Whale……
Of mighty oceans,
You have seen it all.
Secrets of the ages are
Heard within your call.
Teach me how to hear your words,
And how to understand,
The very roots of history,
Of when our world began.
This prayer, taken from the Medicine Cards of Jamie Sams and David Carson, affirms the whale as Mother Earth's Record Keepers, having transited from the land, back to the oceans, millions of years ago, when the Earth shifted and the ancient land mass of Lemuria sank beneath the waves. Originally from the Dog Star, Sirius, whales use sound frequencies to access memories, ancient knowledge, and to communicate with the Collective Mind. Whale-medicine teaches us to harmonize with sounds and frequencies to balance our emotional body and heal our physical form. Their gifts are shared and accessed through telepathy, an open heart and conscious breath.
I feel infinite awe, respect and gratitude for the family Balaenopteridae, suborder Mysticeti, whose kin includes the humpback, fin, Bryde's, sei, and minke whales. Blue whales are the largest mammals on Earth, having once roamed freely the oceanic majesty of our planet, they are now, sadly, an endangered species. The wholesale slaughter of blue whales by commercial whalers in the late 1800's to early 1900's reduced populations from 300,000 worldwide to an estimated 5,000 - 10,000 individuals today. It was with great curiosity and consternation that we came across the remains of a blue whale last week, as we were traveling up the Oregon coast, along Highway 101.
The whale was 78 ft. long, weighed approximately one hundred tons, and his beaching was a rare event; as far as the biologists knew - the first to occur in the past fifty years (blue whales are not known to hug the shore, as migrating grey whales do, on their journeys north to Alaska to feed, and south to Baja Mexico to give birth). Blue whales have twin blowholes, spouting up to forty feet in the air! They maintain a traveling speed of 12 mph (with short bursts of 31 mph) and live alone or with one other, for upwards of eighty years. Blues eat an average of 40 million krill daily, and their calves drink 400 liters of milk a day! Their forté is singing enchanting songs of four notes, up to two minutes in length, both soothing and hauntingly eerie to listen to.
I was hoping to take part in a ceremony to honor the whale's life. It was disturbing to watch his body being hacked into and dissembled. In researching different cultural takes on whales, I read the Vietnamese people regard whales as sacred, believing them to bring luck, safety and prosperity. When a whale is found dead, it is buried on land, with a shrine resurrected in its honor. Thousands of people attend the burial and mourn the whale's death, as if it were family. They respectfully address whales as "Lord".
Whales have been etched into ancient rock, carved in bone and stone, and mythologized in songs and stories, since the beginning of humanity's presence on Earth. Vital to the well-being of sea-faring, indigenous cultures, the Inuit people of the Arctic share a valuable message in The Story of Big Raven:
One day Big Raven (a deity in human form) finds a stranded whale. Wanting to save the whale, Big Raven asks the Great Spirit for help. The Great Spirit tells Big Raven if he wishes to help, he must go to a place in the forest where the moonlight fell in a special way. Once there, he will find sacred mushrooms, that if eaten will grant him the strength to carry the whale back to the ocean. Big Raven agrees, and follows the Great Spirit's advice by going to the forest and eating the mushrooms. When he's done, he returns to the stranded whale and brings it back to the ocean.
This teaching invokes the need to search deep within ourselves, in order to heal the heart of Nature, and more specifically, that human nature is inseparable from the whole. To access courage and strength, wisdom and knowledge, we commune with the Earth's sacred plants, animals, and indigenous cultural teachings. Extreme anthropogenic climate change is causal evidence we are consuming and destroying our eco-system, through ego-driven greed and capitalist-consumerism. We may yet surrender the path of no return, seeking spiritual guidance to change our present destiny and that of our fellow sentient beings. If we'd listen to the whales, we'd realize the way beyond materialist pursuits for wealth / domination, and slow our heartbeats and breath, in order to harmonize and co-create with Nature. There's joy in the quest, as whales (and mushrooms!) evoke a giddy happiness (we once watched a humpback named Ursula jump out of the water, in full-body breach, twelve times in a row!)
Listen to the soothing sounds of whales and dolphins:
