Utilities

Today is the new moon.  A time for seeding what will come to pass in the fullness of the moon two weeks from now.  As we enter autumn, this is also a time to relish the end of summer and look ahead to the darkness of approaching winter.  Cycles upon cycles from micro to macro whisper ends and beginnings in this moment.  I wax poetic, and laugh hysterically at myself in the same moment...

Recently I went to visit a Native American elder of the Chippewa Tribe.  We discussed many things including parenting, the society and politics, ceremonial means and ends, and individual lifeways.  At this life juncture, when I am finishing my PhD writing, looking back on a year of intense travel and activism, burning with desire to create the work and life which is most beautiful to me, the ways of the Red Road are marvellously useful.   

The Red Road is the way of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.  They have an enormous and rich set of cosmologies and lifeways.  Their storytelling tradition is one of the best living oral traditions on the planet.  And their dances are bold and direct.  They advocate a practical path and tend not to mess around with platitudes, they are grounded and very real.  And for me, this is invaluable to balancing a personality that is opulent, artistic, emotional, privileged, and generally western.  It gives to me sense, as in mindfulness, to balance the natural strength of my other seven senses*.  And so I am at peace.  I drink coffee, I sleep in, but I also meditate, and I've quit smoking, and I take enormous amounts of time to listen to my children.  Our ideas can bind us, and in the red road we ask not whether an idea fits into our doctrines or philosophies or spiritual conformities, we ask whether it helps us to live a beautiful and honest life of love.  We look directly at ourselves, and as we are honest with what we see, we laugh, take courage, and laugh again, for we are the most paradoxical creatures in 622 galaxies at least!  And the most celebrated as well, for we are very beautiful when we come to.  And grounded in the earth, love finds a nesting place.  I am thankful for the red road.  I am thankful for the sacrifices this path would have me make, for the clear mind that it brings to me, for the shining star that I am next to the billions here... 

And in linking things up, there is an important Mevlevi teaching which is also about 'staying awake'.  As we whirl within the ceremony we constantly attend to the circumstances which surround us: the space between ourselves and the other semazens, the timing and quality of the musical selection, the sensation of our robes/atmospheres/floor surfaces etc, the directions of the sheikh and semazenbashi, the images and workings of our own hearts.  In attending to these details we choose to stay present and awake to the moment at hand.  The opportunity is there to bliss out, to trance deeply, to fly, and yet we ride the wave of opportunity within the world around us.  We walk with two feet, in two worlds at once.  We walk this way, the people of the red road walk this way, and people have been walking thus since time immemorial.  Aho.  

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My experience of the senses thus far includes sight, sound, touch, taste, hearing, kinesthesia, and intuition.  What we consider to be senses will likely expand greatly over the next 10-20 years, in which case it will be impossible to name and number them.  At the current moment my understanding of the senses are changing and expanding rapidly....

Suns in August

Last weekend we slept on the roof in order to watch the Perseid meteor shower. Banks of fog hung in the sky, and so we had a small fire in the garden, burning paper trash and dried branches of garden trimmings, incense.  We found that if you take dried lilac blossoms and throw them on the fire they are a beautiful beautiful incense :)  On the roof, snuggled under duvets with the sound of many winds whispering in the trees, we looked at the sky.  As we watched the clear sky directly above us widened.  More stars appeared and the fog stayed in patches on the left and right.  As we lay there six large meteors streaked across the heavens!!  Wow. They were either luminous hot white or bold orange with neon yellow edges and they were HUGE.  Each spark lasted only a moment and yet the after wave lasted minutes as the energy surged through our vision and bodies.  Waking up in the morning, bright sun on the face, eyes in the blue, was delightful.

The Perseid meteor shower comes from the constellation Perseus.  A continual stream of comets surges from his heart, and it is at this time of year, when we rotate past his field, that we can observe the Perseids.  This time of year is a special time for the sun, and some of the oldest cultures on the earth date circa 1,000 BC as a time when the sun became prominent in our spiritual ways and means.  

  

Sunday night last I sat in contemplation and the crown on my head opened so that a large funnel of light rays began to flow in.  The were bright and expansive, as if it were the sun itself, and I  momentarily took a moment to let  my brain register this was happening.  Then I let go into the experience and just allowed the sun to wash through me, brightening my entire system until I too shone from the inside with the rays of light pouring into me.  It was spectacular!  The energy which followed lasted several days, and I was just very very zingy, even to point of drinking chamomile tea and remaining alert as ever - no coffee was needed for these couple of days!

The Dakini Sinhamukha
from 'The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation'

I contemplate at this time of year, I remember in my imagination and senses and pauses, the time as it cycles through humanity.  I think on the time when we began to domesticate animals, when women walked with lions, when the horse civilisations began to emerge, when the people of the red road gathered across Asia and walked across the Bering Straight into their new world.  I think on the times when the great temples and structures rose up across the earth, when the push and thrust of the sun directed us in our upward and organisational impulses.  I think of the rise of sun worship and the agricultural turn, our love and dependence on RA shaping our cosmologies and life ways.  And further back, I think on a time when the world was very young and we were not committed as souls to one form yet.  The glory and beauty of changing from an eagle to a tortoise to a rock to a water molecule as Gaia groaned and pushed to create her environment and its inhabitants!  And even then the tiny section of time all this is, the smallness of our own story, the vastness and endlessness of the unfolding mulitverses.  Wow.  

Solar Flare near Tekapo, New Zealnad July 2012

So in August, when the light is softening and the solar flares are strong in our visions, take time to rest and appreciate nature.  Remember the vastness of time and how the one split into the many so that events could unfold at their own frequencies.  Trust your remembering.

Sun!!!  

For last years post on the sun see: Sunshine

Tobacco

Tobacco is one of the sacred plants of the Shuar. According to their mythology, humans were a beautiful and relatively young species upon the planet. Beings from elsewhere then came upon the planet and introduced the first acts of violence. They taught us to eat red meat, and the destructive phase of fear and violence began. After some time, wise and gentle helpers for the earths consciousness felt the suffering of the Shuar, and gave to them tobacco. With tobacco the Shuar began to have visions. Thier necessary and mortal requirements became easier to bear: they could survive deep in the jungle on very little food, their bodies became cleansed, and they were given guidance for action and for life. Tobacco was not on the earth originally, it was a gift for our development and evolution. 


 Tobacco is sacred to all who travel the red road. It is smoked in peace pipes, carried in medicine bundles, offered to the four winds, and burned in the fire. It dispells negative energies, and demons flee in it's presence. Ceremonially, it is a necessary tool, and shamans from across the Americas will use it at key moments within the ceremonies specific to their traditions. 
The Shuar grow and cultivate the sacred tobacco around their homes. Preeceding an evenings ceremonies, fresh leaves will be picked. The shaman dries the leaves over the open ceremonial fire and then places them in a small bowl or a large pitcher. The number of leaves required is proportional to the use if tobacco for the evening. 
Once the leaves are cured they are folded and crushed into the appropriate vessel. Fresh river water is poured over them resulting in a cold infusion. The liquid is then either snorted or drank.  In Natem ceremonies it is said that the preparation and use of tobacco before the use of Natem itself is the most crucial element of the evening. It cleanses the nose and eyes for clear visions, and seals the stomach. It is strong. In my experience, the strength of the tobacco is proportional to the strength of the evening. It is part of the proverbial bitter pill, as spoken of in Tai Chi and Chi Kung, it strengthens us up for our journey. 

tobacoo flowers

 As I understood the story, the use of tobacco allowed the Shuar to hide out deep in the jungle during the invasion of the conquistadors, and in so doing to keep their mythologies and traditions alive untainted. After some time one of the Shuar, named Etza, began to gather the people. They revolted against those who had brought killing, hatred, and fear among them. There was a spiritual battle, and Etza was victorious. The outside beings either left or ceased to have influence among them. Their culture has been able to flourish, and they have for centuries been fiercely protective of it. 


 The Shuar, like many indigenous peoples the world over, recognise that now is the time of the great mixing. A return to indigenous mythology, sacred use of the plant medicines, and the formation of one human community - tolerant conscientious powerful and sexy - is the story of our era. Who will our Etzas' be? What symbologies and new thought forms will be the tobacco for our current global situation? What universal landscapes will open from this mixing? 


 As I became, throughout my stay in Ecuador, increasingly frustrated with the shape and contour of Euro-Indigenous mixing, it is the use of tobacco which grounded me. The depth of lies we have been sold by our cultural conditioners is immense. Like the vilification of the serpent or the wolf, the sacredness of tobacco has been contaminated with chemicals and tars. I will be planting tobacco in my garden in the coming weeks....may the deva of the baccy be my companion now, as it was in Ecuador. *In Love*

Peace

Bright new energies of space and creation and peace, I welcome you onto the planet, into our collective heart, to act through our words - our hands - our eyes, so that we may take our place among the galaxies and universes which we have until now forgotten.  Through peace, remembrance.  Through unity, evolution.  Through harmony, joy.  

