On Receptionists, Empaths, and Daemons.

I managed to get somewhere with the GP surgery today. I talked to the young woman receptionist instead of the older one who likes to identify as an Anglo-Saxon battleaxe. How many times have I said that young women are usually the easiest to deal with and the best at resolving issues? This could have been a longer paragraph, but I’ll leave it at that.

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Skip back a day to my Ashbourne shopping foray. On walking up to the town I was aware of emergency vehicles rushing in from all directions and static traffic blocking the roads. Clearly there was something amiss, and when I walked up to the top of the old market place I discovered the source of the commotion. There were several vehicles and people milling about on the Buxton road leading uphill out of the town, and they were all crowded around two white sheets set up on frames, clearly covering something on the road. Since there were ambulances involved, I assumed it was a person.

It’s surprising how disturbing – even enervating – that can be to somebody with empathic inclinations. I was grateful I could hear no screaming, and I didn’t hang around.

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Many years ago I read Phillip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials and found it utterly enthralling as very many people did and still do. The early part of the story is set in a parallel universe to ours which is mostly similar but with a few notable differences. One of those differences is that every human wears their soul or essence on the outside as a free-living animal known as their daemon. They communicate freely, often work through problems in tandem, and their closeness to one another is essential to the survival of both.

Ever since I read it I’ve often idly mused on what my daemon would be if such a thing existed, and nothing I ever thought of fitted the bill. If I had to choose two animals to which I feel most closely aligned it would be the dog and the brown bear, and yet neither felt right. And then a few nights ago I watched a video accompanying the Lisa Gerard song Sanvean, and I finally found my daemon.

The video featured wolves, and for the first time in my life I saw the majesty, nobility, and intelligence of those magnificent animals. Why have I never ‘seen’ them before? I don’t know, but I was suddenly left in no doubt that my daemon would be a sigma she-wolf. (It should be noted that daemons are always the opposite gender to their hosts, which I suppose is about complimentary masculine and feminine principles co-existing in the composite whole. Nice idea, and one of which I approve.)