Hares

What is it about hares that makes them so emotive?

The big, doleful eyes? Soft ears, that stretch down the back, like Rapunzillian hair? The gentle curve of a velveteen nose that you know is counting time, like a heartbeat?

Michelle Shore, amazing illustrator for ‘Walk The Wheel – tales of the turning seasons’, has a wonderful collection of hares, each one drawn in pen and ink, like the one on this month’s EARTH PATHWAYS calendar page by Cherry Ferris. All are positively vibrating with life and energy and personality. The unique quality of each hare illustration makes them powerful characters in storytelling, folklore and in our psyche.

I’m sure you’ve seen a hare gazing at the moon. Not a real one (unless you are very lucky!) but the ‘Moon gazing hare’ that is such a popular pagan/new age symbol. It speaks to the complexity of these animals and their archetypal nature that we use them to represent the deeply spiritual, the profound. We believe that the moon-gazing hare is looking and seeing and feeling. They are engaged in the act of connecting with the moon; not merely existing alongside, as passive observers.

‘Walk The Wheel’ doesn’t actually have a hare character (missed opportunity!) but there are lots of other animal characters, all of whom are as fully realised as the humans; they have voices, opinions, power and conflict. They are intentionally intentional, not passive nor empty vessels for human use. They have spirit – something that I, a card-carrying animist, believe wholheartedly about all more-than-beings. They are no better nor worse than their human counterparts. And it’s not that they are particularly magical either… They are just themselves! Just alive!

And then there are those characters that blur the boundary, hybridising in the reader’s imagination to reflect the interconnectivity that lies at the heart of my animism and the book’s creative and spiritual core too. Wren is a good example, from the Imbolc story, and of course the injured Blackbird from Lark and the Song of Spring, who bares a striking resemblance to the child Merl at the end of the story.

I love bringing this sense of boundary-less-ness and equity between beings (human and more-than) into my writing. It’s what makes me put pen to paper most often and, in a world full of increasing division and enforced hierarchy, it is one of the few things that makes my writing feel meaningful and impactful. It’s where the true magic lies.

Images by Michelle Shore