Wolf Feathers

art and parcel of my spiritual path, Wolf has always been present. At least as far as I can remember. Even as a kid I remember, when starting cub scouts, I was unbelievably disappointed because I had signed up late and so had to begin as a bear cub rather than a wolf cub like most kids.

At the same time, I never felt comfortable saying Wolf was my totem because I had read Black Elk Speaks, and as much of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee as I could stomach before having to put it down, and so had become pretty sensitive to people claiming things from other cultures that weren't theirs to claim. Still, one night in the early 90s I had a dream that convinced me that, indeed, Wolf is my totem --

I found myself running along the bottom of a dry river bed lined, almost to the point of being tiled, with large river stones. I was in a panic because the wolves were chasing me, and even though I couldn't see them I knew they were behind me. Finally I scrambled up the bank of the river bed and climbed up into a tree. I settled on a branch some distance off the ground and leaning my back against the trunk, closed my eyes and released a sigh of relief. Phew! I was safe!

This feeling was short-lived as, with eyes still shut, I felt the branch I was on bend beneath me, under another's weight. Gulp! I slowly opened my eyes to find a wolf sitting on a fork of my branch, not even a yard away from me. Before I even had time to panic I heard his words float into my mind: "Do not fear. We are always with you ."

...So, yeah, that seemed pretty significant. Definitely not a typical dream, and I had to admit to having been chosen by Wolf. It is from this dream that I took my 1st magickal name: Perching Wolf.

As this dream or vision settled in and made itself comfortable in my personal mythology, I officially joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism -- a medieval recreation group) and, as is one of the first things you do in the group, I started designing my device, or coat of arms. My medieval name is "Lovell", which means "Little Wolf." Technically, though used for humans, it was more common as a dog's name, making me want to adopt "We named the dog..." (an obscure reference to Indiana Jones) translated into Latin as my personal motto. And so of course my device had to feature a wolf, but it had to be distinguishable from other wolves. It had to be my wolf.

I reached further back in my experience to when reading Living In The Light by Shakti Gawain and doing some of the suggested meditations at the end of the chapters. Back then, though new to meditation, etc, I had met a wolf during guidance to meet your inner male. He was black, with green eyes, and he said his name was Yammas (which I still find interesting in it's closeness to the word "Lammas" -- one of the Pagan holidays that celebrates the Divine Masculine).

So my SCA wolf would be black (with green eyes although that couldn't be part of the blazon, or description, of the device), but there had to be more to set him apart... Wings!! How else would a wolf have gotten into a tree with me? And so my black winged wolf became my device --

And so, that is how my wolf got his wings, and the Corvus Lupus was born. And as I learned more about my Totem, and began to identify with Wolf -- to the point of discovering my 'inner puppy' -- he, or actually I in his form, began to show up in my comics...

The winged-wolf continues to deepen and expand into the landscape of my personal mythology. In a shamanic journey I was recently shown the palace/temple of the 'Wolf King,' before which, standing guardian, is a 3-story tall statue of a winged-wolf -- so it has definitely become deeply engrained as part of my subconscious psyche. And that is so exciting because as I grow, so does he. He is a living vital thing, just like me.