observing wild animals at a young age, learning to use his sense of smell and sound to find his way at night when studying foxes and badgers.

Ellis first trained to be a gamekeeper, but left the job when the Head gamekeeper found out that Ellis planned to re-release culled animals into the wild. He then joined and served with the Royal Marines.

After he left the Marines he met a Native American biologist at a wolf seminar, and from that meeting he was able to spend seven years living with the Nez Perce Native Americans on their reservation in northern Idaho, United States as a volunteer in a project studying wolves at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They taught him how to observe wolves, and he was able to get in to a pack of wolves and live among them.
He recorded wild wolf howls and gradually learned to identify individual pack members and began to believe that wolves are highly intelligent and instinctive animals that exude trust and balance within the pack's social structure.

He is the founder and head of Wolf Pack Management at Combe Martin Wildlife Park in North Devon where he works with seventeen captive wolves, which include four pups born on 19 May 2008. There were originally six wolves at the park which he rescued from private ownership. He also regularly gives educational talks about wolves.

In 2005 Ellis spent eighteen months living in captivity at Combe Martin Wildlife Park with three abandoned wolf pups - Yana, Tamaska and Matsi, educating them to be wild wolves and becoming the pack's alpha male.

Ellis has spent much of his adult life studying and living with wolves and has learned to communicate with them through scent and sound. He currently lives directly outside the wolf enclosure at Combe Martin Wildlife Park, so that he is in close proximity to the wolves at all times.

The research projects Ellis is involved with in Poland and Yellowstone National Park in the United States have the the goal of developing humane methods to discourage wolves from entering areas of potential conflict with humans.

Ellis has stated that he would like to see wild wolves eventually reintroduced into England, where they last lived in the 17th century when the last wolves were killed. Ellis has said about wolves, "Although many people refer to wolves as savage killers, I’ve come to know and love them as family."

Books

He has written two books about wolves, The Wolf Talk published in 2003 and Spirit of the Wolf published in 2006. In 2004 BBC South West nominated Ellis as a "Local Champion" in South West England, a campaign that aims to highlight the work of people who are not always publicly recognised. He was featured on BBC Radio 4 on 2 May 2005 in a programme A Life with Wolves.

Television appearances

The Wolfman

Ellis was the subject of a documentary, The Wolfman which first aired on Five in the UK as The Wolfman on 18 May 2007, and has also been shown on the National Geographic Channel in the United States, where it was titled A Man Among Wolves. The documentary shows how, by carefully mimicking wolf behaviour, Ellis was able to raise the three wolf cubs to maturity. It also shows how his expertise brought him to the attention of a Polish farmer, whose livestock had suffered wolf attacks. Since wolves are a protected species in Poland the farmer hoped that Ellis might be able to find some non-violent way to deter the marauding pack. Ellis travelled to Poland to study the local pack, bringing with him audio recordings of wolf howls.

Ellis believed that if the local wolves heard howls coming from the farm they would believe another pack had already claimed it as their territory, and keep clear to avoid a conflict. In order for this to work Ellis had to determine the size of the pack and play back recordings of a similar-sized pack. Initial results were encouraging and in the first few weeks after the farmer began playing the recordings the farm suffered no further attacks. The documentary then shows Ellis returning to Devon, where he attempted to reintegrate himself with the three wolves. In his absence the wolves had established a new hierarchy, and though they recognised Ellis and welcomed him back he was now the pack's omega, relegated to a peace-keeping role between the new alpha and beta males.

Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs

Ellis featured in the first episode of Martin Clunes: A Man and His Dogs, a two-part documentary that aired on ITV on 24 August 2008 in which Clunes explores the canine world, and visited Ellis at in Devon as part of an attempt to discover what binds wolves with pet dogs, with Ellis revealing that a lot of dog behaviour which is interpreted as human, is inherited from the wolf's hierarchical pack instincts. Filmed in January 2008, Clunes joined Ellis with the pack at Combe Martin.

