February 14, 2012: Hare, from the Druid Animal Oracle
There are days when another tool than my Tarot falls out of my Crane Bag, and this is one of those days. Today's draw didn't seem to want to be a tarot card. Instead, we have a card from the Druid Animal Oracle. This card is "Hare", in Gaelic called, "Gearr." The hare represents Rebirth, Intuition, Balance. The image on this card the shows the original hare of Britain- the Arctic hare, which was later replaced by the common brown hare, imported by the Romans from the plains of central Europe. It is nearly dawn but we can still see the moon in the sky. In the background stands a dolmen- symbol of rebirth-and in the foreground we can see a lapwing's nest. with the eggs which were said to have been brought by the hare. Harebell, hare parsley, and hare's foot clover grow close by.
Gearr brings us the benefits of balance and intuition, of promise and fulfilment. The hare is a creature of the Goddess, the moon and the night, and yet it also represents the dawn, brightness and the east. It is the most adept of animals at shape-shifting; we can never be sure exactly where the hare is - in this world or the Otherworld. It represents intuition, which makes things appear suddenly in our consciousness, like the lapwing eggs of Eostre, that magically appear in the hare's form (nest). The hare brings the excitement of rebirth, fertile abundance and willing release as each creative cycle comes to an end.
With the Hare as your ally you will be well able to negotiate times of change, and you will be able to draw on your intuition to guide you through life. As bearers of good fortune, and as animals sacred to the Goddess, hares, or figurines of them, have been found buried in ritual pits. As a grave companion the hare is ideal, for it symbolises the power of the Goddess to bring rebirth and immortality. This power is often represented in the Corn spirit, who embodies the magical ability of the life sustaining crops to die in the autumn only to be reborn in the spring. The pagan underpinnings of Christianity become abundantly obvious at Alban Eiler, the spring equinox. Here the hare is the original "Easter Bunny" - The word Easter being derived from the Saxon Goddess Eostre, to whom the hare was sacred. We look forward, here on the second quarter of the Rowan Moon, and see the old dying away and the new being brought into existence.
