Deer Medicine

a reminder from the gods

I’ve had a draft post in my Substack folder since June, titled Deer Medicine. Around that time, I’d been seeing deer in my travels around the countryside, and wanted to write about it, though I don’t recall now exactly what I was going to share. I’d also found an old blog post (see below) from 2011 that talked about the importance of deer as an omen for me.

This fall, I saw a lot of deer again, mostly as I was driving. They were does and fawns, for the most part. I love seeing them. They’re so beautiful! Their medicine is gentle and calming.

I decided I finally had to finish this post, after having a super magickal experience with a buck deer in my yard this past weekend.

It begins, oddly enough, with kitty litter. I like to use natural, sustainable products whenever possible. We’d been using Cedarific kitty litter for our indoor cat, Merry, when it started becoming hard to find. I looked into why that would be so, and found that some cats had respiratory problems when using it for long periods of time. A good friend recommended another natural litter, one that’s made from grass seed. It’s called So Phresh.

Not wanting to cause issues for Merry, I switched to the new litter. When I clean the box out, I dump it in the side yard, on the edge of the woods.

On Friday, Quester was looking out the window and said, “That’s weird. It looks like there are squirrels out there eating the cat litter.”

I told him that it’s made of grass seed, and now that the ground is covered with snow, they might be using it as a food source. We agreed that was kind of gross, as it’s been used as the cat’s bathroom. But what can you do?

Then, Friday evening just before sunset, I went up to my room to change my clothes. When I looked out the window, I saw a beautiful buck deer, standing there eating the kitty litter!

My phone was downstairs, so I went back down and took some pictures of him through the window. At one point I made a noise and he looked right at me, just standing there calmly. He was plump and fit, and had survived the hunting season.

Strength and gentleness emanated from his mighty form. Eventually he slowly turned and made his way through the backyard and into the woods.

Even though the story involves used kitty litter, the encounter with this deer felt especially magickal.

It came just after my previous post, where I talked about ways to have a more restful, nurturing holiday season. Part of that post came from an older post, on my Starcat’s Corner blog, about the Winter Solstice. When I put it together, I chose to replace the words “rebirth of The God” with “rebirth of the light.”

I’ve had a complicated relationship with the Masculine Divine. In the big picture, I believe that the Divine is beyond notions of sex or gender. Still, I resonate most with Goddess archetypes, and my service in this lifetime is to the return of the Feminine Divine.

The God energies are trickier for me, as they’ve been corrupted by patriarchy and hypocritical practitioners of mainstream religions. When I was first practicing Paganism, I was more devoted to the Wiccan practices that included both masculine and feminine Divine. I wanted to introduce my kids to both, although we made it clear that their spirituality and religion were their own choice.

These days, I work mainly with Goddesses, though I do connect with both feminine and masculine energies, and my main spirit guide identifies as male.

But because of the gradual shift in the way I approach my spirituality, I chose to remove the word God from my post.

Then the buck deer showed up. In my earlier practices, deer was a potent symbol of The God, particularly the One who is sacrificed each autumn, like the deer who are hunted here in Maine.

It feels meaningful that He showed up, in the form of this lovely buck, to say, perhaps, “Hello. I’m still here. I still protect and care for you.” It feels like strong deer medicine for me, here at the darkest part of the wheel of the year.

This year has been hard, and I’m feeling a bit vulnerable. Deer’s visit was a reminder of my inner power, and the magick that surrounds me, always. It’s right here in my yard, eating grass seed kitty litter.

The enchantment is found in the midst of the mundane. The mysteries are bigger than the familiar, known world. The cosmos is vast and full of stories. This is deer’s medicine for me, in this time and space.

It has echoes from my original post about deer medicine, which was written on September 27, 2011. Here’s that post:

I've been gifted with a visit from deer lately. On my birthday, returning home from a celebration at my parents' house, I saw a gorgeous big buck, traveling across the road in front of us, from left to right. He was in no real hurry, and we got to see him quite well. In the past I have usually seen does, or bucks when they don't have their antlers, but he had a nice big rack of antlers that I could see clearly. I felt it was a message from the masculine Divine, the God of the Woodlands. The visit brought tears to my eyes, at the time and when describing it later. I really wanted to give him a great big hug.

Tonight, nearly two weeks later, this time on the way to my parents' house, I had the feeling I would see some sort of critter, and sure enough, there was a deer. This time she was a beautiful doe, again moving left to right (which is auspicious), and taking her time, like she'd been expecting to see me, too.

I'm grateful for these signs, and look to some of the traditional meanings these beautiful creatures bring. Deer means gentleness, innocence, sensitivity, grace, alertness, and peace. It means touching others with healing and tenderness, which makes sense given my recent focus on my own health.

Deer lead us into the wilderness, and into new adventures. Ted Andrews writes, in his book Animal Speak, "Antlers are symbols of antennae, connections to higher forms of attunement. Deer with antlers thus can be a signal to pay attention to your inner thoughts and perceptions, as they are probably more accurate than you think." Antlers are also used as protection, and thus can show us that we need to gracefully care for and protect our gentle and loving inner selves.

Deer, and particularly does, remind us of our path of spiritual growth, and ask us to be patient with ourselves along the path. In Celtic animal lore, deer are often associated with the arts, particularly poetry and music. As a writer and drummer, and with my recent focus on my arts, this makes sense. Another bit of Celtic wisdom tells how the stag would lead troops of the fae folk on a pilgrimage through the forest. What an amazing and vivid image that creates in my mind's eye! Perhaps I can draw or describe it...

The deer's list of qualities also includes abundance, which is an energy I've been working with lately. In China, the word for deer and for abundance and fortune are the same. This is something BlackLion noticed right away on my birthday, when he quipped a money pun about "the buck flowing into your life" (rather than "the buck stops here"). There are many levels of meaning, and much to explore. I have worked with deer energy a bit in the past, having met them while on a shamanic journey, and certainly plan to spend more time with them now. Thank you, Deer, for blessing me with your presence!