The Moon When Salmon Return to Earth

I know I’m one day past the full moon, but the moon you see up in the sky this month is a moon that brings some sorrow to me. It is the moon when salmon return to the Earth to spawn in the very same rivers and streams they were born in – or least when they did historically. Today, many salmon never make it back to spawn.

Salmon are truly majestic creatures, steeped in mythology and awe. Salmon are anadromous – they posses the ability to exist both in fresh water and sea water. They are born in freshwater streams, then spend majority of their lives in the ocean, traveling incredible distances. After 3-5 years, they miraculously return to the exact stream bed they were born to spawn in the fresh water.  For many cultures, this was a marked event in the year, when salmon would be speared and eaten as they returned to their native streams. This was an event marked with great reverence for the salmon – the first to be caught was treated as a King and honored. The bones were sent back to sea where they were believed to re-essemble into new fish. And – the salmon was harvested with great consciousness to the health of the salmon population – people caught when they needed, and deemed sustainable so that this great cycle should continue.

Today, as water ways have become dammed and polluted, the spawning habitat of this great being has been destroyed – at the very same time as the salmon have been over-fished at sea. The European Industrialized mind had a very linear idea of profit – which could not grasp the cyclical nature of the salmon run. Fishing was done without a mind for preserving the salmon populations – only with the thought of more fish equaling more profit. But, nothing in nature is linear – and each year, the cycle of the salmon returned fewer and fewer fish, until, as Jessica Prentice says in The Full Moon Feast, “there is no moon when the Atlantic salmon return to Earth.”

So on the Atlantic, we have started to farm these fish. This great, noble fish which would spend it’s life travelling great distances out into the ocean to feed on krill is now being penned in small areas. They are fed soy meal and ground up fish and fed antibiotics to try and make up for their lack of vitality.  The waste is so concentrated that it creates a dead zone all around the area. They are dyed pink to try and emulate the color imparted by their natural diet of curstaceans.

In Celtic mythology, the Salmon was seen as the creature of knowledge. There is a beautiful story about a particular salmon, who ate the nine hazelnuts which fell into the well of wisdom, and in so doing gained all the knowledge in the world. It was believed that whoever caught this salmon and ate it, would then possess this great knowledge and be blessed with the gift of second sight. A man called Fionn the seer had spent years pursuing this salmon. One day, he finally caught it, and started to cook the great fish over a fire on a spit. It had to be turned very carefully and could not be burned, or the knowledge would be destroyed. After some time, the fire began to get low, and Fionn knew that he needed to get more wood or the salmon would fail to cook properly. He asked his apprentice, Fionn Mac Cumhaill to turn the salmon until he came back with more wood. Fion Mac Cumhaill was a dreamer, and try as he might to concentrate on this great task, he began to let his mind wander. When he came from his thoughts and looked at the salmon, a great blister had appeared on the side. Being very anxious and afraid of the anger Fionn the seer would have at seeing his great prize destroyed, he quickly tried to press the blister back in with his thumb, but burned himself in the process. He instinctively put his finger in his mouth to relieve the pain, and inadvernately  he recieved the wisdom, the second sight, and the gift of poetry.

There are several interesting things that can be gleaned from this story. First of all, salmon are high in a particular type of fatty acid known as omega 3s – which play an important role in the development and function of the brain. There is a belief held in many cultures that those who live on the sea are more intelligent than the inland folks. While many attribute this to the greater accesss of coastal people to trade and exchange of ideas with other cultures, it might be a product of the increased consumption of seafoods such as salmon, that contain these important fatty acids necessary to the brain. Salmon, then, do posess the knowledge in a way. But when they are deprived of the beauty of their life cycle, penned in and fed an unnatural diet, the knowledge – the omega 3s- are completely lacking.

In a more metaphorical sense, salmon possess the knowledge of the cyclical nature of things. They teach us of the important journey we all must take into the world before we may come back to ourselves and our origins to manifest our gifts. They teach us that when we lose sight of the greater cycle, we disrupt a delicate balance that depletes and destroys.

Today we treat information and knowledge in much the same way we have treated the salmon. We have access to all the information in the world at our fingertips. There is so much information being exchanged that we have forgotten what knowledge really is. We have mistaken an abundance of information as knowledge and wisdom, but in essence, knowledge is really the ability to narrow down information – to select that which is necessary and crucial for survival. And just like the salmon, the possessor of knowledge, we have depleted our true wisdom by our greed for abundance. Instead of selecting what we need, we take more in the belief that we will have more. But, cycles do not work in this way – the more you take, the less you have.

On this moon, may we honor the gifts and lessons of this mighty creature. May we honor and trust in the cyclical nature of things, and learn the gift of selecting only what we need so that the cycle can continue. May we work to protect the habitat of the salmon, so that it might continue to return to Earth and share its profound wisdom with us.