We are entering the season of the Spirit Bear.
All Souls’ is three days away — the night when spirits walk in many cultures and places around the world. Here, the day that follows is one to remember and honor those among one’s own who have walked on.
But in the days surrounding this threshold between the worlds, the spirits walk: some that were once human, some that were never so. Some are benign, some are not, and some are simply manifestations of power in its neutral, elemental form.
And it’s the season when sightings of the Spirit Bear begin to be reported.
I’ve written about this bear before: It’s one of those beings that straddles the threshold between this world and the one beyond, between hard tangible reality and the mysteries of metaphor and symbols of the sacred. It’s very much a real thing, and also something no one’s quite sure exists in the usual sense of that word.
The dominant culture calls it the Ghost Bear. It’s actually a genetic variant of the ordinary black bear — not an albino, but one to whom biology and chance have given a recessive gene that causes its adult coat to come in white rather than black. [Albinism involves other specific characteristics, too, traits that this bear does not share.] They are well known on the Pacific coast of Canada, but there are many parts of what is now known as the U.S. where the indigenous peoples of those regions have, for millennia, known of the Spirit Bear. Most of those are to points north, in the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest.
But the people here have long known of the White Bear who lives in the mountains, a spirit who makes his home deep within the stands of piñon and cedar, spruce and fir, well hidden by the protective embrace of the mountainside. He and his kind are known to emerge, periodically, descending to this lower elevation and allowing themselves to be glimpsed on rare occasions.
Such a bear necessarily would seem to hold great power and medicine.
Today, we feature a work that embodies the spirit of this great creature, a medicine bear who appears, but only just, in the traditional Southwestern hump-backed style, and whose coat is just this side of white. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This enormous medicine bear by master carver Mark Swazo-Hinds (Tesuque Pueblo) is substantial enough to be displayed on a large coffee table. A museum-quality showpiece carved of very pale sandstone in a subtle version of the traditional Southwest hump-backed style, he’s more than a foot long and extremely heavy. He carries a complex medicine bundle crafted in Mark’s own inimitable style, of macaw and turkey feathers, pieces of turquoise, old pottery sherds, and shells, tied on with fabric to keep it secure.
Sandstone; turkey feathers; macaw feathers; pottery sherds; turquoise; shells; fabric
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight and fragility require special handling; extra shipping charges apply
This bear holds medicine in very literal terms: feathers, turquoise, coral, shells, ancient sherds of pottery. He is a being of substance, in both size and spirit. But more than that, he is a bear for the season, a spirit being in rare form and color, one who is nearly as white as the winter snows, a medicine spirit of the evergreen mountains who is known for his ability to reject his darker counterparts’ compulsion toward the cycle of dormancy and hibernation.
From now through the winter, there is a chance — just a chance, a minuscule one, but a chance nonetheless — that he will emerge once again. If he does, those given the gift of a glimpse of him will be given another gift, as well: that of the knowledge that it is possible to cross the barriers of biology, and to transcend the boundaries between worlds.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
