Or I was a toddler weredog
by Kym ní Dhoireann (copyright 1999, 2004 © Kym ní Dhoireann, all rights reserved do not republish anywhere)
My earliest memory in this lifetime is about a dog.....I gather it is my earliest despite my problems remembering the chronology of events, for after years having this vision of sitting on the kitchen floor with my arms lifted up around Rusty, a big golden dog that I figured had been a Golden Retriever I discovered that Rusty was actually a Cocker Spaniel! So I was a lot younger and smaller than I thought when I remembered this.
My first memory of preforming an act of compassion was about a dog. I was 3 years old and with my sister to buy a dog for our mother. I insisted on a silver beige Toy Poodle. Why? Because it was the one proportionally the biggest in comparison to the crate it was in. Or perhaps I convinced myself this was what happened when I got questioned about why I chose her time and time again. The first word out of my father's mouth when he saw her was "scram!" and that became her name. Many people's opinion of her was similar. But I adored her, as did my mother. She was very tiny and very fierce. We always kept her "puppy clipped" without a pom-pom to be seen so that she looked like an actual dog (this is how we saw it, I was an adult by the time that I learned that "that haircut" was actually designed for keeping organs and joints warm in cold water retrieval). Or at times a lamb as we weren't all that regular with her clippings. When my father got a Doberman and my sister, who for a time lived just down the road, a Great Dane, Scram was the definite alpha who kept all these dogs towering over her in line. No dog was more ferocious than Scram!
Many of my other early memories is of being a dog! Or thinking I was. I have some where I seemed, well, right. Paws, jaws, fur, working nose, good hearing, muted color vision. Others where I'm confused in a hairless body, no ability to define odor, no long jaws.....what are these things on my front legs? Wait, I can grasp with these, because I can't with my jaws. Perhaps it was just delusion, perhaps not fully processed reincarnation fragments. Perhaps my mother let me watch Dark Shadows at too young an age ----the werewolf fascination was strong very early, and it's stuck. And it has incorporated into my spiritual identity, especially later, the Black Wolf Bitch.
That was when I first made contact, I believe, with the Otherworld. With beings that were often neither humanoid nor animal, but could appear to be both. The Wolf Bitch started to be around then. Not close, but there. My first experiences with the spiritual where watched over by her, me so young I had not concept of religion or spirituality. Only of my friends I later "learned" were imaginary and who I lost for many years when I "grew up" ....until I was ready to realize that what a child knows is sometimes more real than we are convinced of later.
In later childhood, my first experiences of Goddess worshipping were
defined by hounds. At about 9 or 10 years old, I became fascinated
with Greek mythology. This is what was readily available, "fiction"
from history and English classes in school. I dedicated myself to Artemis
in the woods near our home one summer day. With Her Hounds in
attendance.......along with my father's Doberman. I spent much time
in the woods with Cinnamon, sometime my sister's Great Dane and my brother's
Golden Retriever.
In the house was still Scram. Well, outside too, but never as deeply in the woods (although there was the one day that she and I met the coyote. I had a 15 pound bitch with me, we didn't stick around to get a good look. As I reach puberty I was one of those that manifested "poltergeist" activity......mostly noises, some movement of objects. I also again started having visitations, not having much Otherworldly contact for a few years. With me through this was Scram, who stayed in my room at night. She sometimes would wake screaming when something would come into the room. Or attack the "air." Cinnamon likewise would show he saw things that I was the only human to see, although he did not do the stairs to my room where most happened. One night he went after a "person" that was lurking about, but never caught him (if there had been a person there he WOULD have caught him...he was a trained guard dog and, well, they may not be as fast as a Greyhound but Dobies are not slow). It was during this time that an interest in the Occult developed, one that led me to discover Witchcraft as a name for someone who worshipped Goddesses.....later to find "Pagan" as a name still used as well. And to learn I wasn't alone. That I wouldn't always have only the dogs to vindicate that there was something there as well. Others believed.
By the time Gabrielle came into my life, when I was 16, I fully defined myself as Pagan and Witch.......worshiping and practicing in a Wiccan style (I was untrained and initiated, as I was later trained and initiated in a British Traditional group, I believe these are required to actually be Wiccan). Artemis was still my Matron. However, it was while Gabe was giving birth, at less than a year old (first heats sneak up on you and some bitches will go through anything to get to a dog, including a closed window! I'm a big believer in spaying before first heat), that I feel I met another Bitch Goddess. I spent hours fighting the fact that the first pup born, that Gabe had abandoned, was going to die. Of course, Gabe knew better than me. The first time I fought with death, the first time Hecate and Her hounds came into my life. Of course, as one always does in such a battle, I lost.
Gabe was one of those extraordinary ritual dogs. She'd watch the energy
at the edge of the circle, never crossing it which ever side she ended up
on. If something was going wrong, something I was missing was happening,
she'd let me know. For years she was the only other one in my rituals.
She was often called, by others, my familiar (but she never ran errands
for me nor let me possess her body to do so, so that doesn't follow---yeah,
I tend to be very literal about such things) or my "medicine dog" (a bit
NA wannabee for my PC comfort). We traveled over much of the East Coast together.
We spent a summer in the woods, not quite living off the land...okay,
not at all really. She went to many political actions of all sorts
with me. Much of my time, when I lived up north was spent hiking
(sometimes
running) or riding horseback (horses being almost as strong a focus for me),
Gabe was with me in these activities at all times.
Gabe was with me when I first started to feel the pull to be a warrior, when I first learned the name "Morrígan" and the first night I called out to this Goddess. Long before She decided I was ready (by which time I knew better than to try to get Her attention....such is the irony of life). A full moon night, on a hillside in a park, I felt this draw to that side. To something darker than I was allowing myself to experience. Something that might have horrified those I worked with at the time. But Gabe was not, and I trusted her. Walking out of the park, a male jogger asked me if I wasn't afraid to be in the park alone....I laughed at him and asked who would be foolish enough to bother me on a night like tonight. Gabe ran to him in a friendly manner and nosed him, then scooted back to stand between us. She has protected me once from a potential rapist years when she was not much more than a pup, I had faith that she would again if I needed. But I felt as powerful myself at that moment. I was a Bitch too. Perhaps foolish, but perhaps not.
I was claimed by my new Matron when I was initiated into Wicca, a few years later. Shortly after She appeared to me, I had a dream that I was attacked by a large black wolf. I recognized this as the Otherworldly beast that watched me as a child. All those I knew turned away from my fight would not help me, including Gabe. I was alone. I killed the wolf.....heartsick at having had to. Days went by as I realized by "killing it" I had in fact become it. It no longer watched me from outside, but was a part of me. A form I carried in the Otherworld. A center for me as well, my strength, my power.
It was later that She appeared to me as Morrígna, the Three Together instead of as One. Black Crow, White Mare, and a Red Bitch that looked like a cross of a Sighthound and a Wolf. The wolf form can be found in myth.....the Táin Bó Cuailnge - The Cattle Raid of Cooley where She appears as such to Cú Chulainn, as well as Eel and Heifer. The hound is not so prevalent however, but it is very powerful connection for me.....any Bitch actually.
These two things may have led me for years to identify, although hardly live up to Cú Chulainn's myth, either in ability or conceit. For he kills a hound as a child and takes on both the animal's role and its name, "Hound of the Smith." (Gantz, trans. "Boyhood Deeds of Cú Chulainn" Early Irish Myths and Sagas Penguin; 1982). The killing of a canine to become it. Being claimed by Her. Many see it as strange that I have identified with him, for Cú Chulainn and the Morrígan are at odds with each other at the end..... but he rejected Her. A mistake I realized I'd not want to repeat. And Her claiming him at his death truly, in my mind, marks him as always having been Hers. Still, I want to repeat that I never would claim his skill nor his arrogance. But indeed, his bad temper, that yes. ~;)
Gabe was there when my new Matron claimed me. She watched me go from pacifist to taking the first real steps on the warrior path. In her last years she watched me as I began to study Celtic culture and Paganism in college and leave Wicca for CR Paganism. She watched me struggle with having to destroy old ideas and beliefs and accept new ones that weren't always that easy to deal with. She patiently listened. She gladly stayed by my side as I tried new ways to worship, new ritual forms. Or quietly connected to Her with no ritual at all. We still roamed the woods and fields, with me sometimes on horseback, until her arthritis prevented her. Then we'd walk, but closer to home, sitting by the pond, the pond her body lies next to always.
