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| | From:  sageawk57 (Original Message) | Sent: 8/24/2004 4:16 PM |
Frogs Return Moon (Beaver) April 20 to May 20 People born during the Frogs Return Moon, April 20 to May 20, have the beaver as their totem in the animal kingdom, the blue camas as their totem in the plant kingdom and the chrysocolla as their totem in the mineral kingdom. Their color is blue, and they are of the Turtle elemental clan. Their stone, the chrysocolla, is similar, in many ways, to the turquoise. It is often found as a by-product of the copper mining process, as is the turquoise. Chrysocolla is a hydrous copper silicate. It ranges from a true green to greenish blue to a true blue color. It has a shining, glassy luster and, at the same time, an earthy look to the stone. Chrysocolla has the property of sticking to the tongue, and this is often the way it is distinguished. Like turquoise, chrysocolla has been used for adornment since early times, although it is not as valued as turquoise. Its startling blue color, when it is found in this shade, mixed with its earthy luster, has given it a reputation of being the stone that has the possibility of helping its wearer to balance the elements of earth and sky within himself. It is considered a stone of good medicine that will help to bring luck and good health to its owner. It is also considered a stone that can purify the body, heart, mind and spirit. It has been used in earlier times, and today, to make fetishes or nuggets which have and will retain the color that is often associated with pure turquoise. It tends to retain its original color more than turquoise will. From this stone Beaver people can learn to combine within themselves the powers of the earth and sky. Most Beaver people, by their natures and by their membership in the Turtle clan, are very rooted in the earth, sometimes too rooted. They can find hapiness by living well on the earth level without ever looking skyward to see what lessons there are for them in this realm. The beautiful blue shade of the chrysocolla can be an especially helpful reminder to them that, to be balanced, they must look upward as well, to find what is there for them to learn in the other realms of living. Like their stone, Beaver people appear lucky, although often their apparent luck comes about as the result of hard work, and a practicality that lets them know when to be at the right place at the right time. They also have strong bodies and can enjoy good health, especially if they wear their stone, as long as they remember to curb their tendency to overindulge. These folks, like chrysocolla, will retain their original color, or nature, unless something really drastic happens to make them change. They are very stable people, and they are most comfortable being in situations that allow them to retain whatever stability that they can. It is unusual to find people of the Beaver totem who will throw knapsacks on their backs unless they are traveling through another position on the wheel. When they travel or change their environments, they like to do so in as systematic a way as possible. They just feel more comfortable having at least some familiar things around them. This unchanging part of their nature, which reflects a quality of their mineral, makes these folks very good friends to have. Once they decide that they are your friend, they will not easily change their minds. They are loyal associates to have and ones that can bring stability to people or projects of a more mercurial nature. Like chrysocolla, Beaver people have an ability to bring a feeling of purity t othings and people that they touch. This comes from their loyality, their stability and their willingness to treat friendships and other relationships in a way that seems so clean and sparkling by current standards that it feels like it comes from a purer time and place |
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The plant associated with people of this totem is the blue camas, a wild member of the lily family. Several types of camas grow in this country, and it is essential to differentiate between them. In the East is wild hyacinth, or squills, which looks much like the western blue camas except that it is smaller and has paler blue flowers. Blue camas has basal, grasslike leaves, eight to fifeteen inches long. The flowers, which appear in early May, are a brilliant blue. They grow on a single stalk and have three sepals and three petals. The plant can grow to three feet, but usually stops at two. There is another type of camas, which usually grows near blue camas. The leaves, stem and bulbs look just like those of blue camas, but it has yellow or greenish-white flowers. This is known as death camas and should never be eaten, as it will make you very sick, or worse, depending on the quanity ingested. It is said that the bulbs and leaves of death camas will leave a burning sensation when touched to the tongue. To be safe it is best to dig up camas bulbs when the plants are in flower, although the bulb, which looks like a small onion, would be bigger if left until the end of the summer. Blue camas was a staple