Reindeer Woman

This story comes from d page, whose synchronicities we have posted several times before. Her blog,  Mythic Musings, is richly textured with detail and the psychic experiences she writes about always have deep, mythic levels to them. This story, which involves a dream, is no exception.
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In December 2004, D and her husband were out running errands. “Suddenly, my left ear had a long, sustained ringing and I had simultaneous visions of destruction and flooding. I knew many would die. This was one of my first encounters with this type of visionary experience. I was disoriented and my husband had to hold me up until it was over. I told him what I was witnessing. I felt horrified. I knew it would happen in 3 days time, but not where it would happen.”

On the night of December 25, she had the following dream: “I am facing a goddess. She is half human, half reindeer. She is a mixture of skin,
 fur and hair. She has enormous antlers. She is very powerful. She is flinging my body around, like a lasso, holding it by the hair. My body’s orbit stays the same,  until she shifts it slightly, subtly. Then my body’s orbit changes. I just know, somehow, that she is Reindeer Woman.

“I had no idea who Reindeer Woman was. I did correlate  my body in the dream with the Earth. I mention in my profile that I have a complex of autoimmune diseases. I had, long ago, come to a conclusion: the illness of my body is somehow directly linked to humanity’s damage of our environment and that my condition was a mirror of a larger issue regarding the whole planet. Consequently, in the above mentioned dream, my body was the Earth. But who was this powerful goddess?

“When I got up on the morning of December 26, I saw what had happen during the night. Sumatra had had  an  unprecedented quake, with an ensuing destructive tsunamis.”

“Many days after the horrific event in Sumatra, scientists announced that the earth’s axis had shifted.This quake was the 2nd strongest ever recorded and the Earth continued to oscillate for four months after the initial event. When reading about the Sumatra quake causing a shift of the Earth’s axis, I realized that Reindeer Woman was somehow link the axis. I did some library and internet research, but found nothing regarding a reindeer goddess and the axis of the earth. At the time, the only material I could find on reindeer goddesses was Linda Schierse Leonard’s book Creations Heartbeat: Following the Reindeer Spirit. Leonard feels  the reindeer is an excellent motif representing the re-emergence of the Goddess.

“On February 24th, 2010 my husband and I were in a thrift store. There was a rather  dog-eared, hard covered novel on a shelf. I noticed there was a sketch of a rock with a pictograph of an antlered woman on the cover.(I can’t remember the title!) I handed the book to Larry and said; “The last time I saw reindeer woman, the Earth’s axis shifted.” He knew that I was talking about the Sumatra quake. He asked me if I wanted the book. I said no…. I didn’t feel very well and the store was very busy. I needed to leave. I didn’t dream about “Reindeer Woman” that night, but I did have a difficult experience the following night, as described here.

“On February 25th, Chile had an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of the Maule Region,  with tsunami warnings issued for the Pacific Rim. On March 1st, scientists declared that the quake caused another axis shift. My heart sank when I realized the significance of coming across the image of the reindeer woman yet again. Now, I was determined to find the connection between this image, and the Earth’s axis.”

D’s research led her to art historian Esther Jacobson, whose book The Deer-Goddess of Ancient Siberia: A Study in the Ecology of Belief, documents the transformation of the image of the pre-shamanic, neolithic reindeer goddess as Axis Mundi (world tree), through time and history. The qualities Jacobson linked
 the reindeer goddess to included:
* deer mother as tree of life
* source and end of each clan’s lineage
* beginnings endings regeneration
* her sacred places include heavenly bodies,rivers, mountains

The deeper D dug, the more apparent it became that her dream drew upon ancient symbols, what Jung would call the collective unconscious.”According to the Global Action Network, reindeer were domesticated as early as  7000 years ago, before the horse was domesticated. The reindeer is the only species where the antlers are larger on the female and she is the leader of the pack, making this image of the Great Mother Goddess par excellence. Her image has been traced repeatedly on stones, in caves and among standing stones.

“Originally she was portrayed as the axis of the Earth, with her tradition being rooted in an ancient identification with cosmogenesis. Her images were dynamic, in motion, half human into reindeer with the antlers morphing into birds and griffins reaching toward the sky. She was often portrayed with a mirror, representing the concepts that Earth is a mirror of the heavenly, and the afterlife a mirror of earthly life (in reverse). Her morphing form with antler  branches represent the whole Tree of Life. She has been found tattooed on the mummies of the Pazyryk Valley.”

In fact, the image at the beginning of this post is part of the archaeological finds in the Pazyryk Valley in southwestern Russia. “It’s a Scythian reindeer pole that represents the goddess as Earth’s axis and the World Tree. The finds were dated 6th-3rd century BCE and the mummies at this site were tattooed with images of reindeer.”

” How does a modern person come to be connected with ancient primal deities? Why did a neolithic Reindeer Goddess show up in my dreamscape? More specifically, why did she assert herself into my consciousness twice, before an axis shift? Jungians, pagans, Sufis, Kabbalists all believe in the “return of the goddess”. It seems to me, she never left. I am going to make a more conscious effort to connect with Her.”
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Dream symbolism isn’t always obvious, but D recognized a pattern to her experiences, did the research, and it seems she dipped directly into the collective unconscious to define the symbol.