Listen: Brown Bear

 

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Readings:

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Callisto was the daughter of Lykaon, king of Arcadia and follower in hunting of goddess Artemis. Callisto, whose name means "the most beautiful", had sworn the goddess to remain virgin for all her life, as did all the companions of Artemis. However, one day, Zeus saw her and after many attempts, he seduced her. Soon, the girl realized that she was pregnant but decided to keep it a secret from Artemis. Unfortunately, one day, while the goddess and her companions were getting ready to take their bath in a river, the pregnancy of Callisto was revealed. Artemis got so angry because the girl had violated her vow that she turned her into a bear, with the curse to live in the wild for the rest of her life and be killed by hunters one day.

 

A few months later, Callisto the bear delivered a son, who was named Arcas, meaning "born by a bear". Zeus gave the baby boy to goddess Maia to raise him up. When he became a man, Arcas became the king of that land, who was named after his name, Arcadia. One day, while Arcas was hunting in the forest, he met a bear. It was his mother, Callisto. Arcas, who didn't know the truth about his mother, was getting ready to throw a javelin and kill this great bear. Zeus, from Mount Olympus, saw that tragedy coming and before the javelin hit Callisto, he turned both of them into constellations. According to the ancient Greeks, these are the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, meaning Big and Small Bear in Latin. They are the representations of Callisto and her son, Arcas. These stars can be seen mostly in summer, when the sky is clear, at the north side of the horizon.

- www.greeka.com

 

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“Bears, it turns out, are a lot like humans. They form alliances with strangers, they make calculations about relative costs and benefits, they lay down rules and punish those who break them. They trade based on a clear system of reciprocity. They communicate using equal parts emotion, intention, and dependence on context-a combination that is essential for communication between strangers and in fact forms the basis for language.”
― Benjamin Kilham, In the Company of Bears: What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition

 

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The bear was regarded as the king of all animals. Arthur is described as the mighty bear, and as a god and hero. Among the rural population about eighty years ago it was customary to call the Great Bear ‘Arthur's Plough’. People said that in the dead of the night, if anybody cared to listen, the plough and waggon of the Great and Lesser Bear could be heard turning. The little, almost invisible star just above the middle one in the tail of the plough was called the ‘plough-man’, or ‘driver’. The Morris dancers never went forth in former times without a man wrapped in a bear-skin. Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, contains Polaris the North Star. This is the pillar around which the night sky turns, although with precession in 14,000 years time it will be another star, Vega. However if the Great Bear is ‘Arthur's Plough’ this could make the Little Bear Arthur.

- www.druidry.org

 

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A friend of mine, who has been a wonderful mentor for me, shared a soul retrieval experience she had years ago. While journeying to retrieve her patient’s “fetus soul,” which was fragmented and split off while in the womb, she was taken to a Cave in which this Mother Bear was suckling the fetal and at the same time suckling her own Bear Cub. Subsequently, for her, she discovered that Mother Bear often has the “lost souls” of children and she tends them until they are returned to an individual during soul retrieval.

In my own experience I have had Bears accompany me and the “Spirit” of a person after they had died. The most painful and profound experience I had with Bear as my personal healing was spontaneous. Spirit, in its wisdom, took me deep deep into myself to help me release my dead sister’s soul from my deepest psyche. At the end of my journey my sister’s body; which had been lovingly washed and wrapped in a death shroud, was placed upon Bear’s back and taken out of my ‘collective’ reality/psyche to… wherever she was taken.

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Those of us walking the spiritual path need times to ritual together; we need a sacred space in which to explore, nourish ourselves and develop robustness of heart, of courage, and hold a vision that is based on a positive sense of Wholeness — or Wholeness restored when otherwise we would feel fragmented.
Bear Shamans and Bear Medicine Societies are present in many forms in many different, diverse and distant peoples. No two Bear Shamans were ever the same, and how could they be? However, there are certain elemental qualities that characterize the spiritual Bear. Any hunter could tell you how the great claws of the bear can rip through trees and brushes, or dig deeply and with passion into ant hills. Bear Shamans can use the gifts of their bear claws to dig deep into a body to remove what does not belong. Bear Shamans have been known to be great healers of deep wounds, as well as being known for healing bones. There are also Bear Shamans who have claimed to have power over life and death, taking on the resurrection mythos of the Bear. I have read some very interesting accounts of Bear Shaman healing and I can only imagine how it would feel to be a part of such power-filled and long standing ceremonies.

Great healers, like the Bear, restore balance and harmony. The Bear is the keeper of the dream time, and stores the teachings of dreams until the dreamer wakes up to them. Many tribes have called this space of inner-knowing the Dream Lodge, where the death of the illusion of physical reality overlays the expansiveness of eternity. It is in the Dream Lodge that our ancestors sit in Council and advise us regarding alternative pathways that lead to our goals. When I enter the Dream Lodge and sit with my Elders and Ancestors I feel wisdom surround me. I seek my inner silence and peace as I sit with them. Bear has stood over me and together we have looked into the great valleys of dreams. Bear, the Spirit of the Between worlds.

- www.shamansway.net

 

 

Meditation:

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Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger,

In honor and dishonor.

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Contemplations: