When I find a white feather,
I feel it's a signal to stop and pay attention. 
Most of us contain associations related to things--to sights, sounds tastes, odors, or the way something feels to the touch--to words, weather, landscapes, people, or animals. Because of my life associations, a white feather signifies both blessing and warning--gift and prophesy, so a certain thought process is set in motion when one appears in my world.
Most of us contain associations related to things--to sights, sounds tastes, odors, or the way something feels to the touch--to words, weather, landscapes, people, or animals. Because of my life associations, a white feather signifies both blessing and warning--gift and prophesy, so a certain thought process is set in motion when one appears in my world.
This weekend, it just so happens, the Lakota Sioux Nation
will Celebrate the birth of a white buffalo calf
in Connecticut--reminder of the legend of
White Buffalo Calf Woman
Chief Arvol Looking Horse--19th generation
White Buffalo Calf Woman
Chief Arvol Looking Horse--19th generation
Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe,
and Leader of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Oyate
Sioux Nation, speaks
about the legend
My dear friend Donna had white deer
around her property near Ithaca, NY.
She told me she saw them the night before her husband died,
and again
My dear friend Donna had white deer
around her property near Ithaca, NY.
and again
8 comments:
i hope, before i die, i will recognize all the hidden messages that surround me on a daily basis. i know they are there.
only a white cat here
I made a beaded white feather for a friend a few years ago and he was insulted... I didn't understand so he explained it is traditionally a symbol of cowardice, yikes! Talk about x-ed purposes... I had given it as a symbol of hope as he was about to embark on a year of chemotherapy, he's still alive and feisty as ever but yes we have to be careful with the meanings of our symbols. I have often wondered why albino animals are seen as sacred... perhaps just their rarity... personally I like the ubiquity of crow feathers, they always show up when I need one but I often wonder too whether they are around all the time & I just notice them when I need one...
all things have histories, personal histories for those who call them significant. In India one is married in red not white (example)...
listened to Chief Arvol's comments... I hope he is right that we are about to shape peace and effect great change from there....
I always pick up feathers (they are mostly gray) along my daily walk with Racer Dog. It seems that when I hear crows/ravens, I will soon receive a message of importance. I agree that we must be sensitive to the signs meant specifically for us.
Just so you know the context...the Lakota Chief Link was posted in 2010, and things were pretty rough then--much rougher now...which doesn't mean that he, and we, are not working from within to create peace. Real peace comes only from within to my understanding, irregardless of the outward circumstance. Peace exists, soo there's no use in wishing, but doing the work matters. It might be masked in times of war (when was there not such a time)...but it's still attainable individually, and not because the goal is to spread it outward, but for itself alone. Outward effects are inevitable. Even a peace activist, acting consciously in the larger world, is responsible for maintaining inner peace work first and foremost.
Just to be clear, I did not mean that the signifier carries the message in in itself, because that changes from culture to culture, from individual to individual, as Mo so aptly pointed out in her comment....just that whatever we notice out of the vast occurrences of our daily living, is significant to us. It's that significance that is the key for each one. For me it was references from my past to the white buffalo calf woman legend-exposure to a shaman group in the early nineties, and the white deer-because of my friend Donna. World mythology, legends, and fairy tales have interested me since I was a kid reading the Grimm brothers, through more sophisticated studies like Grave's "The White Goddess". Humanity learns to understand itself through these stories, and they are rich in imaginative stuff, so nourishing for the artists craft.
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