#it's to represent deer antlers “bambi”

[vertigoblockbuster]

Mrigashira: Gentle, multifaceted

Mrigashira is the 5th of the 27 nakshatras

Following Rohini and preceding Ardra, Mrigashira lies in the late degrees of Taurus and early degrees of Gemini. It is symbolized by a deer or just the face of a deer. Mars is the planetary ruler of this nakshatra and it's governing deity is Soma. Soma is often thought of as its form as a food or drink, and the deity Soma is kind of like the personification of the qualities it brings to it's consumers.

The Symbology of the Deer

Deer are herbivores which means they don't hunt other animals. They are also very selective when it comes to the plant material that they eat. Part of why deer are such picky eaters is because the growth and health of their antlers is impacted by the quality of their food. Antlers are important for confrontation/combat and they also function as impressive displays during courtship, so the bias of deer towards nutrient-dense plants makes sense.

"Baby with a rack like this, you won't be worrying about these clowns." - Bambi's dad, probably

The herbivorous nature of deer and their high selectivity when it comes to their food suggests that people with prominent Mrigashira placements in their birth chart are 1) fundamentally gentle and 2) curious, restless, and diffuse because they constantly look for the next best thing. If you know anything about deer you also know that they are very flighty and timid animals, qualities this nakshatra possesses as well.

Another important characteristic of deer which is revealing of the nature of Mrigashira is their preference for groups. They are herd animals, not solitary ones. Something this nakshatra cares deeply about is pairing things up. Mrigashira-heavy people will be multi-faceted people with broad minds. They ceaselessly collect new ideas and update their ideologies naturally as they move through life. They look for ways to apply what they learn - not only in the way it was applied in it's original context, but in all areas of their life. These are people that will read a book about Finnish cuisine and their main takeaway is they need to reinvent their relationship to their career.

Mrigashira is ruled by Mars

Mrigashira, Chitra, and Dhanishtha are the Mars-ruled nakshatras. The planet Mars in astrology represents the way you assert yourself. Mars wants to get the job done and doesn't really care about your opinion. Actually, if you wanted to go outside and hash it out Mars would be happy to do that. It's an aggressive planet, a hot planet, a physical planet, an "I'm going to get what's mine" planet. Everybody needs a healthy sense of drive, and the condition of your mars says a lot about how you accomplish (or don't accomplish) your goals. It also gives information about your sexual desires and physical body.

So why does Mrigashira belong to Mars? How does it make sense that the planet of war lords over the same star represented by such a delicate animal like a deer? What links the hot-hotheadedness of Mars with the flightiness of the deer is desire. Mrigashira natives naturally take interest in collecting knowledge, friends, and ideas as they move through life (like a deer combing the forest floor for good food - behavior driven by a hunger, or desire) and want to combine them in ways that make everyone happy. They are driven by this desire; to diffuse and collect, and then to creatively recombine.

Soma as a Deity and as a Miracle Drug

Soma governs Mrigashira. He is the god of the Moon. As a deity, he rarely appears in Vedic mythology in human form. It's more common that Soma refers to the special drink that the gods consumed to gain immortality and supernatural strength. In ancient times it was drank by yogis and sages to bring them closer to the gods while they performed rituals. Soma provides the consumer with 2 things: health (immortality and strength), and pleasure (delight and happiness.)

Soma was created specially for Indra, who was king of the gods as well as being the god of rain and storms. Before Indra ruled the gods it was Varuna who held this authority. After Indra defeated the demonic serpent Vritra, he turned the other gods against Varuna and took his place. Varuna left big shoes to fill and Indra needed assistance to fill his new role. This is where Soma comes in.

Soma the drink was created for Indra by Soma the Moon god so that Indra could become unconquerable. Another name for Soma is Amrita, meaning "no death." All food is Amrita because we need it to live. Soma is what nourishes the plants that we get our food from - water. Water is the element closely connected to the Moon, both relating (in an astrological context) to things like emotions, femininity, nurturing and nourishment, and introspection. What Soma created for Indra was a plant that could be made into a special drink that had an intoxicating effect while nourishing the body. It's like if eating a home-cooked meal sent you on the best trip of your life.

There has been no consensus when it comes to identifying Soma in nature. It is thought by some that when Soma was prepared by regular people, it was made with poppy, cannabis, and Ephedra. Some theories exist linking Soma with magic mushrooms/psilocybin. R. Gordon Wasson was one of the first people from the West to start trying to identify what plant the Rig Veda could have been referring to when mentioning Soma. He thought that the Soma plant was Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric.

The Lesson of Mrigashira

The broad and multifaceted nature of Mrigashira can manifest as aversion to commitment. It can result in someone who is unable to stand for anything, know what they believe in, or find their own center. Focus of energy becomes too scattered to get anything done.

The medicine of Mrigashira is the balancing act of being multifaceted and diffuse in love and life without becoming a commitment-phoebe. If you're on the more rigid side, Mrigashira asks you to be open to de-compartmentalizing different areas of your life. If you're on the more fluid side, Mrigashira asks you to exercise more control over where your attention is going.

A Song to Listen to with Mrigashira Themes: Just Another Man by Glenn Campbell

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Credit is due to Vic Dicara for a lot of the information I talked about here. If you're interested in learning more about Vedic astrology, his YouTube channel is a great resource to do that.