Living With the Wolfman

Living with the Wolfman is an eight part documentary about Ellis which aired in the United States on Animal Planet in October and November 2008. It is also due to be shown in the UK on Five. The documentary follows Ellis as he lives with the wolf pack at Combe Martin and his relationship with his partner, Helen and their life in Devon. It also shows how Ellis integrated his girlfriend into the pack.

Mr and Mrs Wolf

In February 2009, Five screened a follow-up two part documentary, Mr and Mrs Wolf which focused on his attempts to get partner Helen Jeffs adopted as a member by the wolf pack at Combe Martin, as a new "wolf nanny" for the pregnant alpha female, Cheyenne. The programme aired on 17 and 24 February.

*Note: Incidentally, Cheyenne gave birth to Amick, Motomo, Lapwai & Ayet on Saturday, 14 June 2008

Personal life

Ellis has four children from a previous relationship. He met his current partner, Helen Jeffs in 2005. They live by the wolf enclosure at Combe Martin Wildlife Park.

Bibliography

* The Wolf Talk. Rainbow Publishing. 2003. ISBN 189905703X.
* Spirit of the Wolf Talk. Parragon. 2006. ASIN B000R0HZ1U.

This little piggy went to market.....

1:23pm UK, Tuesday May 19, 2009

Todays topic: Pigaticians.


Douglas Hogg. Courtesy of Sky News

Take, for example, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, PC, MP, QC and Greedy Douglas Hogg.

A current Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham, Hogg, by designating Kettlethorpe Hall in Lincolnshire his "second home", could claim expenses against it and was paid more than £20,000 a year between 2004 and 2008 in second home allowances. Among the costs itemised were £2,115 for having a moat cleared around his country estate, Kettlethorpe Hall, in Lincolnshire. £646.25 for "general repairs, stable etc" and £40 for piano tuning, according to the Telegraph. The taxpayer helped meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper too.

2009-05-12. According to the sleafordstandard.co.uk "MP Douglas Hogg has denied newspaper reports that he claimed more than £2,000 in expenses to have the moat at his Lincolnshire home cleaned.
...the Sleaford and North Hykeham MP told the Standard:

"I have never claimed for the moat, or for the piano tuning - the allegation that I did is incorrect. I never claimed for these and I never received any money.
"The work to the stables that the Telegraph mentioned was actually for maintenance of security lights which were installed by the Home Office as part of the response to an IRA threat."

He said he had issued, in the interests of full transparency, full lists of all his expenditure on the property but these were never meant to be the record of a claim.
Mr Hogg said it was clear to the fees office that the overall allowable expenses were over the Additional Costs Allowance and that his claim only covered utilities, council tax, building insurance, the alarm system, heating, repairs and maintenance of house and garden and 65 per cent of the cost of a housekeeper to clean and maintain the house and look after it when he and his wife, Baroness Sarah Hogg, were away.

He said: "It was on this basis and with the express agreement of the fees office, in advance and in writing that I was making a monthly claim equal to one-twelfth of the ACA."

Mr Hogg added: "I am amongst the lowest claimers in parliament – specifically 551st out of 645 MPs in 2007/8. There is no doubt that our system has lost public confidence and we as parliamentarians have got to accept that we are responsible for having put the system in place and that it is probably flawed. We got it wrong and need to apologise for that, and I do apologise for it."

Yes, you do, and then some.

He is a Viscount, he obviously (like all MP's) has a bit of cash to spare. He doesn't have to concern himself with real drama like the average U.K. citizen and unless he's a complete arse, I'm sure even he would agree that he is in quite a privileged position and has a comfortable life.

So he was in a position to claim money to further his own extravagant lifestyle, and was happy as a pig in mud to do it. Did he really need to? No. But he did it because he could. If he used his own cash I wouldn't care, but he used tax payers money. How many hospitals are in desperate need of funding and modernisation? How many homeless? How many unemployed? Yet this rich git has it all and wants more.

So long as it doesn't come from his pocket.

Shouldn't this money be going where it is crucially needed? Hogg has paid back the money for the moat cleaning, but would he have done if he hadn't been caught?

