Deer

While looking at What’s Your Sign.com, I found this information about the deer.  In ancient Celtic animal lore, the deer is linked to the arts of poetry and music due to its elegant form. The Celts also believed that deer were associated with the realm of fairies, and would lead groups of fairies trailing behind them as they cleared a path through the forest. Both the Celtics and Native Americans observed the deer as perceptive when it came to finding the best herbs. The people who did this would follow the deer to prime herb patches, many of which proved to be highly beneficial to their medicinal needs.

In China the deer is a symbol of happiness and good fortune. In Chinese its name is a homonym for the word abundance. The meaning of the deer is associated with the dawn, the moon, and the direction of the east.

Some honor the deer during a full moon to enhance or draw out some of  the deers qualities within themselves. Honoring the deer with one's attention pointed in an eastern direction as the Sun rises is believed to elicit responsive energy to some people.

Symbolic meanings of the deer include: Love, Grace, Peace, Beauty, Fertility, Humility, Swiftness, Regrowth, Creativity, Spirituality, Abundance, Benevolence, and Watchfulness.

In my graphite drawings, I can relate to the deer. I must be careful and attentive with my drawing when using a hard lead pencil so that I don’t dig into the paper.  Every pencil stroke counts, and though I can always erase, sometimes it is best to get things right the first time so you don’t have to.

I also found something called a “white deer” while researching on Symbolic Meanings.com. I am guessing this meant an albino deer, but I am not sure. This sounded interesting to me because I had not heard of one before in real life. I have only seen them in World of Warcraft.

The Native Americans believed the occurrence of a white animal was a major sign of prophecy one that a major shift in the earth was going to happen. Native Americans believed in something called a “vision quest.” This was when one of them would go into the wild without food or water and stay there until they could commune with nature and have a deep personal truth revealed to them in the form of a vision.  Then they would return home.  This was most likely just a hallucination, but to them it was real. Usually, white animals were seen during one of these vision-quests.  However, if one was seen during the normal course of day, this would cause a tremendous ripple among the members of a tribe.  A great meeting would be called, the elders would be consulted, and great care would be taken to communicate with the animal spirits to determine the meaning of the message.

To the Native Americans, the deer was/is a symbol of the great spirit – a sign of the sun as its antlers spread like the sun’s rays.  They also recognized the shedding and regrowth of a stags antlers and saw it as asymbol of regeneration, cycle, and growth.

For us, the deers alert, keen, aware nature can be translated into the quality of being spiritually aware which is why the deer is seen primarily as a spiritual symbol.

When a white animal appears in nature it is a message of:

Higher Thoughts, Higher Ideals, Purity of Soul, Cleansing of Spirit, and Attaining Higher Knowledge.

Add these attributes with those of the female deer which are: Benevolence, Kindness, Creativity, Spirituality, Renewal, and Connectedness.

The male deer holds the same representations, but also includes attributes of: Longevity, Virility, Abundance, and Endurance.