“Guided by My Matriarch” (12/19/2024)
I’ve written about this topic before but never made it public or viewable to anyone. It’s been over 15 years since I’ve written about Horse as an animal guide, mainly because nothing significant went on during that time for this topic. My spirituality is rather lax anymore and slow-moving as I progress through work with guides on and off and gradually. I last worked with Blood-Verine (Wolverine guide), the Devourer of Shadows, and probably am still somewhat in the midst of that work, but it has veered off into Horse becoming the prominent guide. Horse, for me, has been a shadow guide, despite the fact that I have a horse theriotype; Horse has been trying to teach me lessons that are dark, difficult, or uncomfortable to face and work through. Honestly, Horse has been an intimidating guide to me even if I haven’t been quite literally scared of horses during this time.
I started work with her (Horse) in 2009 and discovered she was a shadow guide to me. In fall 2009, I got to finally work with a real horse for the first time through a horse-riding class I took while in college. The entire semester I was mismatched with a horse that would obey the instructor but not me. I think the horse’s name was Carly, and she both frustrated and intimidated me. She could sense I wasn’t very assertive or confident and thus chose not to listen to me most of the time. By the end of the semester, the struggle with her resulted in her biting my hip and leaving a 4-5 inch bruise there. Also, earlier on in the semester I experienced what I can best describe as a psychosomatic “pseudo-allergy” to being around horses–I was strongly itchy all day, every day on my arms, face, and chest in a way that gradually reduced over 8 weeks with each day I was exposed to horses. Before taking the class, I was excited to finally get to work with real horses, especially from the point-of-view of being a horse therian. But unfortunately the whole experience was ruined for me and the reality of Horse being specifically a shadow guide for me was all-the-more apparent. Back then I didn’t make much progress with Horse and around that time I developed chronic depression, which really separated me from my spirituality for a long time.
Fast-forward to 2024, in which I’ve been on a good regimen of psych-meds for a few years and most of my depression is gone. Recently, I’ve been drawn to more things equine–mainly domestic horses but other equines, too. Things like drawing equines (quagga and proto-horse unicorn), interest in reading a horse encyclopedia book, and following some horse-related Tumblr blogs, along with collecting My Little Pony figures. I think it’s all working like a form of ‘exposure therapy’ to expose me to benign or positive portrayals of horses even if I’m not able to interact with real, physical horses.
I’ve also this year (2024) become more bold and confident in myself and less socially anxious, on- and offline. This includes learning to get passed my imposter syndrome regarding my art I’ve had since 2003 and thus realizing after so long that I am a real and good artist, regardless of the artistic skills of others I come across or know. However, the imposter syndrome is there still, even if most of the time it’s more like an itch in the back of my mind now.
Horse is tied to lessons involving the Grassland and earth element, particularly finding balance and stability along with grounding myself to find and maintain calm. Breathing exercises along with yoga or tai-chi are good ways for me to reach these goals, which I haven’t done yoga in years (due to executive dysfunction, mainly, from passive depression) but it did me well when I did practice it. Balance for Horse is manifested in a delicate, fragile manner as horses stand on single digits but they are at risk of severely injuring their legs and losing that balance. This is to caution how balance and stability are gained and that there is notable risk of losing that. The Grassland is home, openness, and freedom–a place where horses feel a sense of belonging. When I was a child, my home had a good-sized field where I found freedom to run to my heart’s content. Anymore, this freedom is more symbolic than that but it could regard personal freedom among others and at home to be myself and be more open about myself and my life or interests. To embrace what freedom I can get despite the things in my life that restrict and tether me. For a long time I’ve seen the Desert (symbolically) as my home and the Grassland as a dream to reach one day, and it’s nice to see that maybe I am getting closer to that dream ‘home’.
On the other hand regarding freedom, Horse stands for discipline, reining in myself for things I need to do–work, school, home chores, etc. She wants me to strike a balance and manage my behaviors, socializations, and overall self to “train” me to function better in my life, especially when it comes to school and job work. I’ve actually learned to embrace my anxiety to my benefit by going ahead and doing things–particularly for school–instead of procrastinating like I used to; I get antsy to go ahead and get those things finished, even working ahead by days or weeks. But part of me, especially the equine part, hates feeling tied down to doing something I don’t enjoy, but Horse has kind of demanded that discipline from me and it’s a work-in-progress still, yet I have improved nevertheless.
