Bear Medicine

Bear medicine is about transformation. Bear is the guardian of the underworld while being a true giver of life. The bear, as the walker between two worlds, remains fully embedded in society as it gives rich and diverse meaning to life through language. For example, we bear responsibility, bear the love of, bear watching, take bearing, bear on, bear tidings, bear shape, bear arms, bear in mind, and bear misfortune. Within our ancestral heritage, bear medicine has been used in ceremony to seek protection from bears, to seek protection by the bear spirit, the evocation of warlike themes, to invoke healing, to welcome seasonal or fertility rites, to invoke sacred initiation ceremonies, and to support the formalities of a judicial nature.

The most venerated ceremony is that of the slain bear. As an spiritual practice following the successful kill of a bear, the spirit of the bear is honored for providing power, clothing, food, and healing gifts to the hunter. As a first kill of a young man, it is a rite of passage. As a spiritual initiation into the healing arts, it is a ceremony of gratitude to the great bear spirit for stripping off the old skins of the initiate, effectively killing the beliefs that prevented the person from accessing the powers of the unconscious for healing self and others.
Bear medicine is about going into the inner sanctum of oneself to find the wisdom of who you are. It involves going into hibernation, often called a little death, where one becomes still in the silence of oneself to more fully birth who you are. It involves surrendering to the primal instincts that know the thoughts that have yet to be known. Bear medicine can teach you to go deep within so that you can make choices and decisions from a position of internal authority. Bear medicine awakens the inner wisdom of the soul, and by bringing it out into the open and applying it, the depth and breadth of life can be known.  AHO