The Horse

You are a brazen horse. This is a magic horse given by the king of Arabia and India. When instructed, with a pin turned in its ear, the brazen horse could carry its rider anywhere. You can also take people in any magical direction in life, although you don’t need a pin in your ear.

There is something mysterious about you, rather like the White Horse of Uffington, the famous chalk creature tied to ancient British history. You also roll in and out of life, rather like the white horses, the white-capped breakers that come in from the sea.

We associate O’Donohue’s White Horses with sweet but unearthly music, when the hero O’Donohue appears every seventh year, on a white horse, on a spring flower path laid by fairies.

Horse, you simply do not live in the same world as the rest of us. This makes you fascinating, intriguing and your own best entertainment. At the same time, you can be inaccessible, hard to understand and unfathomable – for those who are firmly planted in the practicalities of reality.

You suit the world of the arts and creativity. You have hobbies and interests where magic is required or can take an ordinary job and work all sorts of strange wonders with it.

The Wooden Horse in Don Quixote has the same unearthly and fantastic qualities as the Brazen Horse. There is also, quite literally, a Magic Horse in The Arabian Nights, made of Ebony and Ivory.

It’s fair to say you are also a dark horse. People simply do not know what you are capable of. A great deal is hidden about you and in fact, one of Pluto’s horses, Abatos, was quite inaccessible and also unknowable.

There is something mythical about you, rather like Black Bess, the mare belonging to Dick Turpin.
It is also true that ‘You can take a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.’ People can only take you so far, Horse, before they realise you cannot be easily swayed.

It takes a very experienced horse-wrangler to herd you. Perhaps a partner of many years, or a patient family member, has that gift. Rather like a gaily decorated circus horse, you are a wonder to behold, can be rather hard to catch and never stop dancing.

We talk about ‘horsing about’ and horseplay. That is also you. You never grow old.

(Volkers/Rawpixel).