03 Horses as Our Mirrors

Are we making it all about us?

🎧 Audio Recording 🎧

Resources Mentioned

Sylvia V. Linsteadt

and her course, Women Who Run with the Land

Reading

Many of us are familiar with the proverbial saying, in the words of Buck Brannaman, “Your horse is a mirror to your soul.”

Oftentimes, when working with horses we find that horses can mirror back to us our emotional states, relational patterns, physical tension patterns, and other conflicts or themes we are experiencing in lives whether that be in our bodies, at work, with family, or some other realm of our lives.

But when we look to horses as our mirrors, are we just engaging once again in an exploitative, narcissistic, human-centric practice of a culture obsessed with seeing our own image looking back at us, a generation of humans trying once again to make everything about us?

I recently heard some discussion and discourse within the horse community calling this practice of horses as our mirrors into question, calling for a more horse-centered and less human-centered approach to horsemanship.

This sort of reckoning with a culture of humans obsessed with their own image, is not exclusive to the horse world, a subculture, a microcosm of the greater Overculture. In her book, The Flowering Wand, Sophie Strand writes:

“Academia, across disciplines, has been increasingly caught in tautological investigations. Let me examine my words and find the reflection of myself inside their syntax. Let my philosophy always be a deferral of action, a dilation of the ways in which I appear in everything I study. Let me measure the placement of this electron, and find that my measurement device, my observing brain, entangles with the electron itself…. We have turned the world into our glassy pool…our worldview has become narcissus’s mirror.”

If we are gazing into our horse’s eyes to find more of the idealized picture of ourselves, to better ourselves, to self-optimize, improve, grow, to serve our own agendas, to uphold my belief systems, my enlightenment, my brain, my psyche… Then yes, this feels incredibly “ick” and extractive. This feels like a mirror-obsessed culture, drowning in its own reflection and in the process drowning everyone else, a species that has become obsessed with talking only to itself, a culture of people making everything about “me” all the time, asleep in a nightmare of a thousand empty mirrors, our own faces hauntingly staring back into our own.

Yes to this. And, what if there is more to be revealed here?

What if somewhere deep inside our blood and bones, there lies a deep intelligence who knows that there is something important in the mirror, something more expansive, but our deep seated instincts are cut short, unable to finish some essential process to the making of a human being, and this thwarting, this falling short, is when the mirror gazing turns toxic, when we find ourselves not just looking in the mirror but trapped in the mirror, endlessly and neurotically searching for something we came into this life expecting but did not receive?

And, let us consider this: What if the deepest form of narcissism is to believe we would see only us looking back in that mirror, whether it is the horse holding it up to us or some other being?

Dear Reader, let us begin our wondering and wandering through this pond filled wood, together.

The Human Need for the Mirror

Humans are wired for mirrors. To see ourselves reflected back in the Other, and the Other reflected back in us, is necessary for healthy human development and our ability to form loving relationships later in life. A quick Google search will confirm this:

“Young children develop a sense of themselves as a result of how their parents ‘mirror’ back their thoughts and feelings. If a child is experiencing a strong feeling and a parent mirrors back that emotion with relative accuracy, validation and empathy, the child feels ‘seen’—which allows them to then move through that emotion more quickly and better access their ability to behave differently or find a solution to their problem.” (BriggsTherapy.com)

Not only is the child wired to search for the mirror, but the adult is wired to respond, in a process known as the “serve and return” relationship between children and their parents or other caregivers in the family or community.

“Young children naturally reach out for interaction through babbling, facial expressions, gestures, and words, and adults respond with the same kind of vocalizing and gesturing back at them. A baby smiles at you—the urge to smile back is irresistible! This ‘serve and return’ behavior continues back and forth, like a game of tennis or volleyball. If the responses are unreliable, inappropriate, or simply absent, the developing architecture of child’s brain may be disrupted, and later learning, behavior, and health may be impaired.” “The Science of Neglect: the Persistent Absence of Responsive Care Disrupts the Developing Brain.” Working Paper 12. The Harvard Center For the Developing Child, P. 3

This process of mirroring is linked to both a healthy ability around knowing oneself and knowing the other and building empathy for others’ emotional states. Dr. Sue Johnson writes, in her book, Love Sense,

“When we see our sweetie’s mouth droop down or eyes well with tears, our brain mimics the experience for us. In a sense, we physiologically try on the feeling. The line between us and our partner blurs, and we automatically, without conscious reflection or deliberation, feel and know he or she is sad. This is invaluable in helping us tune in to a mate and in building intimacy, safety and trust–the very bonds of love. This exquisite sensitivity begins when we are about 2 years old, at about the same time we start to be able to recognize ourselves in a mirror. “Knowing me” and “knowing you” are linked; they are two sides of the same coin.”