Horses being the social animals they are, forming groups within whole herds with the groups led by a matriarch mare, Horse affects me in regards to my social life. Socially, I have my wife, one of my sisters, and my mother, and beyond that are people online–mainly on Tumblr–though none particularly close to me, unfortunately. I see my wife and those two family members as my main group (equine unit, per se) that I am closest to, while those online I interact with are more like my extended “herd”. I do, however, feel lacking socially, like I don’t have a close friend outside my family, especially in person. That may end up requiring me to be more active online and in other places than my usual haunts, but I’ll just have to see how it goes, especially with me having to balance online life with offline life (work, college, hobbies, home life).
“A wild herd is composed of a number of family groups, usually controlled by strong-minded old matriarchs who are more than able to cope with the boisterous behavior of young colts.” (Edwards, 2000, pg.436)
An aspect of Horse that doesn’t seem to be a lesson for me is travel and/or journeying. This can be thought of in a literal, physical sense or in the spiritual sense, which the latter I’ve never done and don’t think I really can do since it often requires complex visualization and concentration. There is, however, another type of journeying it could instead indicate for me and that’s basically the general spiritual journey and pathfinding that I’m going through with her and other guides. Horse makes for a good guide in regards to journeying because of the deep ties in symbolism that horses have in traveling.
Horses embody power, strength, and stamina. Horse the guide comes to me to also help me embrace and further develop my own inner strength, my confidence, as well as boldness, and my resilience. I feel like my inner strength declined during the years I fought with active depression and my confidence slipped during that time, too. I’ve recently been gaining some confidence and boldness in myself in social situations, which helps reduce my social anxiety. A lot of it is small steps, but it’s still significant progress nevertheless. The resilience I feel relates to things like work, school work, and my art–being able to persevere through these things, even when it is difficult, or things aren’t going as I want (especially with my artwork). This makes me also learn to be patient with myself as I work to not give up. Gradually working through college again (fourth time) particularly comes to mind for me to be patient, determined, and not afraid to keep pushing through.
As a matriarch, Horse has the potential to teach me about leadership though I’m unsure at this point when or where that would occur. I’ve always tried to avoid a leadership position, at least in my offline life, thanks to my shyness and social anxiety. Often times I have taken an important role in a project or situation, but not the leader role, which being a leader makes me nervous and uncomfortable, especially the kind of leader who teaches others. I’ve just never made a good teacher or instructor for others, including training others at a job. I don’t feel that confident in myself and worry about the level of responsibility that falls on me in such roles. It’s like when I was doing horse-riding, I just wasn’t a “leader” enough to command the horse to follow me and do what I commanded, let alone me doing this with humans as some kind of leader role. This is just another aspect to my overall confidence that needs more work, and that work will mainly have to be done through me having to take on some sort of leadership role at some point.
On the flip-side, there’s me in a “follower” role, being led by someone else. I’m rather sensitive to this sort of thing because I pick up on the little nuances of “leaders” and if they aren’t confident in themselves or assertive, I become unsure and uncomfortable and feel like I’m more apt to make notable mistakes. I also pick up on and react significantly to if they are a negative leader, bad in their position because they are mean, disrespectful, or otherwise negative, and it impacts me in negative ways and makes me really uncomfortable being around them, let alone being taught by them; I become distrusting of them. With confident, good leaders, I become comfortable with them and more confident in myself and my skills.
“The recessive horse, possibly unsure of himself and lacking in confidence, presents a different problem but is just as demanding of understanding and positive management. He needs, and looks for, strong, dominant leadership that leaves him in no doubt as to what is required of him. A bold horseman makes a bold horse, and the opposite may also have an element of truth.” (Edwards, 2000, pg.437)
When it comes to interdependence, I’m variable about it. I usually cooperate well with others, but when it comes to doing projects or working in teams, I have to feel confident and trusting of the other person(s) to pull their own weight and do the job well. Throughout my life, I’ve acted rather independently and too often the other team members in schoolwork proved inadequate, so a lot of weight would fall on my shoulders. However, when the team member(s) do their job well, I’m fine and actually prefer working with others.
Horse helps with planning ahead–using farsightedness–to look toward the future, which is something I’ve been focusing on this year, mainly in regards to jobs/a career and working through college to attain a long-lasting job. She signifies to me to look ahead and be aware of obstacles in the way toward my goals and to decide whether (and how) to either work around them or to take them head on; to avoid or to leap over. There is also the aspect of not relying on just “sight” but other “senses”, especially intuition; to not be afraid to let my intuition and instincts to help inform me about a situation. This can be useful in situations where I’m deep into something and can’t “see” my way out easily.