No.

Jasper Gerard of the Telegraph investigates the world of moats and how much you'd need for maintainence.

Leeds Castle: "It doesn't require an awful lot of maintenance. You just have to make sure banks are sound and the fish OK."

Hever Castle, near Edenbridge: Clive Manning, today's head of maintenance, chortles: "This moat is in perfect condition, but then it did belong to an MP."

So how expensive are moats to maintain?

Manning shrugs: "I've been here 15 years and we haven't had to dredge it. With fish and ducks it is self-cleaning. Fish aerate while ducks munch weed. This is the Rolls Royce of moats as it is lined, but most moats just have clay bottoms and the last thing you must do is puncture it during dredging. The only substantial cost has been to electrically power the drawbridge."

So far, the answer is no.

Lets move onto the last moater. Michael Wheeler is a well-to-do farmer in the heart of apple-growing country near the village of Collier Street, Paddock Wood. His family farmhouse is no castle but sits, prettily, in a moat. However, while Leeds and Hever look clean enough for bathing, Wheeler admits his moat needs attention.

So why doesn't he clear it? "Nowadays you can't, unless you are a banker, industrialist, MP or someone of that sort," he says dryly. "My father told me it was cleared out in the twenties, and they had to drain it, then they built miniature railway lines into the moat. All the muck was chucked in carriages and pulled out by horses."

He estimates it would now cost £20,000 to clear, but this would just be the start: our photographer walks along a jetty and narrowly avoids falling through ancient boards. Wheeler is puzzled by Hogg's claim for £2,000. Dredging would cost way more, so what was done to his moat? "You don't really maintain a moat, you just do a really big job after a number of years to dredge the silt and dig out weed, algae and bull rushes."

I smell some big porkies.

Liger

What happens when you cross a male lion with a female tiger?



A Liger - the largest of all felines.

Well I've never heard of these before. A liger looks like a giant lion with diffused stripes and some male ligers grow sparse manes. These massive creatures are 10 feet long on average, weigh about 700 lb (320kg) and stand around 12 feet tall. Liger love swimming - trait common to tigers but lacking in lions. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and accidentally, since shortly before World War II. The largest liger alive today is appropriately named Hercules and lives in Jungle Island in Miami.


Hercules

The liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion (Panthera leo) and a tigress (Panthera tigris), hence has parents with the same genus but of different species. It is distinct from the similar hybrid tigon. It is the largest of all cats and extant felines.

The history of ligers dates to at least the early 19th century in Asia. In 1799, Geoffrey St Hilaire (1772–1844) made a colour plate of the offspring of a lion and a tiger.

In 1825, G.B. Whittaker made an engraving of liger cubs born in 1824. The parents and their three liger offspring are also depicted with their trainer in a 19th Century painting in the naïve style.

Two liger cubs which had been born in 1837 were exhibited to William IV and to his successor Victoria. On 14 December 1900 and on 31 May 1901, Carl Hagenbeck wrote to zoologist James Cossar Ewart with details and photographs of ligers born at the Hagenbeck's Tierpark in Hamburg in 1897.

In Animal Life and the World of Nature (1902–1903), A.H. Bryden described Hagenbeck's "lion-tiger" hybrids:

It has remained for one of the most enterprising collectors and naturalists of our time, Mr Carl Hagenbeck, not only to breed, but to bring successfully to a healthy maturity, specimens of this rare alliance between those two great and formidable felidae, the lion and tiger. The illustrations will indicate sufficiently how fortunate Mr Hagenbeck has been in his efforts to produce these hybrids. The oldest and biggest of the animals shown is a hybrid born on the 11th May, 1897. This fine beast, now more than five years old, equals and even excels in his proportions a well-grown lion, measuring as he does from nose tip to tail 10 ft 2 inches in length, and standing only three inches less than 4 ft at the shoulder. A good big lion will weigh about 400 lb [...] the hybrid in question, weighing as it does no less than 467 lb, is certainly the superior of the most well-grown lions, whether wild-bred or born in a menagerie. This animal shows faint striping and mottling, and, in its characteristics, exhibits strong traces of both its parents. It has a somewhat lion-like head, and the tail is more like that of a lion than of a tiger. On the other hand, it has no trace of mane. It is a huge and very powerful beast.

