It is still Samhain Season. It hasn’t turned just yet – the leaves are still turning and still falling in my corner of the world, though I can see and feel Winter coming because it’s bloody cold in my house.
I’m an animal person. I cast my witches’ circle calling in the animals of the elements, and I am a demon nature spotter – if there is a deer in that thicket, ye gods I will be the one that spies it first. I like to think of things in terms of animals, or fairy stories. For example, I have a friend who dances like a river, another who dances like Sleeping Beauty.
Samhain season, like all the seasons, has it’s own animal associations. We’ve got the good old Crows and Ravens, eaters of the dead and messengers between the worlds. We’ve got the White Sow, associated with the Goddess Keridwen, who likes to eat souls (which makes me think of this dude from the cartoon Adventure Time). But why the hell do we have:
Frogs and Toads?
It took me a while to get this one, as I’m pretty sure that any frogs and toads that haven’t gone into hibernation by now would be dead little frogs and toads. I assumed they were associated with this time because they were traditionally thought of as a bit gross and witchy (even though I think that they are super cute).
But frogs and toads are one of the ultimate creatures of rebirth and transformation. They grow from frogspawn eggs to tadpoles, morphing and slowly growing into little proto-frogs and then into full grown frogs! (That’s if the herons didn’t get them first). Three super different forms of life, all in one pond.
Another thing that marks them out as one of Samhain’s animals is their existence at the edge of the worlds – of water and land that is. They can’t live without the water, but they can’t live without the air and land either – they have a little slimy webbed foot in both worlds.
I’m really chuffed I get the frog thing now.
On the subject of frogspawn:
One of my friends introduced my to a food-hippy drink to my dance class this weekend: Chia Frescas. She drinks it as she doesn’t drink caffine and it gives her an all-natural energy boost and some omega-type supplementals, but I want to try it because it looks like frogspawn. See? Click the pic to find out more about frogspawn-innna-bottle and how it’s real good for you, promise.