Because of the many important roles horses have had and still have, Horse energy is strong in the area of new opportunities. This aspect resonates with me currently because of me getting out of a funk work-wise as well as artistically and maybe even socially soon. I look forward to the next piece of art I will work on including sharing it online (even though I get disappointed at so few people getting to see my art). I also am preparing myself for a new career opportunity after I graduate college again. New opportunities can be good, but they can also be anxiety-inducing or even turn out badly depending on the situation. Planning ahead the best I can helps to reduce the anxiety and can at times make the opportunity more positive. Over time Horse has also taught me to be less hesitant and resistant to changes in my life and even, ultimately, in working with her. Of course, some changes I do stand up and fight against, but I’m more welcoming and positive of certain changes now than I used to be.
Even though I’m a rather docile, homebody kind of person, I feel that there’s still some wildness in me that I often keep restrained. This ferality is more so tied to my cat and vampire sides and my sexuality (which is pretty much nonexistent anymore). So my wildness just breaks through in embracing some forms of freedom in my life. When tied down to something I dislike, I get feelings of anxious, wild horseness desiring to be free that I’ve learned to keep in check. My equine side can be quite flighty but I don’t really show it outwardly. It manifests in ways of me primarily avoiding things that make me feel anxious and flighty, though Horse has helped me learn to take anxiety-inducing things head-on and lowering my anxiety gradually over time. It is no wonder I initially and for so long felt intimidated and nervous by Horse being a guide and why she is/was a shadow guide specifically. I’ve had to develop myself and change my life a lot over time, but especially the last year or two. Horse also permeates with energy of maintaining the wild within a domestic life while the wild outside of domesticity is dying out. Which in relation to me, feels like my wildness will probably continue to live within me but not much on the outside of me, yet it will still survive in me to some extent–I will hopefully never fully lose it.
Beasts of burden is another aspect of horses that my guide encompasses. The best I can figure out how this may apply to me is me being the one who bears the financial burdens in my house and I’m working to become more financially independent. My wife continues to try to find work, but she has a lot of difficulty getting anyone to hire her and she is rather limited in what she can do because of multiple disabilities (and because getting disability assistance from the government isn’t a viable option). So, with some assistance from my family, I’m the one with the financial responsibility which will be possibly rough when I start the main, 3-semester long, program of study in college next fall (2025). But Horse gives me hope that I will be able to bear that burden successfully.
Another aspect is the subject of familiarity–the stable, in particular–and resistance to wanting to leave it while also dealing with the risk of negative effects produced by being in “the stable” too much (in terms of horses, the “stable vices”). The main form of “stable” for me is my physical home. It is where I am most comfortable physically and mentally. Although I don’t mind being away from home for awhile, I start to be affected mentally and emotionally if I’m gone for more than a day–usually ending up with a depressed mood. I don’t, however, tend to get “vices” from staying home for extended periods unless I’m bored and then I’m more apt to do skin-picking or get intrusive thoughts, but anymore I’ve found ways to keep me occupied at home. When it comes to my online life, I have my own “stable” places where I frequent them and tend toward just staying online in those places with me being kind of uncomfortable venturing out to other online platforms. The typical places I visit and interact on are generally where I feel most comfortable being myself online, so I’m hesitant to stretch out beyond that, especially in certain social media platforms. Offline, I end up hiding a lot about myself, in public or at work among coworkers, and generally feel myself wanting to get back home where I’m “safe” and comfortable to be myself.
“Security is as much a basic need for horses as for humans, and for the domestic horse it is provided by the stable, the animal’s familiar surroundings, and, ideally, a companion. It is these factors that produce the gravitational pull of the herd syndrome, and it is important that they should be associated with pleasurable experiences: comfort, shelter, relaxation, safety, and, very importantly, food and water.
“Such is the importance of the familiar stable that horses will often display a greater enthusiasm when turned for home than when leaving the yard for exercise.” (Edwards, 2000, pg.437)
Lastly, I just want to mention that back in 2009 or 2010, I bought a print of “Wild Horse as Totem” from artist Ravenari. The design and energy of it just resonated with me and even despite Horse being a shadow guide back then, I felt I needed to have a copy of my own of it to keep. So it’s been hanging in my bedrooms I’ve had since that time; a reminder of a powerful guide and ally to me even before I could honestly realize it. (Image and linked to their DeviantArt page of it below.)

Works Cited:
Edwards, E. H. (2000). The New Encyclopedia of the Horse. New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing.