Hare at the Moonlit Well: Intuitive Discerning & Deciding
On a full moon night in January, as I was lighting a candle ahead of some evening reading, I saw out on the lawn three rabbits sitting still as statues facing the great silver Ma above. Because the Moon was hovering only a hair above the house, it also seemed as if the rabbits were looking at me. Though I couldn’t see her from my window, I imagined the deep blue, Atlantic mythic wisdom-well crashing on the shore less than a mile beyond the long-eared Ones below.
The scene was eerie and enchanting, commonplace and otherworldly all at once. It was if this trifecta of Hare-spirits wished to tell me something— a divining— whose time would come, but not yet.
I took note.
In the ensuing weeks, as light began to creep ever longer in the gloaming, sandcastle shadows of this mysterious island, I touched on something I love about this place:
She has a singular, devastatingly romantic ability to keep secrets and reveal herself in equal yet unpredictable measure.
Nearly everyday, for the first time in over a decade, I’m out walking in wild places on this 47 square mile isle. Each day, from these limited yet ever-revealing choices of where to go, I head out to this trail or that beach. I can never decide where to go until I’m in the car and already driving. Like choosing a tea, a song or earrings— it’s a mood that’s being matched, a felt hue within that longs for outer mirroring.
And yet, wherever I land, it’s both never quite what I’d expected and predictably one of only a few core landscape potentials. Every place, everyday surprises me. It scares me or utterly enchants me. It finds me. It stalks and tracks me, just as I follow the tracks of Deer, the flight pattern of Hawk, the shapeshifting tides, the circular hop-holes of Rabbit.
Each secretive / revealing place awakens new questions in me and renders old ones— which seemed fully paramount on the car-ride over— obsolete.
It’s a great privilege to live so close to Nature again. Choice and privilege are so intertwined that there is literally not a moment in my day as a white-bodied, American woman that is not overlaid and undermined and over-mined by the ramifications of a colonized inner-ecology. Choice has been used to oppress us (by forcing us into either oppressor or oppressed roles) from the inside-out and the outside-in, all in the name of a false, or at best deeply incongruent, freedom.
Choice— what the deepest structures of culture call “freedom”— is a fickle Lover.
Too much of her drowns us in obsessive indecision or freezes our real growth with wanton greed. Too much choice bewitches us into utterly forgetting what we truly want, who we truly are. From this mass excess of choice (and the consequential assumption that resources, too, exist in never-ending supply to our whim) many useless, wasteful, unimaginative and unsustainable things are created. Things we come to despise or abandon.
And yet, too little choice in the ways that matter most (i.e. basic survival, style of education, and the day-to-day suppleness needed to follow our soul’s heartfelt desires and callings) constricts us and makes us feel desperate, willing to accept scraps of love, affection, resources, magic and belonging. If what we need cannot be found, why not settle for what we can get?
Or, choice-scarcity makes us rush, force, strive in ways that are insulting to our deeper, earthen, chthonic natures. When pushed into a corner of true or perceived scarcity, lasting, loving help or steady devotion to our craft can indeed seem too little, too inconceivable, too late.
Of course, life is filled with too much, too little. But it’s the humans— and most especially white-bodied humans— who decided long ago to move in synch with a default of scarcity. Nature is harmonious not because there is no excess or scarcity, but because there is a highly instinctive, mysterious and yet totally utilitarian inclination to ultimately move in synch with a default of abundance. This abundance is made possible by the enactment of pure desire— each member of a limited yet expansive ecosystem or habitat must discern, decide and act in alignment with their authentic, individual natures (e.g. follow their most compelling longing) in order to ensure the well-being of all, including themselves and their descendants.
A much richer mythography for freedom than choice for choice’s sake.
Nature thrives by constantly ebbing and flowing with desire, able to self-regulate and harmonize. That is, until she can’t due to scarcity— of wild lands, of clean waters, of intimate relationships with humans.
Many human acts indeed of genius, of courage, of harmonious warriorship and exquisite artistry have sprung from a desire to reconcile the pathos of extreme or dogmatic excess and scarcity. Choice keeps things juicy, keeps us on the move. Desire is sacred. But moderation-in-potential and a felt sense of belonging gives our longing a container.
It takes only a small, honest place— both limited and expansive— within or around us, to make a sound decision.
We must make this place if we can’t find it, this sanctuary where we can be free from the too much / not enough dichotomy. A haven where we’re able to hear the messages made specially for us by Mystery, and where we can see our Truth illuminated by the silent, crisp and clear luminosity of a moonlit night. Here, we can discern and decide— from a far more secret, sacred temple within us— which direction to go, which step to take.
As March grows into herself, Hare is back again. To the ancient Celts, Hare, Moon and sacred wells were very connected to this turn in the year, where Winter is giving over to Spring and choice— how we dance with the what / when / where and with whom of our year’s vision— becomes a central task. People still make pilgrimages, often at night, to the sacred wells of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, because Night is the time of pure potential, intuition and magic. Night shines its darkness on our fear of and also comfort with uncertainty. Night tells the truth from the inside-out. These are all aspects needed to make sound decisions.
The Voices of the Wells were the traditional holy womyn, nature-priestesses who guarded the sacred wells and natural springs that dotted the landscape by the thousands.
They offered themselves as oracle to visiting pilgrims. It was their wise council which helped people with the discerning, deciding and blessing crucial to a verdant life. No matter our heritage, the vigorous planning, planting, creating and building done in Springtime had very real consequences for our ancestors. We can see why these clarifying and cleansing wells were revered.
There is a story of a king who, having decided to move in synch with scarcity, went about demolishing the Land and raping the Voices of the Wells. They say that the Voices diminished into the wells, into the hollowed ground, deep into the wildest woods, and that ever since, the Land has no intuition, nothing close to the abundance of old… no feminine oracular impulse. But we all contain a well of wisdom within. Each of us can consult our inner Voice of the Well. We just have to listen close.
And that mysterious Hare, co-conspirator to Moon and the Oracular Feminine, is an age-old, paradoxical symbol of both the fear and abundance that affects our choices.
On the one hand, Hare is one of the most fertile creatures alive, able to conceive while already pregnant, an adaptation linked to being prey to many creatures. She makes hairpin choices all day— to stand still as a statue or dart around quick as, well, a mad March hare, to evade her captors.
Hare lives in a robust honesty with Fear and yet, in witnessing Hare so often here on the island, there’s an undeniable confidence to them, a steadfast knowing. They’re creating like mad, making choices by the dozens all day. And then at night, they get so still in the presence of Moonlight herself, listening to the waters of knowing, gazing up at us, encouraging us to do the same.
From their limited yet expansive groves and hedges, all is not possible— but a few incredible things are. The same goes for us humans. Only from the the holy well of wisdom within can we discern and decide and bless which things those will be.
