After saying prayers and goodbyes to my sister’s lifeless body last October, I walked out of the hospice facility. The sun had just risen. It was a brisk fall Illinois morning. Orange and red leaves glowed against the blue-gray sky. Deadened meadow flowers hung black and limp in the frost. And there, emerging from the meadow grass, I saw two horse statues that appeared to be mother and child. The small one was white, but it was the taller blue horse that caught my attention. Transfixed, I walked over to them for a closer inspection. I took photos with my phone as I marveled. Donated by grateful families, the blue horse is “Hope Reigns,” and the younger horse is “Joyful Spirit.”
This was not the first time that a blue horse has caught my attention. Indeed, the blue horse has been a recurring figure—in my dreams, my shamanic journeys and in my art—for about two decades. Months before my sister’s death, and now, months after her death, the blue horse has revealed itself again and again to me.
The blue horse resides in a land beyond words, beyond time, beyond everyday dimensions. It lives in imaginal consciousness—a very real world that so often is at the periphery of our conscious knowing. We get glimpses from time to time which often fascinate and remind us of the divine. My relationship with the imaginal world and its intelligence led me to leave a high-paying profession to become an art therapist—and later to follow its guidance to pick up another path, and then another path. Following symbolic wisdom has been my trustiest compass. A blue horse helped me before upon the death of a loved one, reminding me in my grief that we are not alone in our suffering—and surely was the reason behind the statues residing in the memory garden of the hospice center.
And I am not alone. Blue horses have come to other artists and writers. German artist Franz Marc painted blue horses. His art was banned by the Nazis because it was not realistic and was therefore a threat to society. An art teacher introduced beloved children’s author Eric Carle to Franz Marc’s blue horses when he was just twelve. In one of his last books, Carle credited the blue horses as the impetus for his prolific career resulting in more than seventy books. Marc’s blue horses—and the artist’s death in World War I—also inspired Mary Oliver to choose her Blue Horses poem as the title for one of her poetry collections near the end of her life.
In my next blog post, I will share more about how specific blue horses have come to me—in mysterious and synchronistic ways—and why this very real world of symbolic wisdom is so important for us.
References
Carle, Eric. The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse. New York: Penguin Random House, LLC.(2011).
Oliver, Mary. Blue Horses: Poems. New York: The Penguin Press. (2014).
For more information about Franz Marc, see https://www.franzmarc.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Marc
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