Samhain and the White Stag
This is Samhain, a traditional time of the ‘thinning of the veils’.
The premise is based on the Celtic understanding of many realms co-existing, sharing space but in different dimensions. There have always been portals between these worlds, with a wealth of legend about magical comings and goings. At Samhain and Beltane the easier interaction can lead to wonders. But, because the differing life forms do not share culture or a common understanding of morality, because life spans differ hugely and because time moves differently in each dimension wanderings between the world can be dangerous. Hence the plethora of folklore as to how to guard against faery enchantment.
Specific types of animal and bird are skilled at passing between worlds, usually as messengers, and in colour symbology, red stands for humanity and white for the Otherworld. In our everyday world a blackbird with a white flash, a fox with its white-tipped tail, a silent white barn owl or the huge creaking majesty of a swan in flight can transport us to a new territory in the blink of an eye, Seeing them, a new feeling inhabits us: one that is slightly less sure of the stability of our world. That is the effect of the appearance of ‘Otherliness’ in nature.
The hounds of Annwn[1] are white with red ears, signifying their ability to move between the worlds. For Pwyll, the Prince, they are the catalyst to a magical adventure. His son Pryderi’s encounter with a white boar[2] is a revenge spell from Annwn, from whence the prince (and his mother, an Otherworldly princess living with humanity) have to be rescued. To Arthur’s knights, the white stag symbolized purity and the spiritual quest. Yvain[3] chases one, setting him on a series of adventures, heroic and magical. When the knight Guigemar attempts to shoot a white hind, the arrow flies back and injures him, and the animal speaks,[4] telling him that the wound’s healing is dependent on him fulfilling a quest.
Every stag symbolizes the power of the wild and free, of sovereignty: it is a potent solar being. In Celtic tales, it leads into Annwn, to meeting a Loathly Lady, to being challenged at a ford: the hunt impels the hero towards his real test.
But foremost amongst all these creatures is the white stag, which is something finer, that shines from the Otherworld, usually at a troubled time. It is to be chased, but not caught. Catching up with it, lives are changed.
The most famous tale is of King David of Scotland, in 1127. The king determined to hunt, although it was The Feast of the Holy Cross. Whilst hunting, in the best traditions of magic, he got separated from his companions whilst chasing a magnificent white stag. Suddenly the beast rushed at him from the undergrowth and he was thrown from his horse. As it charged him with its killing horns, a golden cross or ‘rood’ appeared between them, and as the king reached out to grasp it, the white stag fled. In gratitude for his deliverance, King David commissioned and dedicated Holyrood Abbey, which grew into the magnificent Palace of Holyrood House.
Holyrood House Photo: Scott Dee
When white stags do appear in our everyday world[5] they retain their Otherworldly status: we seem to share a visceral understanding that they may be chased but never caught. So the following news clipping is shocking. But it's brief, so do stay with it.
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Rare white deer shot dead on Bootle street by police 28.09.21
The force said it first received reports of the fallow buck running along various roads at about 08:45 BST on Sunday.
Armed response officers were able to secure it on an industrial estate off Melling Road. A veterinary surgeon was called to monitor the animal's welfare and assist attempts to control it. However, police said they were "unable to get assistance" after making enquiries "to find an organisation who could assist with recovering the deer safely". The animal became distressed, police said. "There was no option to let the deer wander as it could be a danger to motorists and members of the public in the area, particularly as the hours of darkness approached," a spokesman said. "As a result a decision was made in the early evening to euthanise the deer."
A spokeswoman for the RSPCA said that while the deer could have been sedated "this needs to be done with caution in a public area such as this one, as the deer could startle and run when hit by the dart. This could create a bigger public safety and animal welfare issue. Although deer traditionally live in forests, moors and parkland, they are becoming more common in urban environments across the UK."
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So, an animal holding a mythic resonance actually intrudes into our city streets. That is a thing of wonder. Myths are essential to our spiritual health for many reasons, but what they most do is disrupt our sense of the world. They momentarily halt that blasé sense that beats down curiosity and wonder and has us discontentedly sleepwalking through life. In a flash, other possibilities become clear - if we allow them.
