The Stag: Images, Memories, Sacred Encounters

I was reminded today of the antlered stag when a client presented a beautiful dream (mentioned here with permission) in which she walking on a beach and came upon an old driftwood structure that had collapsed. As she described the scene, in my minds eye there suddenly appeared beautiful imagery of water-worn, smooth and sun dappled driftwood branches. As images are wont to do, the drift wood branches brought forward another image-memory of a large antlered stag who appeared to me in a dream. I set the images aside, as I continued to allow space for my client's dream encounter with her dream image.

My personal response to a client's dreams is often about inspiration, synchronicities and reverence for the powerful and vulnerable work they are doing. But the memory of those antlers smooth and sensual, yet strong stayed in my body; that nature could form such beauty and that we as humans have the capacity to revere the stunning beauty that nature offers us. The resonance that I experience in witnessing the sacred encounters in dreams is both sensual and affirming.

After the session, I came back to the image of the stag. It’s not the first time the antlered deer have shown themselves to me in the dreams, and they have appeared in other forms in dreams and journey work over the years (see my post The Antlered One, Guardian of all Who Journey) as well.

Energized by the work with my dreamwork client, I am inspired to share this story.

Dream Story:

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I’ve stood now many times in this spot. The spot where everything narrows and I feel the squeeze of time and the curiosity of what is next. The path narrows, the walls of the ravine close in. The sun holds its warmth back from the trod ahead. As always, fear blooms like a moon flower, dark and silky. It takes my hand for that first step. Each successive step takes me further from the safety of what I know until eventually fear hands me off to curiosity and anticipation, those strange bedfellows that have accompanied me my whole life.

Most often I am alone in these moments, or I think of myself as alone, but really the landscape of the dream is alive. Let me tell you: I look up. The dry California heat shimmers above along the face of the cliff while shadows dance with me in the crevice of the ravine. Insects roam air trails only they can see. A healthy dose of dust kicked up by my feet fills my nose and the clickety-clack of small rocks bouncing down speaks of the tiny creatures that live there, or perhaps it is the wind as finds its way into the nooks and crannies. The ocean waves whisper in the distance.

I reach the end of the ravine as it opens to a grassy field. I slow down, breath catching in my throat, as I see just beyond the opening a large antlered stag. He steps towards me and into the opening. I realize that he intends to pass through where I have come. I press my body against the wall. He approaches and it is like the sky has turned dark as night, he looms so large. His antlers glow and I notice how sharp they seem, how perfectly formed. I think that I will be impaled by those perfect horns, I will be eviscerated, my blood will spill. Fear raises the flag once again. I hold my breath, all is silent now. He takes one step nostrils flaring slightly, then two and he delicately pushes past me, the full length of his body caressing my own. His antlers cause no harm as no harm he intends. I awaken in the awe and sensuality of the encounter.

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There is a lot of collective knowing of the stag. The ancient Celts, my ancestors, revered the stag as the forest itself. A teeming and fertile landscape of which they were a part of, not separate. The antlers rose like tree branches, the crown of life. That the stag sheds its antlers speaks to the regenerative aspect of nature, the cycles of life and death. The stag is also seen as majestic and powerful and as a spirit guide in otherworldly matters.

I believe that part of the work of dreams is to return us to a nature connection, an understanding of the rhythms of life and death, the awesomeness and terror that is the natural world. So the stag who comes in my dream is not all of the collective symbolism that we can ascribe to him (as mentioned above), though that information might be relevant and even helpful in moving us towards feeling. But rather, it is the image and encounter that the Natural Dreamwork method zeros in on to open me to the full experience of what stag is for me. And in my story, the depths intersect with the present, and in that intersection I am whole.

~~~

A few months later, I am standing on my deck. The moon is full and reflecting brightly off my pond in the field down below. Suddenly I see a glowing orb arise from the grass, ethereal like a ghost. I get my binoculars and when I press my eyes to them, my heart leaps. It is the large buck I have seen a few time over the past year. His antlers encircle his head, glowing under the golden moon like a silvery crown. He slowly drops his head again to pick through the legumes and timothy grass, his shadow slides across the surface of the pond. And I remember him coming in the dream as he comes now, like an old friend or an ancient ancestor returned with me from that shadowy ravine.

The Stag: Image Created with AI, LSR

In the late summer, I see the buck again. This time he is with a gang of other bucks of varying ages, a rare occurrence to witness. He is the elder of the bunch and I watch, from my deck above the field, the younger bucks frolic as they follow him, establishing a pecking order that will hopefully result in less aggression come mating season. I admire how he has grown, that he has survived Vermont’s hunting season long enough to grow 6 points and how he offers his aloof yet attentive leadership to the “forkies” and yearlings that follow him.

~~~ Epilogue to the story, a painful ending

In the dark of the following winter, a murder of cacophonous crows lift on heavy black wings from the bottom of our field as I stood at the back entrance to our barn. I look up and see one of them carrying something red in its beak. Later in the day, I see the noisy crows again down in the corner of the field. I get my binoculars and see the gleam of a rib cage and, breath catching, what appears to be antlers. I trudge down the hill to see with a heavy heart “my” beautiful stag now lay in a patch of snow, bones and cavity picked mostly clean by the carrion birds and other wildlife. I see where he had walked down from the forest, returning to our field to take his final breath. I see where he had fallen in the snow, gotten up and walked a few more steps to where he now lay. A few paces away, I see human tracks. I retrieve my metal detector and scan the carcass as I am sure it wasn’t disease that had taken this beautiful animal. Sure enough, I find buck shot in his hip. I feel the anger of knowing that someone had shot this animal and had failed to retrieve him or even ensure that his suffering was ended.

I ask my husband if he will bring the creature's head to me. Not as a trophy, but to be honored. I have a local man in Vermont, who keeps Dermestid beetles, clean up the skull for me. The skull now holds a place of honor in my home, a reminder of the love and pain that live side by side in my heart. And a remembering of that great stag who came in my dream, slipping past me in the ravine, nostrils flaring, delicate hooves picking their way along the path and his body running the length of mine. His great antlers maneuvered around me with grace and presence.

The Stag on my Altar

Laura Smith-Riva is a certified Natural Dreamwork practitioner and Priestix of the Green Mountain Druid Order in Vermont. She works with dreamers from many parts of the globe and in her personal work is interested in the connection to the natural world through dreams and vision work and offers expressions of her journey using art, poetry and prose.