Night Owl Totem

Night Owl Totem

“The Spirit is stronger than the body, or mind”, the Elder Women said “it is time”

All the Grandmothers, and Maternal Uncles agreed “this young man, Jarli, was ready to access sacred knowledge”. Despite the danger, the consensus was that many boys had reached the age of ‘Spiritual conception’.

For Jarli, this was his second initiation, where his personal totem would reveal itself to the tribe. His Maternal Uncle, Diran, was hoping it would be the Night Owl, his namesake, he had often been called a predator at night, they could hunt together. in the shadows of sunset. But this time it involved the whole mob, since his first initiation, Jarli had to focus on his ‘conduct’, now the attention was also on his family, his choice of friends, and his attitude towards mentors. a type of respect for his Elders.

His manner defined his worthiness and the quality of all his interactions because he would one day become an honoured Lawmen. Considered by all as a trustee of tribal values, a keeper of cultural observances, conforming to the Elder’s wishes in everything, from birth, marriage, to burial.

To have an owl totem, for a man, means cunning, a third of the part of Wisdom, an owl totem for a woman, is the whole Virtue of Wisdom. Jarli remembered many nights listening to Elder Women describing the Spirit as the first energy, so infinitesimally small it could permeate all things, connect everything, inseparable from life. He remembered the Council of Good Grace and stories of Totems - the wisdom of relationships between nature and humans, the back and forth of reincarnations, the ebb and flow of energy between Spirit realms and the World of kinship.

For his ritual, kin would come long distances, with only the night sky and land formations to guide them, they never took a wrong turn, they knew when and where to meet. Jarli was a child of the intermarriage of two skins, he and his older sister, Nami, spoke both languages. After such gatherings, only she was permitted to translate learning that went as far back as the beginning of time. Jarli remembered she would wander in a daze and spend hours, days, weeks, pondering the meanings of the Women’s sacred business.

After one such Council, Nami gripped him and pleaded for him to look after himself, saying “the body is the map of the life lived, it must be a worthy one if our Spirit is to live on past death” She was trance like and continued “Creation Spirits are beings, part of ourselves, intimately connected to the earth, they intersect Spirits and become human. Upon the death of a well-cared for body, they pass back into a non-human,”

Jarli knew this is why they lived life as if they would not die, as if they would inherit their own legacy, as if they themselves would benefit, in another lifetime, from their actions in this life, and they treated everyone as if they would meet again in another time. They called this ‘warmth at their back’ there was no burning bridges, they would always return.

Nami, was mystified, as to the power of an energy so strong that the ‘first people entered into a Covenant to preserve nature as it was in the beginning, in exchange for the spiritual power of reincarnation. Nami learnt about the mystical contract to preserve life, across time, and how protecting the original state of the earth, presented a problem. As if his life depended on it, Jarli asked her “how did our ancestors live on the earth as if they weren’t there?

Nami said, Aunty explained it to her as, Totems, we each get given different totems and we are charged with the responsibility to protect out totems. You are about to get a personal Totem, and you have a Tribal Totem, a Skin Totem, and when you are a lawmaker you will have a Spirit Totem. Look Binna, our Grandmother is sitting under that tree, over there, we should ask her how will we each find a way to survive but make no impact? The children made their way over to an old woman sitting on the ground, painting, in dots, a map of the celebrations ahead of them.

Jarli and Nami sat beside Binna and the old woman smiled and said “make the most of everything”, Nami told her that they had no idea of how to leave things exactly as they were and at the same time make the most of them. Jarli, looking perplexed, asked “how is that possible” Binna was aware that any day now her maternal grandson’s fortitude was about to be tested, in such a demanding ritual, that he needed to hear the words of Wisdom, for his Owl Totem.

She touched his eyes and closed them and spoke gently, explaining the ‘Dreaming’ ‘In the beginning of time, our original ancestors devised a way to honor the Covenant, ‘the Dreaming’, a state of Grace, of good Counsel for descendants to pass on rules, perpetuated through Totemic Lore’. Lore is the Spiritual vehicle for Rites, the embodiment of totems, passed down through the millenniums, manifesting in dance, chants, stories, and ceremonies – Initiation.

Binna told of their Skin totem, the purple necked Rock-wallaby, Sadly, recounting how it hadn’t been seen for generations, except in rock images of extinct animal totems. Explaining why it’s cousin the rock wallaby needed protecting from the ever increasing predators because unlike other animals, they leave their babies in shelter caves to feed in the evening on fruit, leaves and herbs, they don’t often drink and can put birthing on hold until the conditions best suit survival, conditions that were becoming increasingly inhospitable, many die before ever having reproduced.

The old Aboriginal woman remembered how the landscape had changed, how many animals disappeared, and their descendants would have to navigate life without their animal totem, having no spirit guide is the highest price for the soul to pay. Owls, the sign of protection, infers a threat and they are under threat, since they live and nest in hollows of trees, found in old growth forests, disappearing from logging, development, and fires.

Binna told her grandchildren how, after colonization, their Elders’ had no way of defending themselves, and how they were banished from their Spiritual source and culture. How they had been forced to break their Covenant, to lose grasp of the threads of their Dreaming, for seven generations they had been Spiritually attacked and how it fragmented their Totemic Lore.

Jarli fell asleep and on the wandering path into the dream he recognised his own totem story, he saw the extinction, the abandoned, the collapse. Yet the crisp breeze kept the heavens clear and the dazzling light warmed and comforted him, and he climbed that wretched mountain, haunted by illusion, with earnest feet he passed the fallen nature warriors, with laughing eyes he flashed a smile without disguise. As he walked in time, he heard the last bells chime, the last trees fell, he felt the Spirits grieve. The Covenant it was broken, all to be judged had spoken. Too Late, Too Soon, cried the voice of Doom, dying sighing nature, their ancestors had warned of the prophecies of a time when the Devil’s Marbles turned white but that’s a story for another time.