And with the baying of Otherworld Hounds in my ears, I held her as she left this world. And I told her that she was free now to run with her namesakes, the Gabriel Ratchett Hounds (a Christian term, oh well, but for the Hounds of the Wild Hunt just the same).
The next year I moved back to the Seacoast and my horses were killed. I had neither hound nor horse. It seemed at times I was not me.
About a year after my horses deaths, I again connected with the beasts of the Wild Hunt. Someone I recently met who was himself hunted by prey that had once long ago escaped the Hunt. On that night I sought the help of Odin, and the Grey Man granted it.....not only taking the creature back into the Hunt, but running his Hounds/Wolves, Horses, and Hunters around us rather than over. That was remarkable, it took years to understand why. And it took years before I was fully a peace with having been claimed not only a God, but one who was not Celtic.....it actually took the affliction of a physical hints to do it! Again, the Wolf, the Raven, the Horse.
When my husband and I adopted our Greyhound Irony
, that connection was remade. She quickly took to our rituals, her awareness
of the Otherworld is strong. Our first ritual with her at Lughnassadh was
amazing, right down to the simple fact that my momentary concern that she
wouldn't share our Blessing, that year it was blackberries, was quickly
alleviated. She loved them. Just as Gabe did. Her ability
to play "Trickster" is only overshadowed by her "brother"
Bran's skill when he joined our family. Likewise
Scolaighe joined right in and
Gleann, just a puppy at his first ritual, who is
able to be off leash took to helping
with
the Outsider offerings and then guarding the West gate right from the start.
And a grand trick may indeed have been played on me. For while watching friends searching for the reincarnation of their beloved pack member and ritual companion I felt that I had done the right thing in not looking for Gabe. I had decided that it would be too much pressure for us and I wasn't sure she'd return as a dog. Shortly after Bran came to live with us, I dreamed that I was walking Gabe and her son Rembrandt who had been my mother's dog, then I looked down and it was Irony and Bran. Irony does not have the same level of absolute devotion that Gabe has, but the breed traits would partially explain that as would the lateness she came to live with me. (on the other hand, I am not sure that Bran is Rembrandt...but the connection wasn't as strong between us.) She does indeed combine that happy, loving good-naturedness with an ability to be very fierce when needed and the strength of our connection is just that strong. Now that she has passed, I am hoping that she finds her way to me again.
With the new addition of hounds to our household there is a great sense that we are touching the culture we are inspired by much more deeply. At lure coursing events we touch upon those ancestors who ran their hounds at hares as mentioned by Arrianus (see Sighthounds in Celtic Lands). Sitting at feast after ritual, we again touch upon the idea of hounds at the feet of their humans, sharing in the wealth of the hunt they made possible (Under the Feast Hall Table, and all that). On early morning walks, I hear the cawing of Her Crows and realize that as I walk these beasts, She walks nearby always. Looking at their sleek forms I am reminded of the Otherworldly hounds that accompanied Artemis when I was in Her care and I know She is not so far either. Walking them in the night, I remember that while they are not so good protectors as another breed might, I am a daughter of the Morrígan and touched by both Artemis and Hecate and am my own power, and that with the One-Eyed's interest in me, I'm not to fear the Wild Hunt, but instead to aspire to my own.
Scolaighe's Page | Gleann's Page Diamond --A Greyhound looking for a person Sighthounds in Celtic Lands | Ritual Hounds What's this Paganism Thing About, Anyway? A Greyhound for Everyone (almost) |
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