food for Native people in many parts of the United States. They would mark the edible plants with strips of bark when they were in flower and then go back to pick the bulbs when they had reached optimum size. Native people cooked the bulbs by digging a hole, lining the bottom and sides with flat rock, and building a fire. When the rocks were real hot, they would rake out the embers, then line the stones with ferns, bush branches or other vegetation. They would put in up to one hundred pounds of bulbs at a time, then cover them with branches, soil and mats. They made a hole with a stick, poured water in and allowed the bulbs to steam for a day or so. When they were cooked, they would strip the bark and press the bulbs flat like pancakes. They smell like vanilla and taste like brown or maple sugar. They were also used to sweeten other foods in the days before sugar. Blue camas bulbs can be made into a molasses by boiling them until the water is almost evaporated. Many early white settlers learned of blue camas from Native people and used this bulb to spice up an otherwise monotonous diet. Although blue camas appears starchy, it does not contain starch. It contains inulin, a complex sugar also found in dandelion root and Jerusalem artichoke. Because of inulin, which effects the action of the pancreas, blue camas was eaten regularly by Native people to help keep the blood sugar level in balance and avoid diabetes. If eaten excessively, blue camas can act as a purgative and emetic. What a marvelous plant for Beaver people who, like it, can be conscious of beauty and practicality at the same time. In flower, camas inspires those who see it with its beauty. Abloom in a wide meadow, it looks like a blue lake. Up close its delicate flowers fascinate you with their beauty and their precision. Even the white death camas is beautiful to behold. Yet the blue camas, besides giving joy, also gives a food that was used to sustain people for thousands of years. Blue camas was one of the gifts of the Earth Mother that gave stability of diet and health to Native people |
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Like their plant, Beaver people have the ability to sustain those with whom they are associated. Because their own roots go deeply into the earth, they are able to give a firm footing to people or projects with which they are associated. Like the blue camas bulb, they can both sustain and sweeten things with which they are involved, for their stability is usually sweetened by the contentment they are capable of feeling and transmitting when they are in balance with the energies coming through them. As the good qualities of blue camas are reversed in death camas, so the good qualities of Beaver people can be reversed when their energies are not allowed to flow smoothly through them. During these periods Beaver people can become so crystallized in their stability that they can literally choke the life out of themselves and any things that they touch. When Beaver people do not feel contentment, they transmit this disharmony as greatly as they otherwise transmit harmony. At these times Beaver people could use the mental equivalent of an excessive amount of blue camas to get them moving again, at least in some way. The color of Beaver people is blue, the brilliant blue of the camas flower or of the pure blue chrysocolla. For them this blue signifies physical tranquillity and psychological contentment stemming from a feeling of peace and happiness. These feelings that come from the color blue are necessary for Beaver people to have before they can work with the spiritual aspects of this color. Beaver people must be happily grounded on the earth plane before they can discover the spiritual aspirations that are also within them. Being born under the Frogs Return Moon, the second moon of Wabun to the East, gives Beaver people a gentle prod toward constantly growing, since this is one of the spring moons during which all things on the earth begin to stir and grow. This impetus is necessary so that Beaver folks will not get caught too rigidly in their own ideas of contentment coming only from complete stability. Being under the direction of Wabun also encourages these folks to go beyond the material level and seek whatever spiritual illumination they can find. As mentioned previously, their membership in the Turtle clan increases the rootedness and stability of Beaver people and intensifies many of their other traits. Being from this clan means that they have to firmly guard against becoming too stubborn or unmoving in any of their thoughts, feelings or actions, or they can very effectively block the flow of life's energy which sustains them |
