There is a bit of an interesting story behind the carving of this piece. I had done no woodcarving before but felt very inclined to try it after seeing some wonderful pieces created by others. I obtained a piece of wood and lived with it for a few weeks, not really having any idea of what I wanted to make. Can you relate?
At this time in my life, I was seriously needing and seeking spiritual growth and support. I had, until recently, lived in a cabin in the woods and missed the contact with nature and so found myself drawn to both gardening and wildlife work in the exurb where I was living. I began to focus on birds as wonderful creatures, able to live both firmly on the ground and gliding through the air; envy doesn't come very close to how I felt about that ability. I decided to carve some sort of bird as a way of bringing that totem animal into my living space. Realizing that I had NO skill in woodcarving, I designed a very rough bird-like shape with outstretched wings, a hawk-like head and a fanned tail; fairly elementary shapes.
While working on this piece, getting the feel of the wood and the tools, I realized that, for some reason, this should be an earth goddess representation. I had lately been finding myself honoring the earth in my spiritual practices and the goddess seemed a very fitting aspect of god at that time and place. Accordingly, as I worked on the body of the bird, I added breasts to indicate the nurturing of the goddess spirit. Shortly after, while browsing through a bookstore, I came upon a book entitled, as I recall, "The Chalice and the Blade" which was about the eclipsing of the ancient goddess worshipping culture by the male dominated culture. On the cover of this book I saw MY carving! Rather startling to say the least, as you might imagine. As it turned out, the bird goddess was a fairly common goddess figure in ancient times. OK…we can chalk this up to eerie coincidence.
As the carving progressed, it came to me that I could easily add feathers to the wing area…a nice touch I thought. Well, about a week after this, I'm looking through a catalogue and guess what? Yes! Bird goddess carving, almost identical to mine, with feathers on the wings. OK…more coincidence.
One night I had an interesting dream in which I was told that a spiral was a special symbol for me and that I should work with it, learn from it. This dream stayed with me so strongly! I began to want to somehow incorporate the spiral into my goddess carving and the idea of a tail in the form of a snake came to me. Frankly, this seemed a little too weird but it was an idea that wouldn't go away.
Shortly thereafter I purchased a book on goddess traditions and, while glancing through the book found a section describing a celtic bird goddess with the tail of a snake, the snake representing eternal live or the afterlife.
I cannot explain, for sure, just how all of this happened, or why. I do know that this carving was a source of peace and nurturing to me during some very hard times. And I do know that, for some reason, the shape of the carving came to me in advance of finding confirmation in historical research about the symbolism.
