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I dropped down an internet rabbit hole recently after digging up the name of a book I'd read years ago and following the trail back to the author and those who've been influenced by him. I'll not retrace that route here --it's seriously tangential at this point unless I dive more deeply into the work-- and instead, I'd like to share an interesting story about some of Yellowstone's re-introduced wolves that rhymes tremendously well with a section in Dion Fortune's Cosmic Doctrine.
In the mid-1990s, a pack of gray wolves was relocated from British Columbia to Yellowstone. The topographical landmark in the area where they were relocated is called Druid Peak and so the pack that was released on its slopes was called the Druid Peak pack (sometimes referred to as Druids Peak pack).
By the early 2000s, the Druid pack had increased in size to a degree that a portion of the group split off to establish new territory at Slough Creek. The five-year span 2003-2007 included the three most populous years for wolves in Yellowstone in the 20+ years since they were introduced, and the Druid Peak and Slough Creek packs reflected part of that population explosion (the Druid Peak pack was at one point 37 strong). By 2005, perhaps the results of the population boom were being felt - the park's wolf pups had only a 32% survival rate, compared to the following year's rate of 78%. Unlike the Slough Creek wolf boom, the Druid Peak pack was reduced to four adults early that year, and all of the pack's pups died. [1]
Inevitably, the increased total population created stressors for the individuals and their family groups and that came to a head in 2005/6, when the Druid Peak and Slough Creek packs became fiercely competitive (their interactions were worked into a PBS documentary [2], which I've not seen, and at that point public interest in the packs' doings increased). From my rabbit-hole source who reported from the documentary, the Druid Peak pack, though it had earlier grown too large for the long run, maintained some degree of balance in the valley in which they made their home.
In the year or so (post extreme pack size) before the Slough Creek pack entered the Druid pack's territory, the Druid Peak pack coexisted with a coyote couple, accepted a Slough-Creek-outcast into their pack, and seemed to approach hunting with an attitude appropriate to their resource base.
With the Druid Peak pack slightly stronger by the end of 2005, the Slough Creek pack still took their incursions into the Druid Peak area to a new level and their skirmishes resulted in deaths in both packs, with the Slough Creek pack able to take over the Druid-pack denning site.
The interlopers harassed and killed the male coyote that had formerly coexisted with the Druids, chased off the pregnant female, and they were reported (in the documentary, it seems; I find no mention of this in Yellowstone Wolf Project reports [3, 4, 5]) to have killed more elk than they could consume. I suspect that the documentary dramatizes the good vs. bad component, but the sense I get from reports of the incident and what follows, the Slough Creek pack seems to have swung toward an imbalance in the area. Essentially, they also drove off the remaining Druid Peak wolves.
The next spring, the Slough Creek interlopers had bred and were settled into life in their new home. In April of 2006, a completely unknown pack of twelve black wolves (the one tracking collar seen was non-functioning and researchers were unable to identify or find the home source of the pack) entered the valley, killed one or two males from the Slough Creek pack, and stationed themselves around the den. They effectively prevented any Slough Creek wolves from aiding the penned-in females and pups, and by preventing any hunting in the area or "resupplying" of the sieged wolves (except for one juvenile who managed to get in and probably regurgitate some meat from a recent kill), they effectively starved the pups whose mothers could no longer provide milk for them. [6] After two weeks, the denned-in (now pup-less) females managed to escape. The mysterious black wolves left the region and were never seen again.
The writer on whose blog I first found this story wrote,
but, since you were wondering where The Cosmic Doctrine fit into all of this, it's here: the unknown wolves might very well have been "following the rules of nature, " though Dion Fortune's take on things won't explain the direct biological causality. It does, however, give a very useful metaphor with which to consider the mysterious ways of nature!