[bambinification]

So... Ronna is... a trauma survivor, right?

In Bambi II, Ronno knows what a deer call is and how to describe it--and that's possibly secondhand info, but where did he hear about it? Maybe another deer witnessed a hunter using a deer call and survived to spread the word, yeah. But also--Ronno has a notch in one of his ears, which could very possibly be man-made.

I kind of have a headcanon Ronno did encounter a hunter, but maybe he was kidnapped or taken in for a short time like Gobo in the book. It probably wasn't pleasant, because he only exhibits trauma symptoms. He probably either wasn't going to be a pet or wasn't going to warm up to a family.

The movie is already about healing from trauma, so I'd love looking at it with Ronno acting as a Bambi foil as well as representing the uglier ways someone heals from trauma (overdramatization, low empathy, selfishness, picking fights, acting "tough" but also being a crybaby, claiming to be grown up but also being behind maturity-wise. That last one is clearly apparent; it's suggested that Ronno is a little older than the other kids by his antlers alone. So why's he the least mature out of all of them.).

[quotesfrommyreading]

Deer have been on human minds and in human lives for eons. Between 120,000 and 108,000 years ago, Homo erectus relied on deer for food on the island of Java. A Neanderthal living in what is now Germany carved chevron shapes into a deer bone 51,000 years ago. Between 33,000 and 30,000 years ago, Paleolithic people painted on the walls of Chauvet Cave in what is now France. Among the animals they left for us to ponder are red deer, reindeer, and Megaloceros—the largest deer to have ever lived.

Deer have appeared in the art and mythology of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Celts, Hindus, and Chinese, for whom deer represent longevity and prosperity. They are prominently represented in medieval European heraldry, mythology, and culture. The deer is a sacred symbol of the Maya world and its image appears throughout their culture. Maya mythology holds that it was a stag, using his hoof, who formed the sexual organs of the moon. The Maya sacrificed deer to their gods and used deerskin to record the pre-Columbian Maya codices. To this day, many Maya people have the surname Ceh, which means “deer” in the Mayan language.

Across cultures and time, people have revered deer as symbols of spiritual authority. A deer’s antlers, resembling a crown, extend beyond its head and body, connecting it to the heavens. Those same antlers drop off and regrow each year, making them symbols of regeneration. In Christian iconography, the stag serves as a symbol for Christ, conveying piety, devotion, and God’s care for his children. Deer star in countless folk tales and fables. In 1942, Walt Disney Studios released the animated film Bambi, which has helped shape North American perceptions of deer ever since. Through it all, human hunters have prized deer for their meat.

Deer are special. We are not talking about a plague of locusts, rats, or venomous snakes—we’re talking about deer. And whenever the words deer and problem come together, many people have big feelings.

Both Indigenous knowledge and Western science have long recognized that deer can have big impacts wherever their predators are few, causing a trophic cascade—the ecological term for changes throughout a food web. Aldo Leopold, the first professor of game management in the United States, famously observed a century ago how overabundant deer on Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau degraded the habitat to the extent that their population collapsed. “I now suspect,” he wrote in his seminal A Sand County Almanac, “that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.”

Tara Martin has been studying the effects of overabundant deer for more than 15 years. Because some islands in the Salish Sea have deer and some don’t, they provide a natural experimental setup to measure deer’s effect on the environment. Martin has found that palatable plant species cover, richness, and diversity are 92 percent lower where deer are common and 52 percent lower where deer are scarce (less than 0.08 per hectare) compared with areas with no deer at all. On some islands, native black-tailed deer and exotic fallow deer occur at densities of over 20 per square kilometer. The resulting loss of understory means the loss of habitat for numerous bird species, which rely on the first 1.5 meters above the forest floor for cover, nesting sites, and food such as flowers and seeds.

“There are over 300 species in this ecosystem that are being negatively impacted by overbrowsing,” Martin says. “Many of those are plants, but it also includes bumblebees and songbirds, and our amazing alligator lizard and sharptailed snake species that are at risk of [local] extinction.”

  —  Giving Bambi the Boot

[brooklyns-makeupandfashion]

Here are my final project themed makeup looks! My theme was Disney characters so I chose Ariel, Bambi, and Cruella de Vil.

Ariel- I did a mermaid inspired makeup look with the mermaid tails and bubbles. All the colours are inspired by the colours of Ariel. The red is representing her hair and the green is her tail. I tied in her purple sea shell bra with the purple hair bow and purple lip. I then curled my models hair.

Cruella de Vil- a Dalmatian spotted eyelid with some red eyeshadow to represent Cruella’s bright red lipstick she wears and a red top lip with a Dalmatian inspired bottom lip with some extra Dalmatian dots on the cheek. For the models hair I back combed it to show cruella’s wild side. For the accessory my model is wearing a Dalmatian spotted light cover up to represent cruella’s desperately wanted fur coat from the Dalmatians.

Bambi- a whole transformation into a deer. Brown eyeshadow and brown eye liner for the eyes and brown eyeshadow around the cheeks and to the top of the forehead for the interesting deer face look with white spots using white eyeliner. I did a black nose and black top lip just to give that “animal” feel to it. For the accessory I had a model wear some fake deer antlers and I twisted the hair up into the antlers for a finished look!