Bringing together the wisdom of the Earth found in nature, science, mythology and spirituality
This is part 2 of the series on the spiritual meaning of horses
Introduction
From my earliest memory, I was transfixed, mesmerized, by horses. I cannot name the moment, the event, the reason for this. It was just always there, from the earliest awareness that I have. It did not come from my parents or my environment. My family did not have horses or even particularly like them and I was not brought up around them initially. Later life experience and connection with them was due to an indulgent family, responding to a never-ending wavering insistence on horses on my part.
I remember at a toddler age, seeing hoofprints in a sandy paddock. The horses were gone, moved perhaps a day or two before, so the hoofprints were fresh. These were the physical remnants of the presence of horses and as far as I was concerned, this made it some kind of holy ground. I stared at the hoofprints with what can only be described as awe and reverence. Horses had stood here. Been here. Breathed this air. Trod this sand. And there I stood, sharing the space where they had been if not the time.
A childhood dream
The lack of horses around me did not seem to deter my childhood determination to surround myself with a world of horses. Any hint of a horse would do. My favourite storybook was one about a horse. My favourite stuffed toy was of course a horse. I sat in rapture on the living room floor listening to a record album of Western songs. My imagination was caught up by the picture on the album cover. There was an endless bright blue sky, a desert landscape, a few figures on horse back scattered amongst some cattle. When my mother told me that the songs were not sung by actual cowboys, I knew, of course, that she was wrong. How could it be other than the cowboys on the wide open desert singing? In my heart, I knew the truth of it.
A birthday gift
One momentous birthday, my grandfather gave me a velvet black horse on wheels that he had owned and I had long admired. The horse had a rich mane and tail, bandages on its legs, and its own saddle and bridle. It was almost, almost, large and sturdy enough for me to sit on, but not quite. That was a magical moment–to have that horse placed in my care and love by my grandfather.
My other grandparents gifted me on another birthday with a more grown up horse story book than the one I had cherished as a toddler, a story book filled with pictures and delightful tales of horses.
My parents recounted to me my never-ending quest for a horse of my own. Notes left in the sugar bowl, tucked into the silverware cabinet, saying “Please, give me a horse.” I remember talking to my father about horses while he shaved each morning, part of my campaign.
I was a bookish and outdoorsy-child. I read everything I could get my hands on about horses, and when not reading, was romping outside. But throughout it all– one vision remained constant. Horses. Horses. Horses.
A horse of my own
And then, one day, the seemingly impossible happened. I had a horse of my own. The world changed. The world opened up, new rich layers of adventure and independence and mobility. I could ride for miles in the open prairie lands that surrounded me. I could explore deer trails and find hidden echoes of the past– an old wagon road, a tumbled down house on a forgotten homestead, an old well now abandoned.
Now, looking back from the long lens of adulthood, I can value that childhood with my horse in a different way. I can acknowledge its rarity in a world that often limits the freedom and movement of a young woman. There were no such restraints of me when I rode my horse– I was faster, stronger, more wild, than anything that might have tried to limit me. I knew the freedom of the wind in my hair, the strength of a galloping horse up a hill, of my own strength and fragility all at once, as I balanced bareback on my horse. Now I can see that these were not the usual heartbeats of a young woman’s childhood or of her life. These are the gifts I carry within me, within my sould and bones, still.
Connection to land
My horse gave me a gift- a deepening sense of being in the land and connected to it. Of being more than an observer. Of becoming aware of the changes of the seasons, each subtle and not so subtle shift day by day. In the winter, a biting north wind blew snow drifts over the treeless hills, while in summer, sun sparkled across the surface of a coolingly inviting pond. A south wind blew hot and sticky in the summer, monarch butterflies migrated in late summer and autumn, and in autumn, the hills would be ablaze in the rich scarlet of what was locally called Indian paintbrush, or prairie fire.
I could not only see the tracks of deer, at times I could ride quietly among them, the deer not bothered by the presence of my horse and I. I could gallop beneath the flight path of a hawk. Land became more than just a place–it was multilayered, magical, full of meaning and connection. It was this gift that my horse bestowed upon me– my first sense of becoming EarthWise.
The magic of horses across time and space
But while my childhood experience might be rare and all the more to be treasured for it, it some ways it also represents some cultural universal truths about horses. For there surely is no society that, having encountered the horse, did not find similar freedom, fascination and mystery in that association.
Horses perhaps uniquely hold a spiritual place across time and space, in many cultures and societies and communities.
Future posts will explore these spaces and meanings.
For instance, the horse features strongly in Irish spirituality and mythology. The Romans worshipped Epona. At the same time, Epona was a Celtic goddess, holding a place in different cultures and spiritualities. Among other things, surely these speaks to the spiritual potency of horses. Indigenous cultures in the Americas have a rich varied spirituality– and the horse features strongly in many of these. Horses were not only integrated into daily life but took on spiritual meaning and signficance as well.
Conclusion
This has only scratched the surface of what meaning horses might offer– what worlds they can open up. For me, they created a space of imagination and freedom, a sense of limitless exploration in an enchanted world waiting for discovery. Horses have occupied different places in culture in time and space. Before industrialization, horses were the literal engine of transportation and work. In industrialized societies, that space is now taken up by mechanical means. And yet there remains a deeply timeless allure and attraction to horses, perhaps against logic and reason, in the modern industrialized world.
Horses remain something that transport. Perhaps in our deepest memories, we remember that horses not only transport physically but spiritually, taking us to places that are part of and beyond our earthly awareness. Such is the spiritual gift of horses– that timeless gift and message and allure that has remained constant over time and space. This will be explored within different cultures and times in which it has occured. Come along for this EarthWise journey.
Take up this invitation to explore new landscapes and meanings! It is not only a journey into spirituality across time and space, but a way to reflect on and deepen a connection to local landscape on an EarthWise exploration.