Mrigasira Nakshatra | The Needs of the Hunter

If we can’t feed or nourish ourselves, we will die. Physically, at least. Perhaps the immortal soul will continue to live on, but our bodies, however, will perish. The body has many needs. It needs to be housed in some sort of shelter. It needs food. It needs sex. The body, as a vehicle, has many needs.

Among that which feeds and sustains us, there is also the potential for pleasure. Think of your favourite delicious treat and you’ll know exactly what I mean. Getting our daily bread is important, but there must be a higher purpose, too. Humans may be the only species (that I can think of, at least) where our purpose is not only to survive, but to also experience joy and abundance.

Behind every single one of our desires is a desire in itself. And what exactly does a hunter desire?

For a hunter to hunt successfully, he must first have in his possession a hunting ground that will allow him to provide for both himself and his family. Once he has found his hunting ground, he must possess the tools he needs to hunt for game. What tools did the ancient ones use to hunt? The spear as well as the bow and arrow… What else comes to your mind?

If we were to apply this same logic to our modern, tech-driven lives–would the same rules apply? Or are there different rules now?

The Hunting Strategy

Firstly, you have to identify what it is that you can hunt on these grounds. What prey exists in a desert versus in the jungle? What prey is ‘superior’? Which prey will sustain your needs for the long-term? What can only sustain you in the short-run?

You’ll probably, or at least most likely, need both. Small prey is better than no prey–but a hunter would always prefer a big prize, wouldn’t he?

What maladies existed in our prehistoric mind that we have carried forward to today?

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers often lived in groups of a few dozens of people, which usually consisted of several family units which lived in close proximity to one another. They developed tools to help them survive and were dependent on the abundance of food in the area as well as each other. If an area was not plentiful enough, they would collectively move onto greener pastures.

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers would most likely have used natural shelters as a living space. Caves were highly popular as comfortable living spaces. The ancient ones mostly stayed near the entrance of the cave to stay within the range of the sunlight. Open sites, which were more exposed to the environment, have also been found by archeologists.

‘The bigger the animal, the better’ is a philosophy that definitely holds up when the head hunter’s chief concern was to feed a whole bunch of hungry and demanding humans. That’s why he invented those tools to help him catch prey that were bigger than himself. He must have had some nerve!

Another huge innovation that occurred as we started living in a group was the invention of a language or of a common tongue. In the early days, language was ‘basic’. With time, full-fledged and complex languages developed. Besides being utilised to organise and allocate resources, the ability to be able to discuss your hunting and gathering strategies in detail would most definitely have allowed for our ancient ancestors to pass down knowledge over the generations… and keep it going for generations to come.

The Hunter’s Star

If you ask me, Mrigasira Nakshatra doesn’t exactly look like the deer after which it is named. It looks more like the hunter that hunted the deer. When it came to the stars, we connected the dots and saw what we knew how to see. The brightest star within the Nakshatra is Bellatrix.

In Western cosmology, Bellatrix was called the Amazon Star and was associated with a group of female warriors and hunters, who matched men in physical agility and strength, in archery, riding skills and the arts of combat. They were called the Amazons.

The ancient Greeks never doubted the existence of a warring tribe of women known as the Amazons. Neither were they the only people who were enchanted by the warlike women of nomadic cultures. Stories such as these had also come from ancient Egypt, Persia, India and China. Greek heroes of old even had encounters with the queens of their martial society and fought them. The texts of the original myths envisioned the homeland of the Amazons at the periphery of the then known world.

Every hunter always has a prey… But some prey are more common than others.

The Deer

Did you miss the main lesson of thousands of years of prehistoric life? I might have. I wasn’t there now, was I? Or perhaps, that world, while no longer in existence, still exists somewhere in my mind and in my psyche.

The deer is a hunted animal. It is not a hunter. Are you a hunter? If you are human, you are probably a hunter of some sort. Think about it. The world is still a wild place, no matter how civilised we become. We are still afraid. Our worst fears can become a reality or they can walk us by without harming us. Is it a warning? Or is it an initiation and an invitation to continue? If we feel scared, we may not continue… But if we are brave, we will try again and realise that perhaps this time around, there may be nothing to fear.

And if you have been harmed–and you’re still here–it means that you survived. Somehow or another, you survived. You figured out how to live.

The San peoples or Bushmen are members of the various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa. They believe that when you track an animal very closely, you can get into sync with that animal to the point that you no longer know if you’re the hunter or the hunted. This was an ancient way of connecting with our primal or wild nature, which was something every human could still access back then. Our myths about part-human and part-animal creatures perhaps portray this very state of consciousness.

We become what we hunt. It becomes a part of our consciousness and our physical body. So stop for a second and think about what it is that you’re hunting…

Do you want it to be a part of your consciousness and your body?