Coyote Medicine

The full moon brought a new visitor to Shaman’s Grove this month. At 3:45am Thursday morning, I was quickly roused from my sleep by the sound of a coyote yipping outside my bedroom window. I bounced out of bed, quickly reviewing the location of our pets as I dashed to the front deck. Yup, I did close up the chickens after dark, and the cat was on the bed. I flung open the front door, purposefully making lots of noise to encourage our visitor to move on . . . Just needed to be sure he wasn’t in the chicken pen. All my feathered goddesses were safe and the interloper moved quickly past my garden and down through the woods. After double counting noses, I returned to dream time.

So, it was time to see what message, if any, coyote might have for me.  opened Steven Farmer’s Animal Spirit Guides and the first thing out of the shoot was “Lighten Up – You’re taking things much too seriously.” My thought was “Yeah, what?” But, I have been trying to work out some technical difficulties with the website that have been frustrating me at every turn. Kind of like Wile E. Coyote in the cartoons, every time I thought I had it figured out, it blew up in my face. So, okay, the message hit home. I’m sure I’ll laugh at the process later, but at the moment it was frustrating! And, I put the project on hold and went off for coffee and to play in my gardens.

Coyote medicine is about the balance of wisdom and folly or play. Coyote reminds us that true teachers of wisdom have a great sense of humor! There are many myths of Coyote as the creator and trickster. A quick web search will give you a ton of great stories to read. If you read a couple, you will get a good understanding of Coyote.

Coyote is smart and skillful, often looking for ways to take short cuts or use the
skills of others for their own benefit. And, like in the cartoons with Wile E. Coyote, it’s not uncommon for things to go awry because he has made things way too complicated. Being a master trickster, Coyote repeatedly falls for his own tricks, taking self-sabotage to an art form. Are you taking life too seriously? Are you complicating what is really simple in some area of your life? Are you too making self-sabotage an art form? See through your self-sabotage and have a good laugh. Remember Coyote’s medicine is in the laughter and joking, so that we can see things from a new viewpoint.