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The beaver, the animal totem of those born under the Frogs Return moon, is, outside of man, the only animal capable of changing its enviroment drastically in order to provide for its own peace, security and contentment. The beaver is the largest rodent in this country, the second largest in the world, after the South American capybara. Adult beavers can weigh between thirty and seventy pounds, and they never stop growing. A beaver can be as much as three to four feet long. It has a body amazingly engineered to suit its habits and habitat. While it is a land mammel, it spends a lot of time in the water. Its lungs and cardiovascular system are designed to allow it to storeenough oxygen to remain underwater for fifeteen minutes or more. It has a large, broad, flat, scaly tail, which serves as a rudder when it is swimming and a balancer when it is working on land. Its front paws are very nimble, allowing it to hold and turn a branch it is eating much as we hold corn on a cob, and to enable it to carry mud and leaves necessary for its construction work. Its rear paws are webbed and as large as a Ping-Pong paddle when extended, giving it its amazing swimming speed and ability. Its brown fur is dense and is kept waterproof by the oil that its musk gland secretes. Its teeth are large, high crowned and capable of repairing or replacing themselves if they are hurt or lost, a most necessary thing for an animal that cuts down many trees both for eating and for building. Beavers have folds of skinbehind their incisors which seal their mouth, allowing them to work underwater without drowning. They have valvelike ears and nostrils which automatically close when they are underwater, and clear membranes which shield their eyes. With such magnificently adapted bodies you would expect to find beavers all over the place, especially since they have few natural predators and amazing defenses against them. We might have them all over now if it weren't for the fact that beavers have two things that men felt they needed more than the beavers: their fur, long used for making gentlemen's hats, and their musk gland, which secretes castoreum, regarded as a cure-all at least from the time of the early Greeks until the eighteenth century. Castoreum contains salicylic acid, one of the main ingrediants in aspirin, and was and still is used as a fixative in expensive perfumes. Beaver was in such demand that the search for them probably did as much to motivate white exploration of this continent as anything else. Fromthe 1600's the Hudson's Bay Company sent trappers in large numbers to get beavers, andmany fortunes, including that of the Astors, were built upon beaver pelts. Because of their value to humans, beavers were almost driven to extinction by the 1800's. Even as late as 1907 to 1909 the average annual catch of beavers here was about eighty thousand. By 1912 it dropped to seventeen thousand, luckily for both us and the beavers |
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Beavers, humans finally discovered, helped the water table and were of great value to fishing, wildlife, vegetation and aesthetics. This help comes about because of the dams and lodges most beavers build to protect themselves and to keep comfortable. These amazing log constructions, shored up by mud and leaves, help to maintain old ponds and create new ones where other plants and animals can live. Beaver's dams and canals are the work of natural engineers. Canals, which can extend seven hundred feet or more, are usually built on a number of levels with locks at intervals to maintain a proper water level. Beavers use them to maintain water deep enough to float a log into their pond so they can have sufficient food and repair materials for their dams. The dams are built so the beaver will have a deep body of water, of a fairly constant level, year round. A beaver needs its pond to remain safe from predators and to keep enough food to last throughout the winter, when it is more difficult to get trees, the staple of the beaver's diet. They eat the leaves and the sweet inner bark and use the logs for construction. Their favorite is quaking aspen bark, a fact that Otter people should note. Beavers don't talk much. There is an occasional bark, hiss or squeal, but they usually make a soft mew, and this only in their lodge. They slap the water with their tails as a warning of danger. Beavers mate for life, and usually live in colonies of about five. They are affectionate parents who keep their children around for two years, or until the next litter of kits come. At this time, they run them off, and they must look for their own mate and lodge. When the babies are born, the mother runs the father off until the kits are able to get around. He spends his exile with other husbands who have also been asked to leave. Old males who lose their mates sometimes become surly, and some people say the beavers in the colony then hold a council to decide whether or not to drive the disharmonious one off. Such old beavers usually live alone in a bank den, not even bothering to find a lodge. People of this totem, like the beaver, are capable of drastically altering their enviroments in order to provide for their own peace, security and contentment. They can, and will, make alterations on any number of levels: physical, mental or emotional. Like the beaver, they will make these alterations in a slow, deliberate but constant and resourceful way. Once they have their environment in order, they will, like their totem, make repairs whenever necessary to make sure that it remains that way. An