SEAL FAMILY: Seeing With Your Mind’s Eye

 Seals (Phocidae) are distant cousins to sea lions (Otariidae), who are, in fact, closer cousins to walruses (Odobenidae). To many people, this seems odd, since they think that seals and sea lions are alike. Actually, the “trained seals” at circuses are really female California Sea Lions. Seals are more streamlined and without noticeable ears. When on land, seals move like caterpillars, instead of walking, like sea lions and walruses. (Note 1)

 

Contrary to popular belief, seals not only live only in the Arctic and Antarctic, but also in the warmer seas as well. Also, seals can be found living in inland seas like the Caspian Sea and Mediterranean Seas. Ringed Seal and Baikal Seal live in freshwater lakes. Hawai’ian Monk Seal can be seen sleeping on the beaches of Hawai’i.

 

Humans have long traditions regarding seals. The Romans believed that sealskins would protect people from thunder and lightning. The Scots and Welsh tell of seal-people (Selkies), who would become human by laying aside their sealskins and walking on the land. Some Irish and Scottish families claim Selchies as ancestors. Other Celtic peoples regarded seals to be messengers from the Fairy Realms.

 

In “The Druid Animal Oracle,” Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm, write “The Dan nan Ro’n – the Song of the Seals – upsets and frightens many who hear it. Its mournful and human sound stirs the heart of the listener to the core.” Otta Flora Swire describes the same in “The Inner Hebrides and Their Legends, the seal’s song as “so beautiful a sound but so terrible in its sadness that those humans who have heard it can bear early life no longer but plunge into the sea to join the seals.”

 

In the “Magic of the Seal,” Melanie Godfrey who rescued a seal pup writes of what the seal told her. “I possess neither land nor sea, therefore I am free. Fear not liminality, but embrace the threshold as you accompany me through the Otherworlds of transition – dance in it….”

 

Seals connect people with the mysteries of life. They live in the water yet come on land from time to time. Bobbing above the surface of the ocean, seals watch life with uncannily human eyes. They live in the liminal places beckoning people, who ask “where will the seals take them?”. Seals help people to see beyond what is. They ask that they look with their mind’s eye to find sacred knowledge of the soul.

 

Notes

Note 1. Sea lions (Otariidae) have noticeable ears. With their powerful shoulder and back muscles, sea lions can haul themselves out of water anywhere, instead having to look for a sandy beach like seals. Moreover, while seals, who have small flippers for legs, scoot along the ground, sea lions can walk with their webbed back legs.