In 1935, four ligers from two litters were reared in the Zoological Gardens of Bloemfontein, South Africa. Three of them, a male and two females, were still living in 1953. The male weighed 750 lb. and stood a foot and a half taller than a full grown male lion at the shoulder.

Size and growth

Imprinted genes may be a factor contributing to huge liger size. These are genes that may or may not be expressed on the parent they are inherited from, and that occasionally play a role in issues of hybrid growth. For example, in some dog breed crosses, genes that are expressed only when maternally-inherited cause the young to grow larger than is typical for either parent breed. This growth is not seen in the paternal breeds, as such genes are normally "counteracted" by genes inherited from the female of the appropriate breed.

The tiger produces a hormone that sets the fetal liger on a pattern of growth that does not end throughout its life. The hormonal hypothesis is that the cause of the male liger's growth is its sterility — essentially, the male liger remains in the pre-pubertal growth phase. Male ligers also have the same levels of testosterone on average as an adult male lion. In addition, female ligers also attain great size, weighing approximately 700 lb (320 kg) and reaching 10 feet (3.05 m) long on average, and are often fertile. In contrast, pumapards (hybrids between pumas and leopards) tend to exhibit dwarfism.

Hercules the liger and his trainer

Hercules and Sinbad

Jungle Island in Miami is home to a liger named Hercules, the largest non-obese liger, who is recognized by the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest cat on Earth, weighing in at 900 lbs. Hercules was also featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, Inside Edition and in a Maxim magazine article in 2005, when he was only 3 years old and already weighed 408.25 kg (900 lb) at the time. Hercules seems completely healthy and is expected to live a long life. The cat's breeding is said to have been a complete accident. Sinbad, another Liger, was shown on the National Geographic Channel. Sinbad was reported to have the exact weight of Hercules. Hercules and Sinbad belong to the T.I.G.E.R.S. family of animal ambassadors, who put on the "Wild Encounters."`

Longevity

Shasta, a ligress (female liger) was born at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City on May 14, 1948 and died in 1972 at age 24. The 1973 Guinness world records reported an 18-year-old, 798-kg (1,756 lb) male liger living at Bloemfontein zoological gardens, South Africa, in 1888. Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary in Wisconsin had a male liger named Nook who weighed around 550 kg (1,210 lb), and died in 2007, at 21 years old.

Fertility

The fertility of hybrid big cat females is well-documented across a number of different hybrids. This is in accordance with Haldane's rule: in hybrids of animals whose sex is determined by sex chromosomes, if one sex is absent, rare or sterile, it is the heterogametic sex (the one with two different sex chromosomes e.g. X and Y).

According to Wild Cats of the World (1975) by C. A. W. Guggisberg, ligers and tigons were long thought to be sterile: In 1943, however, a fifteen-year-old hybrid between a lion and an 'Island' tiger was successfully mated with a lion at the Munich Hellabrunn Zoo. The female cub, although of delicate health, was raised to adulthood.

Colours

Ligers have a tiger-like striping pattern on a lion-like tawny background. In addition they may inherit rosettes from the lion parent (lion cubs are rosetted and some adults retain faint markings). These markings may be black, dark brown or sandy. The background color may be correspondingly tawny, sandy or golden. In common with tigers, their underparts are pale. The actual pattern and color depends on which subspecies the parents were and on the way in which the genes interact in the offspring.

White tigers have been crossed with lions to produce "white" (actually pale golden) ligers. In theory white tigers could be crossed with white lions to produce white, very pale or even stripeless ligers. A black liger does not actually exist. Very few melanistic tigers have ever been recorded, most being due to excessive markings (pseudo-melanism or abundism) rather than true melanism. No reports of black lions have ever been substantiated. The blue or Maltese Tiger is now unlikely to exist, making gray or blue ligers an impossibility. It is not impossible for a liger to be white, but it is very rare.

Zoo policies

Keeping the two species separate has always been standard procedure. However, ligers have occurred and do occur by accident in captivity. Several AZA zoos are reported to have ligers.

In October 2008 a liger attacked its volunteer handler at an animal sanctuary in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. The handler subsequently died from his injuries.

In 1995 nineteen lions, tigers and ligers were killed near Lava Hot Springs, Idaho after escaping from a dilapidated game farm where they had been bred. Several additional animals, including three ligers, were captured by Idaho Fish and Game and were transported to other facilities. The game farm, called Ligertown, became the inspiration for Napoleon Dynamite's affinity for the animal in the popular movie which was filmed in nearby Preston, Idaho.

Heartwarming

I've just watched an episode of Tribal Wives on Eden and in this episode, an English girl named Sass Willis, a 34-year-old from Oxford, spends time with the Kuna Indians. It was, frankly, a lovely and thought provoking show.



She is taken in by Ana Lida and her husband Diego and they both treat her like she is their daughter in every aspect. With a lack of motherly love in Sass's life, you can easily see why it was such an emotionally charged experience for her.
I've heard people whinge about the show, but your not looking at it as a whole.
I found it interesting how the Kuna combat bad dreams, the sense of family and community spirit and most of all the acceptance of an outsider into their home.

Sass is told to sleep in her hammock facing the mountains, as this will prevent bad dreams. The Kuna believe that bad dreams are dangerous and can even kill you. At first she dreamed that someone was trying to kill her, and then she dreamed of blue and white snakes.

Ana Lida advised her to talk about her dreams as hiding it was allowing the bad spirit to remain with her. By bringing it into the open the spirit would have to go and bother someone else. Before anyone laughs, how often are we told not to bottle up our emotions or that keeping things in can lead to misery later on. I think there is wisdom in what Ana Lida says. Then when she opens up about the snake nightmare to Diego, he tells her it is a portent that she will die and immediately jumps in his canoe to visit the mountains and get stronger herbs.
On his return, he says he has what is need to keep his girl safe. To keep Sass safe. Like Ana is a genuinely concerned Mother, so is Diego as her surrogate Father.
He instructs Sass to wash her eyes with the medicine morning and night and leave it under her hammock and hey hey presto, she sleeps soundly.

I'd rather not take the cynical route on this and just say that it was a placebo effect. Once upon a time, our ancestors would have instructed the same (or similar) it's just now we scoff at it and have forgotten what we once knew.

Who knows how much truth there lies in the ways of the indigenous tribes.
What do these people, their lifestyles in the main unchanged by the passage of time and knowledge passed on, know that we don't?

A lot.

Progress is good, but we must remember not to destroy knowledge in the process or scoff at it just because it doesn't come labelled in a plastic bottle or comes in blister pack form. I use medicine now, obviously, as I don't have the means or know how to go and whip up a remedy for this and that. But if I told an elder of one of these tribes a problem, and they suggested something to help it, then I would try their way too. Whether it's a bad spirit that's causing depression or something else, it would be an enlightened study to try out amongst test subjects and one that would probably shock a lot of the "volunteers".

So. The Kuna. Taken from Thorup.


San Blas Islands

The Kuna Indians are a strongly-knit tribal society living on a chain of islands called San Blas Archipelago, on the Atlantic side of the Republic of Panama. Believed to be descendants of the Caribs, the Kuna Indians still live in much the same manner as their ancestors. The San Blas people have cleverly managed to retain their tribal identity and contentedly lead a moral balanced life, free from the complexities of modern, highly-organized societies.

The Kuna have a matriarchal society in which the line of inheritance passes through the women. A young man, after marriage, must live in his mother-in-law's house and work for several years under apprenticeship to his father-in-law. Divorce is uncommon, although it requires no more than the husband to gather his clothes and move out of the house. The daughters of the Kuna people are prized because they will eventually bring additional manpower into the family.