Fortune writes of the "Divine Sparks" that first make their journey through the various planes of existence. The first three, known as the Lords of Flame, Lords of Form, and Lords of Mind, have characteristics different from all subsequent "swarms" of Divine Sparks that make their way through existence (as various aspects and forms of matter and life, etc.). They have the ability to revisit and influence beings on the planes (whether physical, mental, spiritual, and so on).
Of the Lords of Flame she says, "Those that do not so proceed [either in withdrawing from the manifested universe or passing outside the Logoidal sphere to become a Travelling Atom] remain as conditioning influences in the universe, being at-one with the Logoidal Mind, [they] are able to execute the Logoidal Will..."
Likewise, the Lords of Form "undergo similar adjustments" and, pertinent to our wolf story, the Lords of Mind are
Here Fortune's point is to tie in these cosmic forces with the phenomena of virgin births (and corresponding "savior" figures - those spiritual masters and initiated teachers who seem to have sprung directly from Logos), but I was immediately reminded of the unknown wolves who appeared, modified an imbalance in an ecosystem (one that, if the Cos Doc is anything to go by, is also an etheric/astral/mental/spiritual system), and then passed out of it untraced. Who's to say that any such natural vector that restores order to a disordered system isn't in some way following a track in space laid by such divine beings as the Lords of Flame, Form, and Mind - if not outright manifestations temporarily taking physical form?
---Note: Apparently the park's elk population was in precipitous decline after the reintroduction of the wolves - as evidenced by the burgeoning wolf population and easy times the wolves experienced for a brief moment; the reversal and stabilization of the elk population was finally noted in 2010 and this was related to the wolf predation that targeted weak, sick, and old individuals, leaving healthier individuals in an environment with abundant resources. [7]
[no footnotes, you can click on the numbers to go to the original sources]
In the mid-1990s, a pack of gray wolves was relocated from British Columbia to Yellowstone. The topographical landmark in the area where they were relocated is called Druid Peak and so the pack that was released on its slopes was called the Druid Peak pack (sometimes referred to as Druids Peak pack).
By the early 2000s, the Druid pack had increased in size to a degree that a portion of the group split off to establish new territory at Slough Creek. The five-year span 2003-2007 included the three most populous years for wolves in Yellowstone in the 20+ years since they were introduced, and the Druid Peak and Slough Creek packs reflected part of that population explosion (the Druid Peak pack was at one point 37 strong). By 2005, perhaps the results of the population boom were being felt - the park's wolf pups had only a 32% survival rate, compared to the following year's rate of 78%. Unlike the Slough Creek wolf boom, the Druid Peak pack was reduced to four adults early that year, and all of the pack's pups died. [1]
Inevitably, the increased total population created stressors for the individuals and their family groups and that came to a head in 2005/6, when the Druid Peak and Slough Creek packs became fiercely competitive (their interactions were worked into a PBS documentary [2], which I've not seen, and at that point public interest in the packs' doings increased). From my rabbit-hole source who reported from the documentary, the Druid Peak pack, though it had earlier grown too large for the long run, maintained some degree of balance in the valley in which they made their home.
In the year or so (post extreme pack size) before the Slough Creek pack entered the Druid pack's territory, the Druid Peak pack coexisted with a coyote couple, accepted a Slough-Creek-outcast into their pack, and seemed to approach hunting with an attitude appropriate to their resource base.
With the Druid Peak pack slightly stronger by the end of 2005, the Slough Creek pack still took their incursions into the Druid Peak area to a new level and their skirmishes resulted in deaths in both packs, with the Slough Creek pack able to take over the Druid-pack denning site.
The interlopers harassed and killed the male coyote that had formerly coexisted with the Druids, chased off the pregnant female, and they were reported (in the documentary, it seems; I find no mention of this in Yellowstone Wolf Project reports [3, 4, 5]) to have killed more elk than they could consume. I suspect that the documentary dramatizes the good vs. bad component, but the sense I get from reports of the incident and what follows, the Slough Creek pack seems to have swung toward an imbalance in the area. Essentially, they also drove off the remaining Druid Peak wolves.
The next spring, the Slough Creek interlopers had bred and were settled into life in their new home. In April of 2006, a completely unknown pack of twelve black wolves (the one tracking collar seen was non-functioning and researchers were unable to identify or find the home source of the pack) entered the valley, killed one or two males from the Slough Creek pack, and stationed themselves around the den. They effectively prevented any Slough Creek wolves from aiding the penned-in females and pups, and by preventing any hunting in the area or "resupplying" of the sieged wolves (except for one juvenile who managed to get in and probably regurgitate some meat from a recent kill), they effectively starved the pups whose mothers could no longer provide milk for them. [6] After two weeks, the denned-in (now pup-less) females managed to escape. The mysterious black wolves left the region and were never seen again.
The writer on whose blog I first found this story wrote,
"Even so, that’s not what’s really puzzling. What’s really hard for us to wrap our minds around is the behavior of those mysterious black wolves. They weren’t following the rules of nature either. Far from it! They weren’t after the valley’s resources. They didn’t do much if any hunting there. They just waltzed in, surrounded the dens, waited for all the pups to die, and then left, as if that were their sole purpose, which makes no sense at all. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do what they did?"
but, since you were wondering where The Cosmic Doctrine fit into all of this, it's here: the unknown wolves might very well have been "following the rules of nature, " though Dion Fortune's take on things won't explain the direct biological causality. It does, however, give a very useful metaphor with which to consider the mysterious ways of nature!
Fortune writes of the "Divine Sparks" that first make their journey through the various planes of existence. The first three, known as the Lords of Flame, Lords of Form, and Lords of Mind, have characteristics different from all subsequent "swarms" of Divine Sparks that make their way through existence (as various aspects and forms of matter and life, etc.). They have the ability to revisit and influence beings on the planes (whether physical, mental, spiritual, and so on).
Of the Lords of Flame she says, "Those that do not so proceed [either in withdrawing from the manifested universe or passing outside the Logoidal sphere to become a Travelling Atom] remain as conditioning influences in the universe, being at-one with the Logoidal Mind, [they] are able to execute the Logoidal Will..."
Likewise, the Lords of Form "undergo similar adjustments" and, pertinent to our wolf story, the Lords of Mind are
"able to react upon all planes of manifestation, range up and down the planes, performing adjustments by exercising compensatory stresses when the faculty of epigenesis [essentially, free will] has disordered an evolution.
Upon a plane where they function they are simply a center of force, therefore they are unperceived by the denizens of that plan [like those of us humans oblivious to the non-material realms]. They can, however, by the assistance of a vehicle of that plane, detach certain elements to form nuclei for the building of vehicles in the matter of that plane... They bring their own life impulse. Nothing but the accretion of matter is required for their manifestation." (pg 112 in the Weiser edition)
Upon a plane where they function they are simply a center of force, therefore they are unperceived by the denizens of that plan [like those of us humans oblivious to the non-material realms]. They can, however, by the assistance of a vehicle of that plane, detach certain elements to form nuclei for the building of vehicles in the matter of that plane... They bring their own life impulse. Nothing but the accretion of matter is required for their manifestation." (pg 112 in the Weiser edition)
Here Fortune's point is to tie in these cosmic forces with the phenomena of virgin births (and corresponding "savior" figures - those spiritual masters and initiated teachers who seem to have sprung directly from Logos), but I was immediately reminded of the unknown wolves who appeared, modified an imbalance in an ecosystem (one that, if the Cos Doc is anything to go by, is also an etheric/astral/mental/spiritual system), and then passed out of it untraced. Who's to say that any such natural vector that restores order to a disordered system isn't in some way following a track in space laid by such divine beings as the Lords of Flame, Form, and Mind - if not outright manifestations temporarily taking physical form?
---
[no footnotes, you can click on the numbers to go to the original sources]