But what happens when there is no mirror where a mirror should have been? Perhaps we become destined to become trapped in the mirror, forever seeking something we expected but did not receive. And if that’s the case, what might be the path out, back to connection?

Let us now turn to myth and story for possible answers.

The Story of Narcissus

*As told by University of Cambridge School Classics Project and a version by Alan Mandelbaum

There once lived a man, a prophet, who could see into the future the way you and I remember our pasts. His name was Teiresias. One day a woman came to him. She'd given birth to a child she'd named Narcissus, and Narcissus was so beautiful he broke hearts as he wriggled in his cot. She was afraid one of the immortals would envy his beauty and destroy him. Tiresias shook his head. 'The gods pose him no threat. He will have a long life, unless he learns to know himself.' Shaking her head the woman walked away.

Years went by and with every passing day Narcissus became more beautiful. Wherever he went women fell in love with him. But they never approached him because of his flaw. He wore about himself a glassy pride that kept his suitors at bay.

Until a nymph named Echo, who was cursed to repeat the last words of anyone whom she spoke to, came along and spotted Narcissus.

Echo spied Narcissus while he was out hunting deer with his companions. She immediately fell in love with him and, infatuated, followed quietly. The more she looked at the young man, the more she longed for him. Though she wished with all her heart to call out to Narcissus, the curse prevented her.

For months she followed him, waiting for the words to come with which she could proclaim her love. At last, the moment came. Narcissus and his friends went hunting in a forest. They became separated from one another. Narcissus called, 'Is anybody here?' Echo joyfully stole the word: 'Here!' 'Then come to me, come to me!' She ran to him. She put her arms around him. He pushed her away. 'Get off me! What are you? I suppose like all the others you love me.' 'Love me,' she said 'Love me.' 'I would rather die' said Narcissus 'than let you lie with me.' 'Lie with me,' she said 'Lie with me.' 'Leave me alone.' He fled. 'Alone,' said Echo 'Alone. Alone.'

The nymph Echo fell in love with Narcissus’s beauty but he paid no attention to her increasingly mournful cries. To the gods looking down upon the play of men, unrequited love was a crime. They punished narcissus in appropriate symbolic form by causing him to fall in love with his own reflection, ever reaching out to embrace an illusion.

Poor Echo was a slender thing. Her sorrow made her slighter still. She became spindly, bony, pale, gaunt, feeble, and frail. One morning when she tried to stand her sharp bones ruptured through her thin skin. Her body collapsed in on itself. Her bones turned back into stone. Only her voice survived, hiding in caves, hiding among high hills. Echo's voice can still be heard on mountain slopes everywhere.

Weary of the nymph, Narcissus went to a pool to drink. It was a perfect pool, as smooth as any mirror. He leant over the side and saw a face of such beauty that suddenly he was filled with another kind of craving. He leant forward to kiss it but it broke into wrinkles. He gave a cry of anguish, and the image staring back at him cried in anguish back. He lay beside the pool like a fallen statue. He was transfixed by it.

And so the prophecy of Tiresias was fulfilled. Narcissus had learned to know himself, and his awful torture began. No thought of food or drink would take him from the spot. His eyes could never have their fill. At last he said, 'You, please, come to me. Lie with me. Love me. When I laugh I see you laugh. When I smile you smile. When I cry you shed tears. You give me every indication that you love me and yet we do not embrace. I think I understand: I am in love with myself. Always we will be together and yet always we will be apart.

Narcissus closed his eyes and lay his head upon the ground. He realizes he is dying and in his last words, says, “i die in my youth prime, but death is a good thing because death will end my own pain.”

His soul drifted out of his open mouth beneath the crust of earth, down a steep flight of stairs, into the underworld, into the land of many guests, the realm of the dead. As his soul drifted across the River of Forgetfulness it left behind all memory. Even so, some urge too powerful to resist drew it to the edge of the river, where it leant over the side and stared at the greasy smear of a reflection that quivered on the surface of the water.

Up on the earth rumours reached a village: lovely Narcissus was dead. So the people searched the forest to burn the corpse with proper honours. But they never found a body. Instead they came upon a delicate flower with white and yellow petals leaning over the edge of a pool, as if gazing at its own reflection – a flower we know today as, the narcissus flower.

Layers of The Story

Let us look now, at the deeper layers of this story, that may offer some guidance on our question around mirrors and horses. We may seem to be a long way off from our original question, but let us linger here for a moment, let us wander through the wood together; and after, we will circle back to where we began.

Layer 1: The roots of Narcissism

Whilst most will be familiar with the image of a youth pining over his reflection in the water, the beginning of the myth of Echo and Narcissus is less well known. It is told that Narcissus’ mother, the nymph Leirope, was ravished by the river god Kephissos who “encircled her with his winding streams.”

