bat

John and I started Melissa’s Sunday teleconferences in May. And we joined in a powerful Full Moon session last night. It’s hard to explain Melissa’s work, so it’s good that she offers recordings online now for cheap; go check it out.

Last night as we were listening, a group of bats was feeding in the trees around our yard. I love bats and was so glad to see them. I hadn’t really noticed them around, but I do know the neighborhood association has been selling bat houses to help keep the mosquito population (for which Belmont is famous) down. Besides eating bugs, bats have this medicine:

Bat embraces the idea of shamanistic death. The ritual death of the healer is steeped in secrets and highly involved initiation rites. Shaman death is the symbolic death of the initiate to the old ways of life and personal identity. The initiation that brings the right to heal and to be called shaman is necessarily preceded by ritual death. Most of these rituals are brutally hard on the body, mind, and spirit. In light of today’s standards, it can be very difficult to find a person who can take the abuse and come through it with their balance intact…

If Bat has appeared… it symbolizes the need for a ritualistic death of some way of life that no longer suits your growth pattern. It can mean a time of letting go of old habits, and of assuming the position in life that prepares you for rebirth, or in some cases initiation. In every case, Bat signals rebirth of some part of yourself or the death of old patterns. If you resist your destiny, it can be a long, drawn out, or painful death. The universe is always asking you to grow and become your future. To do so you must die the shaman’s death. Source

Holy shamanic cave dwellers, bat-man! Most of us don’t like the idea of facing pain. But this bat symbolism fits with the astrology of this Full Moon being in close proximity to Pluto, the planet whose namesake ruled the underworld in the old myths. Pluto’s energy signals emergence of deeply buried Freudian/Jungian psychological stuff, and situations that threaten our sense of control. These can bring out extremes of feeling and behavior, our own personal “trial by fire” that we must either “do or die,” either lance the boil and let the yucky stuff out, or push the infection down more deeply. (Sorry for the icky metaphor.)

If we choose to live consciously, we understand that these extremes emerge so that we can stop repressing whatever is at the source, and live more fully in our truth. Pluto is also the god of wealth, presumably the wealth of spirit and/or “coin of the realm” as my friend Polly calls it, that comes to you when you own your power, those gems you find when you go boldly into the depths of your own psyche. It’s the easiest thing, and it’s the hardest thing.