The Wolf.
I want to answer the "why werewolves" question briefly mentioned the other day, but to do it, I first need to talk about the symbolic significance of wolves. The two are inextricably linked, after all.
Because it was exterminated in the lower part of the continent, the vanished wolf has now been romanticised into a symbol for all that is best in both the wildnerness and in mankind, and as a symbol for all that we fear we will lose, all we fear we have lost.
Idolization is not respect, though, not really. The romantic view of the wolf as a perfect being inhabiting a perfect society in a world to which it is perfectly tailored is certainly more enlightened and humane than the older image of a snarling demon sent from Hell specifically to devil the flock of mankind, but it is still not accurate, and the root of "humane" is still "human."
The wolf means a great deal to me personally. I consider my spirituality - what there is of it - a private thing, but I am comfortable saying that I acquired the metaphorical Wolf as a sort of spiritual role model many years ago. Half my life or more. My connection to that archetype has deepened and grown as I have grown. What the Wolf has meant to me has changed over the years, and my respect for the animals separate from that guiding archetype has become great indeed.
Wolves are animals, and my admiration of them relies heavily on that understanding. No animal is more efficient than its environment will allow, predators least of all. Wolf society cares for its own as well as it can so that the pack might survive, but that does not make wolf life or wolf politics fair, nor does it make them virtuous beings. They live in a harsh world, the very hardest, well-equipped enough to bring down their prey and bear their young, but not gifted with any magical advantage that makes their lives easy. Their lives are hard, their deaths are hard, and the fact that they, like all animals, seem at peace with the world they inhabit does not mean that they are inhabitants of a peaceful world. The rank and succession within their packs does not make them noble. They are beautiful, this is true, but it is not a beauty they would care about even if they could see it, nor is their beauty evidence of any favored spiritual status.
They are a symbol for me, laden with significance beyond their place in the ecology of our dangerous planet. Yes, I have romanticised them. Storytellers do that sort of thing. It's like breathing. We can't really help it. But I do realize that what meaning they have for me metaphorically, spiritually, comes from me, and is not an innate quality of the wolf itself. The wolf does not need my admiration to be an admirable creature. They are infinitely more interesting in their brutal reality than as symbols of whatever it is that preoccupies the viewer.
This newer image of wolf as superior spiritual being reflects movements within our own collective consciousness. While it is not accurate it is, perhaps, closer to a kind of truth. The wolf is a precious thing worth preserving. It occupies a very special place in the balance of nature, a place that has been too long empty in my homeland.
Symbolism aside, we do share many of the wolf's better traits, and that should remind us that we are worth preserving as well. Many people turn their back on their own species, as though what virtue we see in the beasts around us is not also within us. Yet we are special creatures, too, occupying a unique place in nature's balance - one we would be wise to better understand.
I am, overall, fonder of animals than of people. I sometimes feel like we don't deserve our position, but that's irrelevant; we are here. The worse part of our nature has not made me blind to our better qualities. While we're here, we might as well develop our full potential. It's quite a poor showing we've made so far, but there are glimmers of brightness in the dark, and the fact that we are trying against great odds to make room for wolves once again is one of those tiny sparks.
It gives me pleasure to know that the wolves are returning. It gives me pleasure to think that someday I might be able to visit friends in the north and hear wild howling. Somewhere up there, wolf pups play under a summer sun. They will learn to kill in a forest rich with game, they will run wild across land from which their ancestors were driven with bullets, traps, and poison.
I think of their raised voices like an unbroken chain going back to the beginning, to the days before we had thought to domesticate anything, even ourselves. That sound is my talisman against the dark. That sound is the essence of what the wolf is to me at this point in my life. The wolf's return reminds me that a species, like a person, can weather the absolute worst, can face death and even extinction, and still return with a song.
Because it was exterminated in the lower part of the continent, the vanished wolf has now been romanticised into a symbol for all that is best in both the wildnerness and in mankind, and as a symbol for all that we fear we will lose, all we fear we have lost.
Idolization is not respect, though, not really. The romantic view of the wolf as a perfect being inhabiting a perfect society in a world to which it is perfectly tailored is certainly more enlightened and humane than the older image of a snarling demon sent from Hell specifically to devil the flock of mankind, but it is still not accurate, and the root of "humane" is still "human."
The wolf means a great deal to me personally. I consider my spirituality - what there is of it - a private thing, but I am comfortable saying that I acquired the metaphorical Wolf as a sort of spiritual role model many years ago. Half my life or more. My connection to that archetype has deepened and grown as I have grown. What the Wolf has meant to me has changed over the years, and my respect for the animals separate from that guiding archetype has become great indeed.
Wolves are animals, and my admiration of them relies heavily on that understanding. No animal is more efficient than its environment will allow, predators least of all. Wolf society cares for its own as well as it can so that the pack might survive, but that does not make wolf life or wolf politics fair, nor does it make them virtuous beings. They live in a harsh world, the very hardest, well-equipped enough to bring down their prey and bear their young, but not gifted with any magical advantage that makes their lives easy. Their lives are hard, their deaths are hard, and the fact that they, like all animals, seem at peace with the world they inhabit does not mean that they are inhabitants of a peaceful world. The rank and succession within their packs does not make them noble. They are beautiful, this is true, but it is not a beauty they would care about even if they could see it, nor is their beauty evidence of any favored spiritual status.
They are a symbol for me, laden with significance beyond their place in the ecology of our dangerous planet. Yes, I have romanticised them. Storytellers do that sort of thing. It's like breathing. We can't really help it. But I do realize that what meaning they have for me metaphorically, spiritually, comes from me, and is not an innate quality of the wolf itself. The wolf does not need my admiration to be an admirable creature. They are infinitely more interesting in their brutal reality than as symbols of whatever it is that preoccupies the viewer.
This newer image of wolf as superior spiritual being reflects movements within our own collective consciousness. While it is not accurate it is, perhaps, closer to a kind of truth. The wolf is a precious thing worth preserving. It occupies a very special place in the balance of nature, a place that has been too long empty in my homeland.
Symbolism aside, we do share many of the wolf's better traits, and that should remind us that we are worth preserving as well. Many people turn their back on their own species, as though what virtue we see in the beasts around us is not also within us. Yet we are special creatures, too, occupying a unique place in nature's balance - one we would be wise to better understand.
I am, overall, fonder of animals than of people. I sometimes feel like we don't deserve our position, but that's irrelevant; we are here. The worse part of our nature has not made me blind to our better qualities. While we're here, we might as well develop our full potential. It's quite a poor showing we've made so far, but there are glimmers of brightness in the dark, and the fact that we are trying against great odds to make room for wolves once again is one of those tiny sparks.
It gives me pleasure to know that the wolves are returning. It gives me pleasure to think that someday I might be able to visit friends in the north and hear wild howling. Somewhere up there, wolf pups play under a summer sun. They will learn to kill in a forest rich with game, they will run wild across land from which their ancestors were driven with bullets, traps, and poison.
I think of their raised voices like an unbroken chain going back to the beginning, to the days before we had thought to domesticate anything, even ourselves. That sound is my talisman against the dark. That sound is the essence of what the wolf is to me at this point in my life. The wolf's return reminds me that a species, like a person, can weather the absolute worst, can face death and even extinction, and still return with a song.