The Lady and the Wild Stag

a Winter Solstice Memory

Pagan and Christian are human concepts.   They matter in how we shape our own lives, but they mean little to the wild or to the divine.  

What matters to the Mother of All is our manner of approach, our quality of presence, and how we give and receive blessing.

A short way up the road from the land I called home for several years there is a small wooden church dedicated to Our Lady of the Lakes.   Across the street is a little shrine – a statue of the Lady right at the edge of the woods.

It became a place where I would go to pray and leave offerings.  The names I would call the Lady were far older than Christianity, but the spirit I was calling without fail seemed to show up within the marble.   In the summer I would bring Roses.  In autumn and winter I would bring Apples.  Often Does and Fawns  would come just as I was leaving to eat the Apples under the Lady’s watchful eye.

The Vincentian priest who lived in the rectory beside the church would sometimes wave to me.   One day he introduced himself and told me that the Lady was always happy when I came bringing gifts.  And that he was inspired by my devotion.   He never asked the nature of my practice or why I did not come to mass.  We prayed for each other in our own ways.

One Winter Solstice, it began to snow in the late afternoon, and by dusk the snow was deep.

I had only a few dollars, and the roads were treacherous, but I knew the Deer would be hungry.   So I went to the supermarket and bought Apples, and drove down the steep hill to the shrine.   I waded across the snow,  lit a small candle, and began to offer my prayers to the Mother of All.

Soon the Does and the Fawns appeared.   They came closer than they ever had before – close enough that I could feel their breath moving the air.   I rolled Apples toward them in the snow.

Then from the edge of the forest, an immense Stag emerged.  

I bowed to him three times.  And he bowed three times in return.

We stood and watched each other in perfect stillness across the field while the Does and the Fawns at the Apples.  

He turned then, and disappeared back among the Pines.

I gave thanks one more time and returned home.

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This was not the only time I was blessed in this way by a Stag, but the third.

The first was at the edge of the my ancestral forest near Loch Léin, when a Red Deer Stag came and showed me some of what my great-grandfather’s people had learned from his own ancestors’ herds.   That is a tale I tell in part in The Silver Branch and the Otherworld which is soon going to press.

The second was an experience shared with one I love that is not for the telling here.

All three brought deep blessing.  But tonight it is that third blessing that I feel most close at hand.