• Tag Archives raven
  • Just Like Canada

    Lughnasa                                                                                             Waning Honey Extraction Moon

    The nights have grown cooler.  The August moon has begun to fade away, and the September moon will not come for a bit.  Dark nights approach, a time for the occult.

    Minnesota, Mark says, feels like Canada and the Twin Cities feel like Canadian cities.  The bright blue August sky, the changed slant of the sun’s rays, the occasional cottony fluff high above us all combine, with cool nights and the gradually decreasing highs to put us in the same northern space as Ontario, our nearest Canadian neighbor.

    At our best, we are like Canada.  We believe in health care for all people, a good education and jobs that require education.  Winter helps define us and, hey, hockey is big.  We have an openness to our governance that seems to be true in Canada, too.

    We share some totem animals, too:  moose, raven, lynx, wolf.

    If Minnesota could be the next province, it would fit right in.


  • Touring the Thaw

    Samhain                                                      Waxing Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Working with the Thaw collection today, two tours.  As I’ve gone back over my notes, the collection becomes alive again, a collection of masterpiece art made by native American artists, women and men, in many materials from all the regions of North America save Mexico.  The Tsimishian raven frontlet is still my favorite, a compact work, well-carved with abalone inlay.  It features, probably, Raven Who Owns The Sun; the image of raven enhanced with an abalone sun that, when struck with light, flares back the rays of our home star.

    The Yupik mask, too, with its feathery margin, fox teeth and diving seals, conveys the power necessary to hunt in the frozen world of the Arctic.  In order both to survive the hunt and bring back food essential for life shamanic prayer and ritual added itself to the hunter’s knowledge and weaponry, giving as much of an edge as possible to the Yupik hunter.

    Though the phrase is from a current photography show, I would call the Thaw collection an embarrassment of riches.