Sunday, December 28, 2014

Horse Spirit Animal




From January 31st 2014 is Chinese New Year, ushering in the Year of the Horse, and it is followed one month later by Losar, the Tibetan New Year. 

“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”     Shakespeare, Henry V


According to psychologist Carl Jung, horses symbolize natural forces mastered by human beings. Just like we harness a horse to ride it or use its power, we can harness our own energy or nature’s to serve us and bring us further. 

Horses are noble, grounded, powerful, spirited, and independent.  In virtually every culture, they are symbolic of freedom and passion. But they are land-based animals, so this freedom and passion is based in this world, defined by action – a very different feel than last year’s Water Snake energy. 


That theme of service is present in some Native American representations of the horse. As a spirit animal, the horse symbolizes the driving force or passion that carries us forward in life. But horses are also friends of humans like almost no other animals (other than perhaps dogs.) They have played a huge part in human culture all around the world, in the realms of transportation, agriculture, and sport. This was certainly true in many Native American cultures as well (though horses weren’t introduced to the Americas until the Spanish brought them in the 1500s, when they greatly changed the Plains Indians lives.) In other words, horses represent this combination of passion and service. In the best of circumstances.


In Buddhism, the horse is a symbol of effort and energy in spiritual practice. In some teachings, it also represents the prana energy running through the channels of our body, and particularly the mind-energy as it manifests. This mind-energy is sometimes called the ‘wind-horse’, and we can ride this wind-horse – we can tame and direct our mind – in whatever direction we want with effort and discipline.

The 11th century Tibetan yogi Milarepa speaks of the taming of this wind-horse in his  “Song of the Galloping Horse of a Yogi”:

In the mountain hermitage which is my body,
In temple of my breast,
At the summit of the triangle of my heart,
The horse which is my mind flies like the wind.
He gallops on the plains of great bliss.
If he persists, he will attain the rank of a victorious Buddha.
Going backward, he cuts the root of samsara.
Going forward he reaches the high land of Buddhahood.

Astride such a horse, one attains the highest illumination.

(translation by Losang P. Lhalungpa)


It was a great year to be with horses, the year of the horse.