Thus, Narcissus was a child of this rape, conceived by the raping of the feminine.

There are a few important details I’d like to share with you in order for us to understand the depth and importance of this act that is the story’s true beginning. Namely, who was Liriopie, the victim? And who was this river God Kephissos, the abuser? And what does this contextual information tell us about the roots of Narcissism displayed by Narcissus in this story?

Who was Liriope?

According to Sylvia Lindseadt in her class, When Women Were the Land, nymphs – such as Liriopie– had a deep relationship to water guardianship and protection in pre-colonial and pre-patriarchal Europe. Nymphs were also connected to the autonomy and legitimacy of female oracles who serve a feminine lineage outside of patriarchal law.

But with the rise of a patriarchal Greek mythology, such nymphs were reduced, through the act of slander and erasure, to nothing more than a false portrayal as a sex-crazed lonely nymph with the sole desire to seduce men to their deaths, and bring them to their ruin. Could this be the collective rape of nymphs, stripping them of their wisdom and water guardianship, that the rape of Liriope, in this myth, is nodding to?

“When you follow the streams, you begin to see a pattern across all of Europe of female spirits as guardians of springs, rivers, streams and wells,” Sylvia says. “Part of this pattern is that you do not approach these holy waters without care. They need to be respected and properly propitiated.. Or they can become vengeful.” Speaking to the story of a different water nymph, Calypso, Sylvia says of her portrayal, “Perhaps Calypso was angry. Perhaps trapping Odysseus was her revenge for the rape of her sister nymphs across the Aegean with the coming of Zeus and the men who worshipped him.”

Who Was the River God Kephissos?

Across Europe, the names of many rivers were once the names of goddesses. But with the rise of patriarchy and by the time of the story of Narcissus, a river God has taken the place of the river Goddess. Instead, we have the River God Kephissos presented in this story, as the one who committed this act of abuse toward Liriope. Who is he?

Kephissos is a river that flows through the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The "Oracle of Apollo at Delphi" refers to the ancient Greek prophetic oracle located at the sanctuary of Delphi, where a priestess known as the "Pythia" would deliver prophecies believed to be the voice of the god Apollo.

So the River God Kephissos is located in the kingdom of Apollolian consciousness. But just who was Apollo? Well, Apollo is one of Zeus’ two sons. Apollo is the god of the sun, art, plague and disease, of rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity and stands for reason. Dionysus is the god of wine, dance and pleasure, of irrationality and chaos, representing passion, emotions and instincts.

And so, Apollonian consciousness refers to a masculine energy, a hot sun god, who values reason and rationality over emotion and intuition, order over chaos, and so forth. In summary, apollonian consciousness is found at the heart of patriarchal consciousness.

And so, better understanding this river God, Kephissos, we can see that the feminine water protectors, the age of matriarchy, is raped, their power and dignity stripped away, by the rise of the patriachal Appollonian consciousness.

Sylvia connects us to to how this present day raping of Liriope is still taking place today.

“We are all daughters of the Well Maidens, and sons of the Grail King. We are all the ten thousand daughters of Tethys who were silenced and suppressed by the rule of conquering gods, daughters of an unending font of life-giving underground clear-pure water. The Earth is crying out, and the waters run with poison, and violence still reigns supreme.”

Impact on Narcissus: Roots of Narcissism

With this understanding, we can see how the conditions of this kind of rape and abuse could leave a culture of both men and women stripped of the feminine and the qualities she represents, such as emotional attunement, mirroring, validation, and empathy.

What happens when the child looks into the eyes of their caregivers, but their eyes, eyes that were supposed to hold a mirror, reflecting back the child’s face and feeling state and sense of self, are empty?

We have children who cannot know themselves. Because to know oneself you have to have someone who reflects and mirrors your own feelings, own sense of value. The story tells us that Liriope was likely unable to give Narcissus these things.

And so the result is a child who cannot find his own being inside of the Other, either. The mirror is missing. What happens to the child in this case? We can see how the child would be cursed to become trapped in a mirror, his own making of himself to try to falsely and artificially create his own validation, without the loving presence of the Other reflecting back to him. According to Martin S. Bergmann in an article published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, this behavior can be understood as an emergency mechanism which attempts to restore the sense of self, by trying to replace the absent mirroring mother.

Thus, a narcissist doesn’t stare into the mirror out of self-love and admiration, but of self-hate and loathing, masked as grandiosity, endless searching, endless reaching, for the Other that he is cursed to never find lest he begins to grapple with the original wound of what he came into this world expecting, but never received.

There is another feature of the narcissist in his survival mechanism: Because a narcissist is a person who is unable to face the pain of feeling so unlovable, and the pain of needing the Other who is unavailable, he also attempts to reject this need for the Other altogether.