There’s no point in suggesting how the scenario might have played out. The fact is, that confronted by the wild and unknown, the unpredictable, humans always panic. Then the juggling of expediency and public accountability, the foreboding caused by H&S culture and the belief in the unstoppable dominance of car-culture resulted in the inevitable. The RSPCA said the animal could (should?) have been sedated: the police shot it.
This is immensely significant to Pagans and mythographers. The mythopoetic view of the world which seems life as an ongoing interconnected story would say that the stag was undoubtedly a messenger from the Otherworld which informs our dense world of matter. Such messengers come rarely, when things in our world are at danger point. They presage great change – maybe personal, more often cultural. That is their role.
Our role is not to let this pass without thought. Although not present, we can act as witnesses, make clear in our own minds why this happened, draw conclusions and think about the effect it has had on us, and make an accommodation within, and reparation to outraged nature and the Other realms.
The wildness of the white stag and our societal inability to cope that is at the core. Imagine the experience of those people giving chase: fear of the unknown leading to quickened breath, sweating, minds running but finding no known highway to go along to ‘solve’ this situation. I think all urban dwellers would have shared those feelings. A shocking intrusion from the wild disrupted the comfortable feeling that we have the world systematised and able to be coped with day to day. Suddenly, certainty was not so certain.
Expand this thinking from a personal to a national, global and political view of life and we have a situation of danger not to one animal, but the entire planet. We find the leaders of our societies maintaining a spurious ‘certainty’ whilst teetering on the edge of our world’s extinction. We hear them paying lip service to principles whilst making plans that treat nature as a commodity, to rip, destroy, tame and tarmac the world. And all we have to do, as citizens, is to act as if this is normal. At the rundown to COP26, enter the white stag, the very spirit of wildness, unpredictability, power and sovereignty. Unbalancing our sense of safety, it has to be disposed of, quickly. Like climate change proof, we can bury what happened under mountains of persiflage and obfuscating. Is ‘euthanased’ a nicer word than ‘killed’? Of course. It tidies up the unconscionable fact. Our language is sanitised for us by the media to make it easier for us to act as if this is normal and acceptable. Do we usually kill animals that become distressed? I don’t think so.
I don’t need to go any further with this. Except to say that if COP26 was held in bothies in the highlands, with water from burns, wood fires, no flush loos, a pot of stew and no phone signals, the delegates might gain a sense of perspective. Bitten by midges, tripped by heather, unnerved by being out of their comfort zones, they might remember that they are simply human animals who have got disastrously too big for their boots. They might discuss sensibly how they might make an accommodation with, and attempt to make amends to, the living, sentient Earth on which we all depend.
My abiding feeling is, how ineffably sad - that this thing we call ‘’society’ has developed institutions so divorced from our living reality that they will sacrifice beauty, majesty and power simply because of expediency. It reminds me of CS Lewis’ Voyage to Venus, where a human rips and destroys with no awareness of the wickedness and destruction. Individually we may be intensely aware, but we are everywhere constrained by structures that have no longer a hold on reality.
This is becoming darker than I intended. But if we don’t contemplate difficult things at Samhain, when will we?
But a light shines through into a forest clearing, bringing light and hope.
Maybe the white stag did bring a message from Otherness, to remember, cherish and protect wildness and beauty wherever it appears to us for its own sake and for the sake of our infinitely diverse planet. To remind us of nature especially when in the Conference Hall. Whatever our job, the windows of our rooms show the unfolding natural world: it is always there, just waiting for us to join in. Its messengers are calling to us now; we just have to be quiet enough to hear their voices.
If you wish, why not journey within to our own magical Grove of the inner realms, and from thence to wherever the white stag might lead us. It sounds very little to do, but if we take things of the spirit seriously, and allow time and space for them, their effects permeate down to refine and subtly alter our actions in the world, which still needs all the help it can get. Let us sink within, to hunt, but never catch, our stag… Samhain blessings. /|\
White Stag by Yuri Leitch
[1] First branch of the Mabinogion. ‘Pwyll prince of Dyfed’. Arawn’s hunting hounds
[2] Thrid branch of the Mabinogion ‘Manawyddan the son of Lir’
[3] The knight of the Lion. Chretien de Troyes
[4] The Lay of Guigemar: Marie de France. Many magical messenger animals appear in tales of this period
[5] The white stag's unusual appearance is likely caused by a condition called leucism that results in loss of pigmentation. A fully mature white stag was known as a “white hart” in old English.