After having met the bear several times in a psychological sense I suggest that the ceremonial bear hunt may have another side to it than what is common belief.
The killing and eating of the bear in traditional sami life may also be seen as a ritual for the renewal of spiritual beingness transferred to the bear, and a respectful ceremonial of death and rebirth in a controlled ritual hunt as an outlet for uncontrolled acts of discontent, aggression and blame that has accumulated in the community. Of powers threatening its stability. Or when the the acts of an eviscerated and repetitive social life in a city make us feel bad about ourselves. More of that further down. In the killing of the bear, it was extremely important to let the bear know that the blame was his, not theirs, and the hunters where very careful not to take any of that blame with them back from the hunt. In fact, everything involved in this ritual was about being cautious not to let the bear blame them for his murder. So the blame was transmitted on to the bear. By waking it up from its hibernation, they also awoke themselves from the slumber of social life, from casualness in relation to nature, the bear turned on them att full force. So the hunters must have been very alert and keep their heads to be able to handle the tensity and its rage. Which is the very purpose of spiritual training. Intuitively, my senses tell me that the whole hunt is more of a clensing ceremony. A ritual transfer of guilt, of handling aggression, dissatisfaction and complaints, and to put the blame on the bear for him to carry it back to the spiritworld. Ultimately, it seems that the hunt was aimed at a spiritual revivification of a group or community. We still have it today. The hunt is there but the ceremonials are gone. Our sports heroes may in part meet these ritual conditions today. Even so, it continues to live on in a hidden and distorted form outside of any ritual handling where it doesn’t belong, and we turn it loose inside the community itself and tear both the community and each other apart.
In the absence of ceremonials, or the integrity of spontaneity and visual life, this is what is happening today. We hunt indiscriminately both people and animals with our rage, and we blame them for our actions. It is how we relieve ourselves of the phenomenology of our actions, no matter how obvious it is for any bystander to actually observe that the aggression or blame are coming from us as we move it out of ourselves and place it on something else.
So the bear itself becomes the subject of our untamed forces in the hunt. For the unrestrained and antisocial behavior we have within us. But when the bear within us expresses itself, our own company is enough. He is playful but make us irritable and anyone in this state is best left alone to himself. It is a kind of social hibernation. And not a behavior for common purposes. We can meet the bear in our dreams, as the power of our raw unrestrained nature. In solitude and in the mountains. Wherever he appears, he has something important to say about the relationship we have with ourselves and others. When we have met him, he becomes a significant companion to our inner life.