Once more, with feeling

In this world where information has become currency, words seem to have come to matter more than the meaning behind them.

It's because we miss that meaning that we just keep looking for more words.

We're obsessed with collecting information, horde it in files

                      like pirates with chests of gold doubloons 

only to bring it out and look at it now and then, memorizing terms and phrases we think are important - we call that learning? - never realizing that information, without meaning, is like food without nourishment.

Wolf Medicine (Agrimony)

"Totem" animals - Wolf, Badger, Eagle, Rabbit, Mouse, Mole, Ant ..

Many of us - modern White folks - who have probably never met a wolf or badger or any other truly wild animal, let alone shared an environment with them all our lives, have nevertheless found ourselves drawn to the idea of Totem Animals as our companions and teachers. Never mind that our understanding of the true nature of these animals in the wild can only be, at best, on an intellectual level.

We seem to have a yearning. A longing. An ancestral memory of the time, many many generations ago, when our own forefathers and foremothers lived perhaps not so differently from the way that the Native peoples of North America were living when European explorers "discovered" them. After all, in the distant past, long, long before those explorers set out, even we Europeans were once "Native peoples" in our own lands. We once knew our own animals intimately - and they knew us. Do we not have the right to rekindle that old understanding that lies hidden in our genes?

Because this post fits into both categories - herbal medicine and spirit medicine - the rest of it can be found on my other blog, here