MONARCH: transformation

Beltane is a pagan festival falling on April 30-May 1 halfway between spring and summer. My Celtic ancestors likely celebrated this day by honoring the earth -- abloom in pink and white spring garb -- with feasting, planting seeds, and dancing around a Maypole. The monarch in Beltane represents transformation as the earth evolves, babies are born, and flowers (such as daffodils) bloom. In the center is a woman’s face, like the goddess Maia, one of the seven sisters of the Pleiades, whose name became the month of May.

ANGELS: messengers of love

COYOTE: trickster, teacher, change | ECLIPSE: duality, light and darkness

In Eclipse a blood-red moon rises above a snowy landscape, partially covered with the crow’s blue-black silhouette. A coyote trots across a tree-shadowed field of snow, symbolizing the canine powers of January’s full Wolf Moon. The two are tricksters, teachers, and symbols for change. Both are on a timeless and mysterious mission. I was born during a lunar eclipse, so it’s an important personal symbol for me. An eclipse symbolizes light and darkness, a duality like yin and yang, where one cannot exist without the other. Here crow represents darkness.

LUNA MOTH: the fleeting nature of life, the night time BUTTERFLY: transformation OAK TREE: longevity MOON: emotions

In Luna Moth white trees rise up from a twilit blue landscape. A serene female moon watches over a single green luna moth as she flies upwards on one of the few short journeys she will have on this earth. Representing the fleeting nature of life, luna moth tells you to seize each day. The oaks, in contrast, represent longevity. The moon represents the feminine emotional energies we all have: tenderness, nurturing, and empathy. A ghostly shadow of a coyote trots by below representing change. Transformation symbolizes creatures of both day and night and that change comes to us all.

WINTER GODDESS: Time

In Winter, an ancient aged face gazes down impartially on a cold, blue-sky winter’s day as dry, grey oak leaves swirl around her impenetrable gaze. This goddess of winter, embodied in a feminine form of stone, not flesh, is an otherworldly being, caring not for time but is in fact time personified.

DANCING OWLS: joviality

Juvenile great horned owls appear to be dancing against a background of Mozart’s music.           

SWAN: beauty, grace, purity

In Song for Claudia a mysterious, gigantic swan slips silently through the trees of a sacred lakeside oak grove. The landscape is otherworldly: the trees are indigo and purple, the sky is pale yellow -– the color of the dawn of a dream. Is the swan skating on ice or levitating above the forest ground like an angel? Grief for my friend, Claudia—who passed away too young—resonates throughout. The swan is one of the oldest totem animals and appears often in folklore and fairy tales. Claudia was writing her own story about a Danish princess, “Swanwhite,” just before she died. The term “swan song” comes from a Greek legend where the swan would sing its most beautiful song just before its death.

In Golden River Swan, a swan turns its head into an s-shaped curve to look in the opposite direction. A waxing moon casts its golden reflection in the darkness of the river, perhaps symbolizing the River Styx. Swans were sacred to Apollo, god of the sun, so the swan symbolizes the daytime hours: golden leaves and the pink and rose colors of the sunrise. Its pure white feathers, long serpentine throat, and graceful wings make it seem like a ghostly spirit from another realm, misplaced in a world of night.

HAWK: messenger | MOON: emotions

Hawk is one of my primary Totem Animals and is the Native American astrological sign for my sun sign of Aries. Hawk brings perspective, or “seeing the big picture,” because Hawk flies so high. I’ve seen this red-tailed hawk many times. She looked so noble posing for me, with her feathers blowing in the wind, that in Songbird I gave her the music of Mozart, a sacred grove of oak trees, and a full moon to create an otherworldly environment for her. In Hawk Spirit, the moon is a feminine symbol and the oak trees represent my British roots. My last name, “Ashley,” means “Dwellers in the Ash Trees” and I always imagine my ancestors living among sacred groves of trees.

HUMMINGBIRD: infinity

Something Wonderful features the hummingbird, one of my primary animal spirits. A hummingbird moves its wings in a figure 8, a number which when viewed on its side becomes the infinity symbol. It is the only bird that flies in any direction, even backwards. Fast and resilient, they cover great distances in their semi-annual migrations and with their incredible memories they often return to the same location year after year.