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Gerald's Web Site
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Profile: Horses of Myth
Certain animals, such as cats, dogs, and horses, have been our constant companions since our earliest times on earth. Each has contributed to our growth as human beings in different ways. The dog has been a faithful guard, friend, and coworker. The cat, besides warming laps and hearts, has kept our food stores safe from rodents. But without the horse’s strong back, we couldn’t have built the world we know today. For, in the millennia before the motorcar, there was only one way to travel great distances and to haul heavy loads—by horseback.
Mythology explains our relationship with the horse in many ways. It says that we were long ago of horses born, and that as humans we still remember being joined to horses that could fly across the heavens. Mythology also tells us that of the horses of war, none was greater than the dancing Arabian, and of the horses of harmony, none more wing-footed than the Lipizzan. Other horses of greatness were the Percheron, mightiest of the strong, and the Thoroughbred, fleetest of the fast.
In the United States there are a great many myths celebrating the mule. The Poitou mule was said to be “the mule that made America possible.” Without this mule’s strength and good sense, the mines and mills would not have worked so smoothly. In field and hollow, farm and town, America profited by having the mule. If the horse made us proud, the mule made us prosperous. And how that little cousin of the horse could make us laugh!
In Native American myths, the horse came from the earth and the sun. In fact, long before the coming of the Spanish, the horse was worshiped by the Aztecs. When the Aztecs saw a man astride a horse for the first time, it was, to their eye, a magic being fused into oneness. To the Dakota, the horse was sunka waken, the mysterious dog. The Shawnee called it mishawa, elk. When Antonio de Espejo visited the Hopi in 1583, the Indians spread cotton scarves on the ground for his horses to walk upon.
Companion on the hunt, burden bearer, and friend of the people, the horse became the literal backbone of the Plains tribes. A new economy came from the horse and it was based upon wealth in numbers of these great animals. Horses were rubbed and blown upon. They were dreamed and gentled with no more than a whisper. They were fancied and made friendly by the sharing of breath—a man offering his to the horse and the horse exchanging its own essential life breath in return. And thus, again, man and horse were one.
Imagine taming a horse with a wave of the hand or guiding it with a gentle touch of a stick; or perhaps the pressure of legs or the connection with bit or bosal. The Indians used all of these techniques and more. It is no wonder that the son of the Sun Father in Navajo belief rode upon a turquoise horse at the opening of the sky. To the Navajo all aspects of the horse are praised—his neigh, the dust of his hooves, the fresh flowers he feeds upon, the holy waters he drinks, and the mist of pollen in which he is hidden.
It is no wonder then that the sun horse travels across the sky carrying the sun. A white horse of dawn; a blue roan of noon; a red chestnut of sundown; a dark bay of night.
Some years ago we asked a Navajo rider why the single track of a horse looked so much like the wings of a butterfly, and he told us, “Long ago in the time of legends, and before the first horse could walk, Butterfly came and put the flints of power into Horse’s hooves. This gave him life. This gave us power. From the wings of the butterfly came a fire-white horse that could walk upon the clouds.”
And so horse of dreams, myth made of flesh.
The magic being: horse.
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