A Sami shaman once stabbed me in the heart with a reindeer antler
Wednesday, December 4, 2013 at 10:11AM A Sami shaman once stabbed me in the heart with a reindeer antler. That’s how the reindeer came to live in me as a spiritual ally. That was twenty years ago, and since then the reindeer has been an otherworldly teacher and healer for me and a protector when I do shamanic healing for clients and groups.
Do I know this sounds crazy? Of course. Have I stopped caring? Mostly.
This is why the 10th Winter Solstice Blessing is a personal experience for me. It is my way of honoring all of our unseen spiritual helpers.
There’s more.
He taught me the story of how the Great Goddess, the Antlered One, carried the blessing sun. the source of life, back from the underworld at the winter solstice, so that all creatures could jump up and live again. And how she sacrificed her own heart to implant at the center of creation and it is her heartbeat that gives life to all creatures.
These images of the reindeer are so beautiful to me, and though I’m not a reindeer herder, I seem to know this Goddess. In our culture, the Christmas reindeer are male, and the lead reindeer is a funny little guy with a nose that lights up – a twisted image of the Great Goddess Reindeer carrying the life-giving sun back from the underworld, between her antlers.
I do the Winter Solstice Ceremony because she asked me to help her come back into the world in her proper shape, in her honorable form, the form that gives life to all life at this darkest time. This is the blessing she brings us, and the blessing we try to deliver at the 10th Annual Winter Solstice Blessing.
A few years ago she gave me this song. (You could put the woird “she” at the beginning of each phrase to make it a little more rational):
Moves the dark wind through the sky bones.
Flows the a silence from the unknown.
Flickers fire in the cold hearth.
Drums the thunder under earth.
Breathes the light into the star room.
Weaves the ice on winter’s tree loom.
Calls the song back from the deep dark.
Aims the antler to the heart.
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