orderly, secure setting is really necessary for Beaver people to work and grow, and it must be orderly on all of the levels previously mentioned. It is not that Beaver people can't change, it is just that they can grow more easily when they have a setting that gives them a feeling of security and contentment. Like the beaver, most people of this totem have some attraction to the water: to swimming or sailing, or just walking around lakes, rivers or ponds. The water seems to allow them to see thingsmore clearly and put their lives in better perspective. Beaver people are cleaver and nimble. They are quick to learn anything that they feel is necessary or beneficial for them to know. Like the beaver, they also have bodies and minds that quickly adapt themselves to their environment, once they have set the environment in order. Because of this, these folks can be successful in any field or endeavor to which they apply themselves. They are patient and perserving people and will usually obtain whatever they set their minds to because of these qualities. They are also creative people, especially on the physical level. You will rarely see a Beaver person's lodge that will not show a great deal of originality in its decor. They will spend a lot of time and creativity on designing just the right backdrop for their own personalities. This creative energy can be put to other uses with as amazing results. |
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Beaver people, like their totem, have minds capable of wonderful feats of engineering, whether they put their minds on their homes, their jobs or their friends. When they determine that things need changing to function better, things will change. Given some time, Beaver people can redesign most jobs or work projects to run better, smoother and more harmoniously for all of the people involved. They will sometimes put this creative energy to work to help their friends and loved ones redesigntheir lives to work ina more content and tranquil way. When they have done all this, they will turn their energies toward the spiritual realms in which they can also be at home. These folks often don't talk to much, when they are not certain of their surroundings or the people in them.Once they get to know people, however, they will express their thoughts quite readily. Their feelings are another thing. These they can hold back as effectively as the beaver's dam holds back the water. Beaver people must learn to let their feelings out a little at a time, or they run the risk of someday being drowned ina flash flood of emotion. It is a difficult task for them to learn to do this, as they are self-reliant people and usually feel that they should not burden others with their own problems. If Beaver people don't learn to express more feelings and to accept life with its changes, they can become very stubborn and unhappy, and will, in this condition, often overindilge themselves in food, drink or anything else that will dull their feelings of discontent. If they continue long in this state, blocking themselves from what they need, they can develop blockages in their neck or throat or can damage their liver or gallbladder through overindulgence. Beaver people, like their totem, take relationships very seriously. When they find a mate, they sincerely hope it will be for life. The stability of a good relationship often gives them the contentment they need to grow in other directions and they will lavish affection upon those whom they love. These folks make good parents, like the Beaver. Females tend to be very devoted, almost territorial, about their children, especially when very young. They also can make the mistake of doing the same thing the beaver female does and driving off the male by ignoring him and giving all of her attention to the child. As the children get older, Beaver people will loosen the ropes on them, and they often will make a real push to get their children out of the lodge, when it is the right time for them to make their own lives. They have a good sense of timing on this. As children, Beaver people can be testy until they have an established routine. Once they have that, they will be contented children and usually quite well behaved. They are creative and can easily amuse themselves for long periods of time. However, Beaver children are not the kind to take on long trips with vague destinations. The insecurities that this kind of traveling gives them will dampen the fun of anyone involved. Beaver people complement those of the Snake clan. They are most easy compatible with their fellow members of the Turtle clan, those of the Snow Goose and the Brown Bear, and with those of the Frog clan, Cougar and Flicker people. As people from other totems travel through this place on the wheel, they can learn how to set their own houses in order on this earth plane, so that, whatever they seek, they can seek it from a place of tranquillity and contentment. They can also learn the value of stability, of patience and perseverance, and they can learn better how to root themselves in the Earth Mother who sustains us all. |
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