Wolves and the Moon: Tarot, Heathenry, and Personal Gnosis

[Faemon]

Last night, I dreamed about a wolf. It wasn't a lucid dream, but I remember at that moment being unsurprised, reasoning that I found a gateway into Heathenry some months ago and have been exploring what I could. Of course the symbolism would leak into my subconscious, perhaps helped along with the Game of Thrones marathon, and a funny conversation I had with a friend recently about Dr. Clarissa Estés's book (Women Who Run With The Wolves-- another friend of mine seemed to think it was the same sort of literature as Twilight, and spouted an extensive predictive analysis on its impact on society in culture. Without, I believe, having read either...?)

When I tried to get a sense of the wolf's nature, I was surprised to sense a scythe-like aspect to it. This was a killer ("the fur of a killer!!1!" ...sorry, ha. It was a wee bit snow-dusted and sparkly.) It wasn't complicated by joy at bloodshed, or knowing what it has to do to survive, or the fear that one might not survive if one does not resort to this, or knowing its place in the ecosystem and the circle-of-life-King-Mufasa-lecture or anything. There was something pure in it that shall end you, period, full stop.

Since it didn't have all those complications that usually come with autonomous intelligence, and mostly because it was not proceeding to end me, I figured that this wolf was a part of me.

And, kind of not... because, well, I'm an urbanite. At a stretch, a tropical creature: I was always more inclined to feel instinctively threatened by sharks. Whenever I hear stories about wolves, or see the Big Bad Wolf in the picture books, I imagine a black German Shepherd. Or an Alaskan Husky. You know, pets-- and ones that can accept members of their packs and even alphas that are so obviously outside their species. I don't disbelieve that in the history of the Northern Western world that has had wilderness and nature based faiths, that wolves haven't earned a reputation among people... but I figured that I would have to be almost attacked by one to really get out of the mindset that a lone wolf is just a very fuzzy stray dog that's usually a real threat only to prey that is smaller than they are.

This appeared to assert a wolfishness that got me out of that mindset (although I was smaller than it was, slightly, that didn't strike me as much as what I sensed inside it.) Maybe, with the influences that I mentioned, the Platonic understanding of wolfishness was beginning to seep through.

I dreamed that I saw it attack people. I'd wished harm like that, but not really-- it was almost as a joke, it was something I couldn't make happen or (so I thought) even imagine. It would be abstract suffering expressed in a cartoonishly elaborate concrete way. Witnessing a wolf attack, in this dream, was a horribly ugly death. I saw the teeth bared, saw the rending of flesh, spurting blood, spilling organs... I saw people I disliked fight for survival against something built to kill, and, even though I couldn't look away-- even precisely because I couldn't look away and I had to see everything, every wound inflicted upon a body that must have hurt so bloody deeply and so much-- I felt an aversion to that situation.

So, that was horrifying enough-- but then the wolf ate the meat bits. I guess that is part of the circle of life, but I personally didn't want that meat in my system. It occurred to me that this was the figurative price of vengeance. Vengeance might be a function higher than instinct, but the fact seemed to be that this wolf can't kill and then not eat. As I mentioned, the mood wasn't open to philosophies built around ecosystems, and this fact feels quite different when I don't have that intellectual buffer to lean on.

This dream appeared to be more psyche-ic than psychic. The grapevine says they've been having the time of their lives without me, as I have had without them except for this one oddly sympathetic nightmare about them being ripped to pieces by dire wolves.


And that's what I saw. What I did when I woke up a little, and I don't do this often, was to channel that power into myself (because I seemed to have channeled it out, at some level-- I wasn't a shapeshifting werewolf in my dream, I was myself as human with some resonant connection with a wolf that was separate from me that I was watching from the outside.)

I allowed my imagination to surprise me, so the visuals came before the reasoning. I was rising above a forest, watching a pack of wolves run between the trees, and the shadows would shift so I suppose that I had my back glued to the moon or something. They stopped to howl, and I could almost understand them. They had names, and were sort of saying it in the howls, like, one was Thunder because it had the biggest growl in the pack, and the other was Fang because it was always the first to bite, and I forget the others but mine wasn't one of them-- may or may not have been the same pack.