For some unknown reason, there is a high rate of albinism in the Kuna men. Because of the intensity of the sun in Central America, the albino men are not able to do the work expected of a Kuna man. In order to contribute to their community, they assume duties traditionally assigned to the women, including Mola-making. Although encouraged not to marry, the albino men are accepted in the community and their work is respected by their peers.

There is a traditional division of labor within the families. The husband gathers coconuts, cultivates the food, provides firewood, repairs the house, makes his own and his son's clothes, weaves baskets and carves wooden utensils. The wife prepares the food, collects fresh water from the Mainland Rivers, unloads the boats, sews female garments, washes the clothes and cleans the house.

The Kuna have a custom for every event and happening in their life and these customs are passed on to their children through dances and chants. These events are also documented in their Molas.

Mola

The Kuna language (until recently, unwritten) is spoken throughout the community, however, Spanish is fast becoming the second language. Due to the United States influence since the building of the Panama Canal and with the influx of tourists frequenting the San Blas Archipelago, English is being spoken more and more by the Indians.

The traditional dress of the women in the San Blas is spectacular. The gold nose rings, beaded arm and leg bands, head scarves, blue sarongs and the colorful "Mola" blouses worn in combination are a work of art in itself. The Kuna men have adopted a clothing style more traditional to the men of the western world and appear drab beside the Kuna women.

Speaking of colourful, look at the these Molas.

I'll be back to blab about the Kuna and other indigenous tribes soon.

Cernunnos

The Council of Cernunnos by Emily Balivet

Cernunnos

Although Cernunnos is a Gaulish horned god, his worship was widespread in the Celtic era, and he was venerated over the channel in Britain in various similar forms.

In appearance he had stag antlers sprouting from his head, wore a torc around his neck, and was depicted with a ram headed serpent. He may have been seen as lord of the animals, and the spirit of the woods, a powerful archetypal nature spirit and male partner of the earth mother. Later, in Christian times his image was transposed on to that of the Devil, who also appeared with horns.

The archetype is still powerful today and it may be an ancient folk memory of Cernunnos who haunts Windsor Great Park in Berkshire as 'Herne the Hunter'. In Britain he is associated with place names with the prefix Cerne. The similarity between this name and Herne the hunter is unlikely to be coincidence.

Maponos

Oak King, God Of Summer, King Of The Waxing Year, God Of Light, Lord Of Trees, Green Man, Mabon

Most easily recognised as the Green Man, Maponos is the Celtic God of Summer. His face is a splash of oak leaves; a personification of the male aspect of nature. Curiously, this image survives even in church carvings and sculptures. Known by several names, Maponos appears in the Arthurian tales as Mabon, and is rescued from a prison by Arthur and his warriors. This symbolises the return of the god from the underworld.

Maponos is the counterpart and double of Cernunnos; different and yet the same. As the Oak King and Holly King, they complete a ritual contest every solstice. Maponos is always victorious at Yule and Cernunnos is always the victor at Litha. The contest ensures the continuation of the Summer / Winter cycle. As the beheading game in the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight reveals, the axe-strokes are symbolic, and the loser always survives to challenge the winner later in the year.

The Mabon sabbat is named after Maponos, and remembers that at this time of year he is retreating from the approaching Winter, but also readying himself for the ritual contest with Cernunnos at Yule. When Maponos first appears after the Yule solstice, he is young and cautious, stepping lightly across the landscape before his confidence grows. The emergence of new life reveals the maturing of Maponos.

At the festival of Beltane, the Goddess and Maponos are young adults, and they become lovers. The conception and creation of life continues the seasonal circle. Although Maponos is destined to lose the beheading contest at the next festival, his creative energy remains visible on the landscape for many months afterwards.

Maponos is the spirit of the Summer landscape. His presence may be seen in the blossom and wildflowers of woodland and hedgerow. Quiet reflection in these natural, wild places will lead us to him.