“For all his air of self-sufficiency, the narcissist is full of interpersonal needs. He is more needy than most people who feel they have something good inside of them. If he is to survive, he must find a way to get his needs met without acknowledging the independent existence of the person [or more-than-human kin] off whom he wants to feed. To admit that a person [or more-than-human kin] is necessary to him gets him in touch with feelings of deficiency, which plummet him into intolerable emptiness, jealousy, and rage. To avoid this experience, he inhabits a one-person world. Either he exists and other people are extinguished, or vice versa. In his mind, he is center stage and other people [and more than human kin] are mere shadows beyond the proscenium. This solution creates a new conundrum: ‘How can I get fed without acknowledging the feeder?’ The solution is to dissect people [and more than human kin] and to turn them partially into objects, to make them inanimate. A person comes to represent a need-fulfilling function or an organ like a breast, a vagina, [or I might add a “natural resource”]… There is no overall person to consider.” Elan Golomb, PhD, Trapped in the Mirror

And so, on an individual level, with the development of a narcissist, we end up with a person who rejects the Other out of a deep feeling of being unlovable – it seems less painful to convince ourselves we don’t need the nurturing of the Other than to submit ourselves to the pain of expressing this need and not getting it. And on a cultural level, we end up with people who pretend they do not need the Mother who is Earth and the nourishment she brings us, to not acknowledge her as a living being in need of relationship and reciprocity. Instead we reduce her to “natural resources” and we mine, frack, pollute, and poison her with our never ending demands.

Layer 2: Why Does Narcissus Reject Echo?

Before moving onto the pond, we must take a moment to look more deeply at Echo. Who is she, and what does that tell us about why Narcissus may have rejected her?

Echo is the primary lover that we are told Narcissus turns down. Who is Echo? We are told that Echo is a nymph who was cursed to only be able to echo back others’ words, never able to use her own. The loss of her voice is very significant here.

“Echo could neither start a conversation nor remain silent after another stopped talking. To be

unable to start a conversation is a symbolic way of saying that Echo lacks an independent self.

To be compelled to comment when someone else is speaking is a symbolic way of saying that Echo clings and cannot separate.” Martin S. Bergmann, The Legend of Narcissus

So by losing her voice, we can see how Echo is not able to really be her own person, the Other.

Some point out that Narcissus’ inability to love even this woman, who seems to be the quintessential narcissistic object, who has less demands than a woman who has her own personality, thoughts, wishes, and will, points to just how severe Narcisuss’ narcissism was.

However, if we are looking to myth to offer guidance on the healing of narcissism, not just a story about narcissism, to me it seems like an absolute necessity that Narcissus would not be attracted to Echo; for he is craving the Other, and Echo provides him with only more of himself, an Echo of himself.

And, real mirroring, the mirroring Narcissus likely never had as a child, does not come from just repeating and regurgitating the words of another; it comes through the body. True mirroring is emotional attunement; the other sees you fully, sees what you see, feels what you feel.

In this way, Echo is more of the same - seeing only oneself gazing back, where the Other should have clearly been, the Other that contains and mirrors back the self.

So while many psychologists use this part of the story to show that Narcissus’ rejection of Echo was a step towards his own demise, I believe it was a step towards his healing. There is something different Narcissus needs – not more of himself, but a return to the womb-like, amniotic waters that birthed him, able to reflect back not an Echo of himself, but a reflection of who he really is, his true nature that he has forgotten, a nature that is embedded in ecology beyond the human self.

Layer 3: The Mother Pond

“Now, to the waters. The holy upwelling waters of life, the life-giving waters, the living water, where life began on this earth, coiled up and seeded in the great primordial oceans of the beginning, 3.5 billion years ago when the first little organisms began to quiver and stir in the waters which are nearly as old as our Gaia, our planet, herself. All the water on this earth has never left this earth—it has cycled endlessly through stone and tree and cloud and the bodies of all beings for millions of years, renewed, recleansed, returned to mineralled depths, upwelling once more. Touch water, and you touch the history of life. Touch water and you touch ancestors, and you touch the living consciousness of this holy Earth. Every earth-rooted, earth honoring human culture connected has known this to be true, and has centered water, has listened to water, has revered and respected water, and especially places where springs arise right out of the earth, right out of stone, right out of the unseen realm of the deepest underground, underworld, otherworld. Such places were and are known as holy ground. And across the world, including across the varied lands of Europe, in the old stories and traditions, women guard these waters. Goddesses, nymphs, ancestral women, priestesses, female spirits.”

Syvlia Lindsteadt, When Women Were the Land

Finding the Other

When Narcissus bends down over the pond to get a drink of water, he notices his reflection for the first time, and becomes enamoured. What did he see there? Was it only himself?

Unlike Echo, denied her own Otherness and personhood, the pond is teaming with life, the wild and beautiful Other.

