The C's using the word 'dire' was interesting. I see it as as very strong word, a 'dire warning' is one worth paying attention to. Then when the news about the Dire Wolves started trending very soon after this session I found it interesting to consider that it was no coincidence, and then it seemed more playful and clever, less worrying.
Were they trying to convey the concept of things being dire but also to face the situation with more humour and a sense of wonder?
The other interesting angle is to consider the association of Dire Wolves with Ice Age conditions, since there are many signs heralding their return. Is this another sign of that, although more symbolic in nature?
In the realm of fiction, one connection is that the Stark family children each received a dire wolf pup at the beginning of Game of Thrones. So with the 'dire wolves' return in our reality, we can maybe say that it's a sign of things getting dire in a GoT kinda way. As it's a story about political powers being totally unprepared for the return of Winter (Ice Age), monsters (window fallers) and dragons (comets) because they're so busy with their plots, I don't think this isn't very far off from what we already suspect.
In the realm of ecology, wolves are apex predators. They basically maintain the balance of whatever ecosystem they live within. IIRC, their preferential prey is generally moose, but will hunt deer, elk, and other smaller prey when these populations get more numerous. They will also preferentially hunt the weak and the sick animals in any given prey population. They are eugenicists! Joking aside, although they get a bad rap as predators, due mostly to fear and ignorance, they are actually maintaining the health of the prey populations. They also change the landscape itself. Cool video on this:
So dire wolves returning may be a cosmic retrieval system symbol that indicates what might be called a 'wolf-like process' is about to ramp up for the whole planet - the weak and the sick will be taken by 'the wolf', thus achieving balance. Though it may be bloody.
In mythology, there's the devouring god in the wolf Fenrir. He swallows the goddess Freya, goddess of love, warmth, summer, and sunshine - and as a result, the sun stops shining, ushering in Fimbulwinter, or the Great Winter. That's the key event that begins Ragnarok. In terms of the archetypes and the human-cosmic connection, when human behaviour replicates this motif of the Beast devouring Love, the cosmos responds with an Ice Age. This is from
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie Lousie von Franz:
In its negative aspect the wolf is dangerously destructive, representing the principle of evil in its highest form. In old German mythology, the end of the world and of all the gods in the universe will come when the Fenris wolf gets loose at the end of days. He will devour the sun and the moon, and that will be the beginning cataclysm and the end of the universe. So the wolf is the demon of utter destruction. There is a saying that if one speaks of the wolf it appears, just as when you speak of the Devil and he comes. In order to avoid mentioning the wolf by name, it was called Isengrimm, which means irongrim, grim being the state of rage or fury or anger which has turned into cold determination. To say something with Ingrimm means to say it with cold, hard iron determination which stems from a hidden rage or affect. Naturally, if applied in the moment where one needs a merciless determination which comes from a “holy” anger, this can be positive.
The wolf is also one of the Devil’s animals and an animal of all the war gods. In Rome, for instance, it belongs to Mars, one of the chief gods of the Roman Empire, which is why a female wolf mothers Romulus and Remus. The animal has a secret relationship not only to the dark god of war and the dark side of the light god, but to the feminine principle. In “Little Red Riding Hood,” for example, the grandmother, the Great Mother, turns into a wolf and threatens to eat little Red Riding Hood in that shape, before the hunter, who is also an aspect of Wotan, comes and kills her. There the wolf becomes an attribute of a dark feminine goddess and of dark nature.
In the dreams of modern women the wolf often represents the animus, or that strange devouring attitude women can have when possessed by the animus. In many mythological connotations the wolf simply represents hunger and greed. In English one speaks of “wolfing” food, eating with a kind of passionate greed. That is why there are many tales and stories in which the fox outwits the wolf by catching him through his greed, for that’s the moment where the wolf loses his cunning reflection and gets caught. Greed or hunger brings about his downfall. From our standpoint that’s where he gets caught in destructiveness.
From our standpoint that is where one can catch him. In Grimm’s Fairy Tales there is the story “The Seven Little Goats,” where the wolf is greedy and they put stones into his stomach and throw him into the water. There again he is outwitted through his greed.
In man, the wolf represents that strange indiscriminate desire to eat up everybody and everything, to have everything, which is visible in many neuroses where the main problem is that the person remains infantile because of an unhappy childhood. Such persons develop a hungry wolf within themselves. Whatever they see they say, “Me too!” If one is kind to them, they demand more and more.
Jung says it is a drivenness which cannot be identified clearly with power or sex. It is even more primitive; it is the desire to have and get everything. Give such people an hour a week and they will want two; if you give them two, they want three. They want to see you in your spare time, and if you gave that, they would want to marry you, and if you married them, they would want to eat you, etc. They are completely driven. It is not really that they want it; IT wants it.
Their “it” is never satisfied, so the wolf also creates in such people a constant resentful dissatisfaction. It stands as a symbol of bitter, cold, constant resentment because of what it never had. It wants really to eat the whole world.
The wolf comes more into the Nordic fairy tales where it is the companion of witches and of great goddesses. In Greece the connection with the feminine was not so easily possible, because the wolf was Apollo’s animal, but there are late Greek magic papyri where the wolf appears among the dogs with Hecate. But we must not forget his connection with the light. The greed, when mastered or directed onto its right goal, is the thing.
So she's pointing to the dual nature of any symbol, it's dark and it's light. In folklore, there's one story that provides a positive side to all this wolfy stuff, his 'connection with the light' - my favourite being
Ivan and the Grey Wolf.
Ivan and his brothers set out on a quest to bring back the mysterious Firebird to their Father the Tsar. Fast forward and Ivan's horse (his plodding and loyal domesticated nature) is eaten by a giant wolf. The wolf has compassion for him, and becomes his new mount on the journey (indicating a Soul transition to his wild, instinctive or intuitive nature, healthy aggression, etc.). Fast forward and Ivan, although he's a lovable idiot in the story, is successful - he gets the Firebird, and even finds a bride and some cool treasures.
On his way home, his brothers see his success and murder him in jealousy and greed, cutting him to pieces (a strong image of personality disintegration and betrayal) and scattering his corpse in the woods. Two young ravens and their mother arrive, put on their napkins, and prepare to eat his remains. The wolf pounces, holds one young raven down, and threatens the mother raven that her child will die unless she returns with two magic Waters - the Water of Death and the Water of Life.
Ivan's body/mind or personality is disintegrated, but he has yet to undergo a true death of the false personality. He's in limbo. So the Water of Death is necessary. He dies, and is reborn with the Water of Life, integrates on a higher level, and returns home, where the shadow-brothers are 'taken care of'. All of this being impossible without help of his aggressive, wild, intuitive nature, the wolf.
So given that there's probably some Game of Thrones-level trouble heading our way, and the Ice Age or Fimbulwinter is going to ramp up towards Ragnarok, there will likely be some wolf-like processes unleashed in the world in the form of depopulation and mass death, including in our own personal lives. Ivan learns to 'ride the wolf' and trust his wild guide. This 'riding the wolf' is another way of looking at the universe - it will 'take care' of things down here in the same way a wolf takes care of its ecosystem. By eating. Nature can be brutal, but it also knows what it's doing, and the concept of 'riding' the wolfish process points to the challenge of accepting the brutality as necessary for the restoration of balance. So that's what I thought of when I heard the dire wolf news. It's similar to 'ride the wave', in a way.
