Notes and Additions to Chapter Five
The Magical Cycle

1. Willowwind offered this comment: As I have grown older I have found that the circadian cycles have a much more powerful effect on me than they did when I was a young woman. Now on winter nights I want to hibernate as soon as it is dark. Western industrial society expects production to continue at the same pace 24 hours a day. This is in direct contradiction to what our bodies are telling us to do. I think seasonal affective disorder is a diagnosis that ignores what nature is telling us to do in favor of what the demands of business are telling us to do and to call it a disorder makes it worse, as if somehow the human who feels these cycles deeply is the one at fault. Western culture could use a little more wisdom of the cycles.

2. Willowwind offered this comment, which expresses a point beautifully: I have worked quite a bit in the Native American tradition (where I live, after all). Using some methods of seeking a totem you can end up with a regular zoo. Some of them may interact once in a while and some may simply become a background recognition of possibilities. The ones I have found to be really powerful are the ones who show up when you are not looking for them. This happened last spring for me with a particular badger – a good totem for a ferocious minded old grandmother. I have also found that the really strong, teaching animals are not the ones you would have picked for yourself, so that is a caution for people seeking an animal. Not many people would pick a turkey, for instance, and one time when I would have liked a hawk or something free and glamorous, there was that darned turkey. But the message was much more to the point than if what I had wanted had shown up.