Wake Up You Sleepy Heads!: Channeling Rabbit Energy

There were a couple of things on my mind this morning as I was out sauntering through The Shire.

First, I was thinking back on the open mics I have played this summer and remembering what songs seemed to land really well with audiences. Interestingly, some of the songs that I didn’t think would land as well as they did are ones I believe were inspired by the influence of David Bowie. I like that a lot.

I could say quite a bit about this and the influence of David Bowie on my life and music, but that gets us off topic.

But that led me to the second thing on my mind. I started humming and singing to myself the song “Oh! You Pretty Things.” I decided to put it on and take a listen.

What a great, great song. If only I could write such a masterpiece.

This is a song on his Hunky Dory album. It’s the second track on the album. I was thinking it was written by Paul Williams, but I was wrong. The credits give the composers as Bowie, and Mick Ronson for the arrangement.

Ronson, his lead guitarist and probably closest collaborator during this whole era of his career, was absolutely the secret sauce of his post-Space Oddity through Young Americans album era, even though he was gone after Pin Ups, the covers album. I hear his influence perhaps even into Scary Monsters …

but again, this is a bit off topic.

It’s a freaking great song, and the album stands as one of the most beloved albums I have ever heard, of all time.

“Oh! You Pretty Things” has three messages that really resonate for me. On the surface, it is about the turning tides between generations, but I think it is much deeper.

First, it is a call to pursue heightened consciousness. Wake up, you sleepyheads!

Second, it is a song that heralds a transformation of our species. It’s very Nietzschean in this regard.

Third, it is saying the signs and the path forward are mystical and strange. It’s mythical poetry.

Yes, indeed.

Strange days ahead of us all.

“Strange days indeed” — “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon.

Which brings me to the core topic.

Rabbits and rabbit energy.

Rabbits have been everywhere for me this summer.

Since getting back to the PNW in June, they have been out each morning in droves. I could barely walk 100 yards without encountering one.

But this morning, I didn’t see a one. In fact, it dawned on me that I have not seen them since I returned from the Northwest Tarot Symposium.

Strange.

However, they were everywhere at the Symposium.

The first evening of the conference, we went through a workshop about our spiritual animal. Everyone received, at random, two envelopes. We were instructed to open the lighter-colored one, and inside we found a card with an animal on it.

This represented our animal spirit. I don’t think it meant “THE” animal spirit, but one that is at work in your life at the moment, and perhaps has always been there.

Mine was the rabbit. And the rabbit is found on the Queen of Pentacles card in the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck (the most common and well-known).

My friend, Jennifer, had told me a week earlier that she believed she had probably been a rabbit in a previous life and that is why she didn’t have children in this one. She was joking, but symbolically, not.

You see, for the Karaoke Party on Saturday night of the event, we were asked to dress in costume as one of our past lives, and she had made this joke to me when we were texting about what we might go as.

Now get this.

On Saturday morning, Jennifer was one of the featured speakers at the Symposium. She was standing by the table we had been sitting at during the last presentation, getting ready to go to the stage. I came up to check in with her and offer some words of encouragement.

Next thing you know, a ruckus was set off!

Someone yelled, “What is that?!!”

Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a little creature heading my way.

Someone yelled, “It’s a baby rabbit!!”

And the rabbit ran right over my right foot and under the chair I had been sitting in.

If you read the lyrics to my song The Novel One, discussed in a recent article, I sing, “My slow foot is dragging me back towards the door I just came in from, out of the cold.”

I was referring to my right foot, for a specific reason that I will hold off from discussing right now, but, wow, a very mystically poetic occurrence.

I am sure the rabbit meant something to others, and certainly to Jennifer, right before she took the stage to do her great presentation, which I will cover in a separate article.

Nevertheless, it felt very personal and meaningful.

Then, towards the end of the last day of the Symposium, Jennifer had taken some books off the “free library” table (kind of a leave-a-book-or-tarot-deck-and-take-a-book/deck-free-library thing they do).

She looked through one and decided to put it back. I said I might be interested in taking it, as it was a beginner’s guide to working with the RWS tarot deck.

So, she passed it over to me, and I began to flip through it.

I soon realized it was a book sort of like a dream-meaning book that has “one meaning” for a type of dream. If you dream of flying, it means X. If you dream of money, it means Y. If you dream of missing your final exam for a class, it means Z. Etc.

Not very useful.

Dreams and tarot readings are personal, and only the person who encounters them can assign and decide the meaning.

However, I came to the page where a description of The Wheel of Fortune ends and the description of the Justice card began, and found a slip of torn-off notebook paper, as if used for a bookmark.

I pulled it out and looked at it, turning it over.

The side facing The Wheel of Fortune had a little printed-in-color cartoon drawing of a bunny face.

Yes, a little rabbit.

Say what?

Boom.

Mind blown.

Okay, well, there’s more to the story, and it has to do with my personal myths and paths towards integration. And I think I have figured it out this past week.

last Monday I wrote that I was taking the day off to process, in The Novel One article, but no, I took the whole week, and am still going.

Energy, enthusiasm, and awe are very high.

Like a rabbit, you might even say.

But that’s all I got for today, folks.

Thus, as I like to say, stick around, it is getting interesting up in here.