Boar

I am a ruthless boar" 

boarIn this month Amergin sings, "I am a ruthless boar." The Boar is the last of the Four Sacred Animals to be mentioned by the poet. We have seen the boar several times dealing with the "hinge" of the year, the passage across the boundary between Light and Dark. The Boar is the creature that represents the unending continuity of divine energy and is seen as chased from one realm of energy-manifestation to the other, it's expression changing, becoming either a dark, creature of destruction or a solar teacher. Just as the Stag, who is the Boar's counterpart, changes from the antlered apparition to the earth-bound power at the heart of the greenwood, so also the Boar, at Samhain moving into darkness, is now the harbinger of death, taking the active energy of growth into darkness. The green energy of full light, who rose to triumph half a year earlier now is killed by the Boar as the hunt replays itself. Death is victorious, the forces of growth are stilled, soon the leaves will fall from the trees, and the lengthening nights will establish the rule of the Dark. 

But the Boar's descent into the Underworld is not purely a journey of destruction: because it is basically, in spite of any other roles it may play, a creature of fertility, it plants, within Death itself, the seeds of renewal. It is as though the single, driving force of growth manifest during light of the year had been smashed, but its many fragments retain life within themselves and, buried like seeds in winter soil, they will be nurtured by the darkness of the dark until the next bright season. 

The weakening of the sun and the cooling of the air should alert us to the waning of our own expanding energies and the need to face the ending of this phase of our existence, The last of the energy must be used wisely, in a way that ensures the survival of what we have already made and that facilitates the resumption of activity at a later time. Already, from far away, we hear the boom of the sea on the cliffs of Samhain, calling us down again into the depths. 

As the moon waxes, we see the wild hunt of Death charging toward us, lighting up the Land with bright autumnal colors in its throes, and we gather up those shreds of beauty to treasure in our souls. On the Full Moon the hunt has reached us, we come face-to-face with the Boar, and we hold up the gift we have prepared, the shape we have chosen to best summarize what we have achieved through this year's activity. With the moon's waning we look serenely inwards, as another year ends, and a new cycle is about to begin.