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In January 2017, two notable orcas died – Granny (also known as J2) and Tilikum. Both lived tragic lives in different ways. Granny, captured and released because of her age, saw the gradual extinction of her pod due to pollution and overfishing. Tilikum, captured as a calf, killed three people arising from his torment at being a performing killer whale. Both animals were the impetus for humans to reconsider the ethics of using animals for entertainment. The result was an ending of orca shows at major marine parks. These two orcas became deified by the Whales as Gods – Granny, the Matriarch, and Tilikum, the Resister. The Whales saw Holy Power in each of them.
 
Granny (J2), the Matriarch Orca
 
Granny, also known as J2, the oldest known orca of the world has died at 105 years old. She went missing on October 2015 and was declared dead in January 2017. As the matriarch of the J Pod of the Southern Resident Community, Granny let her pod by sharing what she learned about when and where to find food. (These orcas roam from southeast Alaska to central California and the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean.)
 
Granny was captured and released in 1967. Because of the destruction of her original pod and her age of 40 years old at the time, this orca became known to activists. She was the icon for keeping communities of orcas intact in the oceans.
 
The Whales told me that Granny joined the Holy Powers as a Deified Hero. She is called upon by other orcas to guide their pods and to advise the Matriarchs. Granny is now the Divine Matriarch.
 
Hail Granny (J2)
Matriarch, Crone
Teacher, Mother
Survivor, Lover
 
Advertisement
 
May we honor your life
May we protect your kind
May we learn from you.
 
Hail Divine Matriarch
Guide for the Orcas
Leading Them Home
 
Tilikum, the Captive Bull Orca Who Resisted
 
The largest bull orca in captivity, Tilikum sired 21 calves. He became the first successful grandfather of orcas in captivity. Tilikum died at 35 years old from an ongoing incurable disease of his lungs.
 
Tilikum’s notoriety came from killing three people at Sea World (accounting for the three of the four deaths by captive orcas). In 2010 after drowning Dawn Brancheau, he became the focual point of why orcas should not be kept captive. The movie “Blackfish” detailed his tragic life from being captured as a calf, through his being bullied by other orcas, to his isolation, rage and depression. Why Tilikum killed became the intense focus of trainers, marine biologists and others. The result was the impetus for ending the performing orca shows at Sea World.
 
The Whales raised Tilikum to be one of the Heroic Dead. He is the Resister, who leads their kind in their battles against being be assimilated by humans. They honor Him for the Hero that He is.
 
Don Mclean’s “Vincent (Starry, starry night)” is a fitting elegy for Tilikum.
…….
 
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
 
……..
 
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen they’re not listening still
Perhaps they never will
 
Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group
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 I was watching the movie “Moby Dick” starring Gregory Peck the other day. And of course, I rooted for the whale. I kept thinking, “This whale is mad as Hell, and he’s not taking it anymore. Enough with the whale killing. This White Whale is the Whale Avenger for all the murdered whales.”
 
One of the most famous of Whales is Moby Dick of Herman Melville’s novel, “Moby Dick”. Besides being white, Moby Dick has a wrinkled forehead, large hump on his back, and a curved jaw with crooked teeth. This giant white Sperm Whale took revenge on the whalers, who hunted him.
 
Harpoons did not seem to hurt him. One of Moby Dick’s favorite tricks was to swim away as if he was fleeing, then suddenly turn on the whalers, and smash their boats. Moby Dick was based on an actual white Sperm Whale who lived near the island of Mocha off of Chile. Mocha Dick, the White Whale of the Pacific, had become known in the 1800s for his violent attacks on whaling ships. When He was finally killed in the 1850s, sixty-year-old Mocha Dick was toothless, blind, and had eighteen harpoons sticking out of his body.
 
“Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else.” (“Moby Dick”, Herman Melville.)
 
In his writing of “Moby Dick,” Herman Melville sensed the Avenger of the Whales. Moby Dick is called upon to help the whales fight those who would destroy them. He is one of the few known Gods of the Whales. When writing Moby Dick, Melville, a former whaler, apparently channeled this. The whales wanted the humans to know about their Avenger and to take heed.

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