Let us also consider that Narcissus sees his reflection not in a man-made object such as glass, not in a mirror, or even a bowl or pot or vessel shaped by human hands that is holding water, but in a pond that holds nourishing and healing waters. He is thirsty – could it be he had been experiencing a drought of his Soul, and the water was quenching his thirst in more ways than one?

Sophie Strand explores the concept of finding the Other in our reflection in her book, The Flowering Wand. She writes:

“Perhaps the Narcissus myth resonated differently two thousand years ago. But today, simplistic interpretations of the myth seem like a misdirection. What is the beautiful youth really doing as he gazes into the watery depths of a forest pool? The overculture would have us believe he is being vain or lazy. But I'm going to attempt a new interpretation. What if narcissus is showing us what we really need to be doing? The glossy mirror of narcissism is the myth of progress, the flickering screens in our pockets, the idea that nothing we encounter is really real. The pool, scummed by algae, glittering with pollen, a frog eye surfacing like the visual apparatus of the water itself, is the mirror of inclusion. It doesn’t show Narcissus a sterile, anthropcentric reflection. Instead, it offers something much more nutritious: The Animate Everything. The wild multiplicity of the whole world that includes us. Yes, maybe he sees his face. But it is a face rippled by a fish distributing the silt below. It is a face turned iridescent by a dragonfly wing skimming the surface of the water.” Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand (pg 54-55)

With this understanding, perhaps the solution to a culture full of self-absorbed, human-centric, forever adolescents with narcissist tendencies is not removing the mirror; perhaps the solution lies in the mirror, but the problem is what we see being reflected back to us. The curse is only seeing more of ourselves– but not even our true selves, as reflected by the Other, but our own interpretation of ourselves looking back at us, the grandiose image we have built up like armor to safeguard us from the intolerable depths of shame from being denied our full humanity; the medicine, the thwarted response we may be looking to complete, is seeing the strange and beautiful Other, gazing back at us, seeing ourselves and Other inextricably connected. Me, embedded in the You, something more than me.

Mother Mirroring

Not only is the pond teaming with the Other, but also unlike Echo, mirroring that the pond provides Narcissus is through the body, not words: when he’s crying, the pond’s reflection cries back with him. And when he reaches out to touch the reflection, he can see the pond reaching out towards him. This is the kind of healing mirroring, mother mirroring, mirroring of body and soul that Narcissus was denied. The pond’s mirroring is the medicine he was searching for this whole time, but in this moment, he experiences it in a real way, not in an artificial way through the reflection of himself he tried to build on his own, laced with false pride and bravado. No, this reflection is brought to him by the womb of all life.

It is significant that Narcissus’ own mother was a water nymph. But even if that were not the case, water is often associated with the feminine, with the mother.

Kaya Hill, a Haudenosaunee woman from Six Nations of the Grand River territory writes, in regards to the relationship between indigenous women and water on Turtle Island:

“Water is the life blood of Mother Earth. Her waters not only cleanse and nourish her own body, but the bodies of each living being she carries. In this way, water represents the interconnection between all living beings.. As women, we are connected to the earth through a strong relational bond. Not only do we carry responsibilities to the water outside of our physical beings, women also carry water inside of our beings, especially when we are in the process of creating new life. This sacred relationship between women and the earth’s waters has existed since time immemorial.

Our Grandmother, the Moon, has a special relationship with the waters on earth; she controls the ebb and flow of the water according to the cycles of the moon. Women also share a special connection with Grandmother Moon. Some call our menstrual cycle our ‘moon time’. This is because just as the moon regulates the water, she regulates women’s bodies. We have a menstrual cycle that lasts 28 days, just like one cycle of the moon phases. When we are menstruating, this is our most powerful time of the month, when the energy in our body is letting us know that we are ready to create life. This connection to the earth’s water is also related to the birth experience for women who choose to have babies. When a woman is set to give birth and the baby is ready to be born, water comes out first. Water gushes out, and this tells the mother that the baby is ready to come. Mother Earth does the same thing in the springtime when she is ready to give birth to her young; her water starts to gush, spring waters start to flow, and new life emerges (Anderson, 2016). This relationship between Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, the waters, and women is a feminine relationship that has been maintained for millenia. It is a relationship of life cycles; the earth produces and nourishes life, the moon regulates the water which sustains life, and the women hold the power to create life.

https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/indigenous-women-and-their-connections-to-earth-and-water

This relationship between women and water is found the world over, and in pre-colonial Europe as well. In her class, When Women Were the Land, Sylvia shares,

“Women as guardians of the waters of life makes a lot of sense, from a very practical, biological place— the observation, across generations, of a mother’s waters breaking as she goes into labor. We literally enter this world through the flood of feminine, wombic waters, the waters of life. And then of course there is the nourishment of breast milk— and this imagery, of the waters of rain, and of springs, and also of breasts and breast milk, is often very intertwined in Paleolithic and Neolithic European imagery. The miraculous cold, clear water of springs often rises up right through a cleft in stone— an opening that is like the female anatomy, and very often has healing mineral properties… Earth feeds us waters, like the first nourishment we received from our mother’s bodies, inside the womb, and at her breast. I wonder how early on in our myth-making, in the origins of metaphoric thinking in our species, we connected these flows. Fairly early, it seems.”

When we look at the pond in the story of Narcissus through this lens, water as sacred, water as Mother, we can see that Narcissus is coming home to the feminine that was raped and defiled, that was lost. And he is filled with a yearning, now seeing clearly for the first time what was lost.

But without this lens, with the colonial interpretation where water and hence the pond is reduced to an inanimate “thing” devoid of life, devoid of the Mother, the common interpretation of the story leads to quite a different place. In that kind of interpretation, the pond is referred to as a “non-responsive love object” and we are told that the “image in the water should be seen as a particularly unresponsive type of love-object.” Conclusions are drawn that Narcissus is “gazing in vain” into the “non-responsive mother” emphasizing he must “learn to love himself before he can love another” and that the story represents a “self cure that has failed” (Martin S. Bergmann, The Legend of Narcissus).

I deeply disagree. My interpretation of the story is that Narcissus did not have some failed attempt at healing – Indeed, seeing his reflection in the Pond, the Other, the Mother, mirroring back himself to himself, is the medicine needed for this kind of Narcissism.

In summary, I disagree on two points:

First, I see the pond as not a stand-in for Mother, but pond as Mother. Thus the healing taking place is not one of a failed projection or a stand-in, it is one to be taken literally. While it could offer healing for the relationship with his birth Mother, either way this healing is significant on its own, because water is Mother.

Secondly, with my interpretation, the Pond’s Waters are not a “non-responsive love object” devoid of life and devoid of the Other. Thus, the reflection Narcissus sees staring back is not just more of him; it is him contained in the Other, him seeing his interrelatedness with the natural world. What he needs for his healing is not necessarily to “love himself” as western therapeutic modalities so often tell us; but by falling in love with the Other and then learning to love himself through seeing the Other in himself.

With this lens, when Narcissus comes to terms that what he is seeing is his own reflection in the pond water and says “I am him,” psychologists conclude in their interpretations that from this “crucial phrase,” he knows that it is his own reflection he is in love with. However, understanding the reflection as beyond individual self, but rather reflection within the Other, I hear Narcissus saying “I am him” as “I am pond water. I am the iridescent dragon fly. I am the fish below. I am algae, glittering with pollen and frog eye.”

Could it be that Narcissus, in this moment, is coming to terms with the fullness of his identity – I am nature, and nature is me?

Pond as Oracle

One last layer tucked in the layer of the pond I’d like to softly touch on, resting our finger ever so gently for a moment’s time on the pond’s surface, and examining for a moment the small ripple that emulates forth, is pond as oracle.

Water holds wisdom, and I have no doubt that the pond in the story of Narcissus brought him deep wisdom and healing. I will leave us with this excerpt from Sylvia:

“Tradition seems to suggest that not only otherworldly women but real women across the north of Europe (and beyond) sat in divination at sacred waters, and also acting as guardians of the waters of healing.Great luminary of women’s history and creator of the Suppressed Histories Archives Max Dashu writes of witches and pagans, regarding practices across Britain- p. 25 -- ‘Meditation by the waters was a very old custom. The 8th century penitential of Egbert of York not only forbade making libations and other offerings at wells, but also the custom of sitting out beside a spring’—Because it was well known that people, and especially women, had an old custom of sitting out through the night at wells to watch the waters.

The Gesta Herwardus Saxonis (1068) described how English women held nocturnal dialogues with the spirit guardian of a spring: “In the middle of the night, the women go out in silence to the springs of east-flowing waters; Hereward saw them go out of the house beside the garden; he immediately followed them, and heard them from a distance, conversing with I know not what guardian of the spring, asking questions and waiting for answers.”

The church was very aware of how strong this practice was, especially amongst women, to go sit out at waters all night and ask for vision, offering gifts and lighting a candle or torch— and so made extra effort to forbid these very practices—and this started early, we’re talking 700 AD. So we can say with confidence that this was not just a mythic legacy, this was not just stories told or spirits or goddesses associated with waters— this was also real women going to these sources, springs and wells to commune and ask for healing or vision, and in doing so connecting at the same time to lineages of otherworldly women—female ancestors, goddesses, protectors and generatrixes of life.”

And so, let us consider this for a moment, dear reader: What better way to help create a culture of people who have forgotten the wisdom the water shares with us, and to further defile it, than to say staring in such water is a practice of self-vanity at its greatest, and leads to our own demise?

Layer 4: The Flower

Many interpretations of the myth reference Narcissus’ death and metamorphosis into a flower as evidence of his demise, noting that even when his body takes a flower form, he is still left ever gazing at his own reflection in the pond.

But could it be that Narcissus’ death and rebirth as a flower was actually his ultimate redemption? Could it be that he needed to die to his wounded and narcissistic, life-taking form into his life-making form? Could it be that in order for the story to reach resolution, he needed to be taken down into the soil, and composted in order to germinate, and spring up as new life, taking on the form of the green and shimmering Other? Could it be that his flower form was not bending over to see his own reflection in the pond, but bending over in a bow to the Mother waters who guided him to rediscover his true nature, whose waters led him back to his widened identity, bowing to the pond waters who birthed him? What if the pain that was alchemized into the beauty of a flower is not for Narcissus, but a sacred offering for the creation that birthed him, what if the point of our beauty is to become, in the words of Martin Prechtel, “something god would like to eat for breakfast”?

I think this is possible. I think it is possible if we see death not as linear, not as punishment, but part of the great turning of life, if we see darkness and the underworld not as a place of solely spooks and fright but as a place necessary for a seed to germinate and the place the moon comes back to life.

But don’t take it from me, dear reader. Let us talk to the Narcissus flower. What does she have to tell us?

The narcissus flower, also known by the common name Daffodil, dawns a beautiful, golden trumpet shaped crown surrounded by white petals. She is one of the first flowers to be seen in the early springtime, reminding us of the great green rebirth that takes place after the long dark. She prefers to have her feet wet, living in damp meadows and along the banks of streams and rivers.

She tells us that her medicine will be very different for us, depending on when we gather her. Daffodil bulbs contain an alkaloid, the action of which varies as to whether the alkaloid is extracted from the flowering bulb or from the bulb after flowering. Thus, we must be careful what parts of the flower we harvest and the manner in which we do so.

For one way the narcissus flower has been used is as a narcotic. It is interesting to note that the word "narcissus” shares the same root as the Greek word “narcotic”- narke, which means “to numb.” Also known as “opioids,” the term “narcotic” comes from the Greek word for “stupor” and originally referred to a variety of substances that dulled the senses and relieved pain. Indeed, the narcissus flower is described to have a “stupifying vapor that could induce a death-like sleep (Bunker, 1947).”

Even the common name, Daffodil, has interesting meaning in this territory - it derives from the Greek asphodel, the land of the departed souls, the field of ashes, the realm of ghosts where the majority of ordinary souls were sent to live after death, cut off from the Earth and the land of the living.

But, as well as potential for numbing and inducing a death-like sleep, the narcissus flower also holds healing powers, when harvested in the right way. Traditional Japanese medicine uses the root to treat wounds. But what I find most interesting is the thread this special flower holds back to recovering the feminine, the feminine that was decimated and defiled at the begining of the story with Narcissus’ water guardian mother’s rape.

For this narcissus flower is the flower that Persephone, daughter of Demeter, was said to have been gathering with her friends when she was abducted into the underworld by Hades. Sylvia Lindsteadt explains that this picture of women out gathering flowers is more than a pretty pastoral motif – the flower points to a deeply ancient history of women’s initiation rites around the time of menstruation and puberty. The ritual gathering of gynecological flowers is actually what was happening in this scene, before her abduction by Hades, and before the rise of the patriarchy sent matriarchal practices and ways of life underground. Narcissus, iris, crocus – all of these flower friends have connections to midwifery cults and traditions.

And so, dear reader, the Narcissus flower and the story tells us, that depending on how we harvest her, she can lead us to fall into a deeper sleep, even threatening us to be banished to the realm of ghosts disconnected with the earth, unconscious, and forgetting who we really are as a people; or, she can provide her medicine for the feminine to rise once again, for her ways of ancient guardianship and sacred protection of the Earth and her waters to be restored.

And so, as the telling of this story comes to a close, we see the prophet’s prediction came true in the end: He, and he as in the collective depiction of Narcissus, a Narcissistic Patriarchal, feminine banishing culture, will have a long life, unless he learns to know himself – unless he, unless we, look in the mirror our more-than-human kin are offering to us, helping us to remember all we have lost, remember who we are as not separate from nature, but the reflection of nature, contained in her very waters, as the Mother pond showed Narcissus.

Perhaps Narcissus was demonstrating the process needed for our culture as well; that we must die and be reborn collectively. We must remember who we are with the help of our more-than-human kin and healing waters reflecting back to us; we must allow ourselves to die, enter the long dark, de-compose, germinate in these dark soils, and then bloom to be reborn, drinking the water of our Mother once again. And we can only do that when we see, as Narcissus was shown by Mother Pond, that we are nature, and nature is us. For when we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.