So, I was rising over the land, and then over the sea, and thought, "Okay, so wolves aren't actually so far-fetched." Following modern astrology, I had been working with the Moon and the Water. I thought that I would become Water, and with practice that was why that realm and/or element worked well... but,
I might have had a little more innate clout over water, than I'd earned, because I had cultivated Moon energy within myself as a separate sort of personal development project. Wolves were an association that I hadn't ever explored before now, but most Moon tarot cards that I've seen do love their canines, so I suppose it was always there and staring me in the face. That, and just pop-culture-werewolf-full-moon thing, and maybe (fuzzy memory) did Hecate have a traditional association with wolves?

Because from what I knew of Norse mythology...a wolf is destined to eat the Moon. Not in any way be a subject of it.


So... thoughts? Should I have just stopped at the personal dream interpretation, instead of delving into comparative religious symbolism? And just for fun: if you had a dire wolf, what would you name it?

[Zaphaux]

So... thoughts? Should I have just stopped at the personal dream interpretation, instead of delving into comparative religious symbolism? And just for fun: if you had a dire wolf, what would you name it?

 
 I believe that the dreams are connected somehow to your soul, since it's a sequence of images of things going on your subconscious - which is close to your 'pure thoughts', the root of all of them, what I call the 'soul'.
 So the dreams can have actual meanings, but also it can be just random things, depending of what have gone on your mind on that time. If you pushed yourself to dream of wolves or if it happens occasionally, and if you feel like you should search about it, then do it. But it's important to remember that you are the only one that can interpret your own dream - or someone with high knowledge in the subject, and it is really hard to find, even if you do this person does not know enough about you as you do, also there is a possibility of not believing in the same things you do.
 As you stated, it really seems like a vengeance deity or something like it. You should search from this starting point, it's a good start. It seems like some kind of apocalyptic dream.

[Zaphaux]

So... thoughts? Should I have just stopped at the personal dream interpretation, instead of delving into comparative religious symbolism? And just for fun: if you had a dire wolf, what would you name it?

 
 I also am pretty sure I heard somewhere once about some nordic beliefs that there was a kind of 'fight' and a Wolf "Demon" would try to steal the moon, and would always be stopped by a goddess, I think. Try reading about Fenrir, the wolf and its family - Fenrir's mother I think is called Angrboða, yet I don't think she is a wolf. Read also about Hati and Skoll: Hati was a nordic wolf that chases the moon, and Skoll chases the sun.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenrir
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angrbo%C3%B0a
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hati_Hr%C3%B3%C3%B0vitnisson
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skoll

[Faemon]

it really seems like a vengeance deity or something like it. You should search from this starting point, it's a good start. It seems like some kind of apocalyptic dream. I also am pretty sure I heard somewhere once about some nordic beliefs that there was a kind of 'fight' and a Wolf "Demon" would try to steal the moon, and would always be stopped by a goddess, I think. Try reading about Fenrir, the wolf and its family - Fenrir's mother I think is called Angrboða, yet I don't think she is a wolf. Read also about Hati and Skoll: Hati was a nordic wolf that chases the moon, and Skoll chases the sun.

Thanks! Angrboða's puppy litter was one reason I thought I might have been dreaming of wolves, because I was reading about wolves in waking life. I haven't gotten around to reading much about Angrboða herself.

I've also been reading up (here) on fylgja.

[Grimnir]

Thanks! Angrboða's puppy litter was one reason I thought I might have been dreaming of wolves, because I was reading about wolves in waking life. I haven't gotten around to reading much about Angrboða herself.

I've also been reading up (here) on fylgja.

Angrboða had her strange 'litter' with the aid of Loki. A wolf, a serpent and a half-dead, half-alive woman. Fenris is the most well-known I'd guess, but Jormungandr and Hel are equally important.
 
If you're interested in Gremanic mythology, this site has some very well written articles. http://www.germanicmythology.com/