Finding the Other in the Mirror

“We have no more time for abstraction. And we have no more time for moralizing. Species collapse every day, bringing down other beings they have been mutualistically involved with for millennia. But conversely, the emergency of our situation does not call for the manic techno-narcissistic death of trying to “fix” the world. It calls for slowing down. For sitting next to the pool. And looking into the water. If we are lucky, we will see ourselves. But not as an isolated subject in the abstracted blank space of phenomenological ontology. Or in the metaverse of digital binaries. We will see that we are in the pool. We are not outside of the life forms that are damaging and polluting. We are intimately of them. The real narcissism is to believe we can stand apart philosophically, or morally. And yes, let us, like Narcissus, fall in love with this more complex reflection. A reflection that contextualizes our being inside of, and dependent on, many other modes of being.” Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand, pg 55

Let us now complete our circle, and return to where we began, amongst our beloved horses, musing around horses as mirrors - is it a human-centering, narcissistic practice we need to do away with?

After our long and winding journey through this wood, it seems to me that it depends.

It depends whether or not we are able to see our reflection in the mirror, the pond’s ripples of who we are, a self in relation to other beings beyond our own, or merely our projection of who we are.

It depends whether we are gazing at our own reflection fashioned from a smartphone screen of our own design, a mirror of our own making, or are gazing into the pond-like surface of a horse’s eye.

It depends whether or not we can see the beautiful and strange Other looking back at us in the mirror, in those almond shaped pooling eyes of Horse and the grasslands, rivers, and soil that have shaped their bones and pulse through their veins.

To truly see the Other’s reflection of ourselves requires great humility, and a courage and willingness and soul-ready timing to see the truth, which always exists in relationship to one another. For an honest look in the mirror always asks something of us. This mirror gazing is not about serving our own egos; rather it can question our very foundational and core beliefs of who we really are, which can be a terrifying, as well as rejuvenating process if we are able to receive the gift. But it may require us, like Narcissus, to die and be reborn into some new and unrecognizable, never before seen shape. I believe Horse has both the capacity and oftentimes the desire to bring this gift forwards to us. The question is whether or not we can accept it.

Healing is not just for us - and neither are the mirrors Horse holds up for us. All of this means that the reflection we see is not about our own self-improvement, our own growth, our own benefit, our own enlightenment, our own analysis. Rather, its primary aim is to benefit our wider communities of both human and our more-than-human kin. And I believe they are deeply wanting us to receive that gift, in fact it may be urgent in the times we find ourselves in that we slow down, abandon our strict schedules and personal timelines, and are able to settle in, gaze into our horses eyes and find their glossy reflection, their eyes like like the dark waters of some kind of ancient scrying practice in which we receive visions and messages directly from the Horse, acknowledging she has something to teach us. And not in a demanding way, not in an extractive way, not in an entitled way, but in a manner in which we remain humble, oftentimes falling to our knees weeping, forever bent in a bow like the narcissus flower over the pool in aw, reverence, and gratitude.

For it is only then we will be able to see that when we harm them, we harm ourselves. It is only then we will be able to come back into relation, to accept that we need her and she needs us to return home.

When we look at the mirror from this lens, perhaps we can see that the very notion of separating and fragmenting humans versus horses is impossible. For we exist within the horse, and the horse exists within us. And the very notion such a line of separation can be drawn, is another symptom of colonial fragmentation, a recipe for becoming a species obsessed with talking only with ourselves.

When we look in the horse’s mirror this way, perhaps we will be able to, in the words of Francis Weller, recognize the soul in world and the world in soul. And when we do this, perhaps we awaken to the enchantment of life, we restore the ritual of life, and we return to encounters with the sacred.

The task is to find the thread between what is innermost and what manifests in the world out there, to find “the greater part of the soul lies outside of the body” and remember our wider identities, moving away from a place of rigid identity to a fluid, shapeshifting identity, moving from egocentric to polycentric, going from the “me, my, I” to becoming part wind, part rose, part moon, part night sky, in the words of Francis Weller.

Is this all centering the horse? To me that question now floats away along the babbling brook, and I watch it float for a while, and then be swallowed up by the swirling waters as I come to ask, what if Horse doesn’t want us to “center them?” as if they are something outside of ourselves that can be centered? What if Horse wants us to find them in ourselves, and ourselves in them, to come home to our deep connectedness, inter-being, and relation, recognizing land and horses as the soul of our soul?

For we cannot make it “just about the horse” any less than the horse can make it any less about the grass that makes up their beating hooves and hearts. Horses are a part of us and us a part of horses, and both of us in relation to land. Our heartbeats, and heartbeat of the Earth, are intertwined in a great dancing drumbeat of life pulsing pulsing on.