Sunday December 18th I found myself on a peace walk through London. We began at The Bank of Ideas, the third occupation site in central London, passed by Finsbury Square, the second occupation, round to the Bank of England, and over to St. Pauls, the first Occupy site.  Madan, an esoteric activist from Wales, helped me to plan the route.  London was arranged according to hermenuetic proportions and balances, and is laid out just so.  This particular march crossed over the coronation line, which stretches northeast from Arnold's Mound to southwest at Kingston.  St. Paul's Cathedral rests in the middle of the line, and it is here, on the steps, that kings presented themselves for public approval.  Kingship by birth was not given, the people had to accept each successor, and they did so at this historic location.

At St. Paul's several speeches were given, including spoken word poetry, Occupy London's initial statement, a statement by Stop the War Coalition, and a very moving address from Veterans for Peace.  From here we marched down Whitehall, otherwise known as The Queen's Highway, toward Trafalgar Square.

What happened at Trafalgar Square is still giving me chills! Spontaneously, the whole of the march descended upon the square, climbed up the monument, and began to dance.  TS security, rather than become upset, began taking photos and dancing with us!  The energy spiraled up and up and up and I sang my heart out, grooving to the funky beat of our cycle propelled OLSX soundsystem.  Eventually Scotland Yard did show up, and we continued on to the war cabinet.

Here we presented the cabinet with an invoice for the wars of the past several decades.  Totaling more than 140 billion, it read: paid for by the people, the taxpayers, the 99%.  Inspired by the magnificence of the crowd, I burned sage as we chanted "Peace Now! Freedom Now! Love Now! Humanity Now!"  "No War in Our Name Ever Again!"

From here we moved on to Parliament, and despite SOCPER rules we had several speakers and music for dancing right in front of the building. Activists shared their views on stopping war, on encampment as a necessary form of protest, and read more poetry.  Then we reclaimed Parliament as sacred ground, affirming our right and our destiny to Occupy Parliament, to let loose the secrets of the ages for all peoples.  We formed a long line around the building, held hands, raised them, and chanted three long beautiful Ohms.  Afterward we danced in the streets, waving peace banners, and created a might ruckus!  

Heading back via the river, we stopped at Cleopatra's Needle to energize yet another iconic point for peace, and made our way back to St. Pauls. The march was planned in less than two weeks, and almost 300 people demonstrated.  It followed on from a Silent Peace Protest on 11-11-11, continuing the momentum.  A bigger wave is coming...as I prepared for the march several days before, meeting with police, talking to press, and circling Parliament with prayers, I saw 30,000 or more descending into the streets, proclaiming love as the only viable solution to humanities problems.  Through peace, remembrance. Through unity, evolution. Through harmony, joyous creation.  For that is when we are at our best, when we are creating together.

And, in a sobering thought, it is just in time.  There is a North American Indian prophecy which states that if humanity does not come together at its final chance then there will be a third world war.  The area which is now known as the Middle East will attack North America, and "the air will be too hot to breathe", "people will have to hide out in order to survive." Let us do what we can, let us speak out, camp out, but most importantly, let us come together in peace.

As you are with family today, harness the new moon of December, and sew seeds of unity, harmony, and real kick ass love.  For love is enormous, may it engulf us with possibility~ 


photos by Aimee Vallory, Shukri Sultan, and Richard Keith Wolf.
Richard Keith Wolf:http://www.richardkeithwolff.com/gallery.html
Pete the Temp:http://www.petethetemp.co.uk/?page_id=314
Matt J Horne:http://farangrakthailand.com/
Veterans for Peace:http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/
Stop the War Coalition:http://stopwar.org.uk/
OLSX Initial Statement:http://occupylsx.org/?page_id=575

Skeleton Woman

I write this post in red, for a beating heart.  The life death rebirth cycle is important to the evolution of all relationships, and we are in the midst of a massive restructuring of our relationships across spectrums.  As Kali does her dance and old structures crumble many advisers tell us not to look into her eyes, but to focus on the heart, and the emergent beauty there.  The story of skelton woman is pertinent in these thoughts, for she, murdered for an offense to her father that no one can remember, is healed by the compassionate longing tears of a fisherman, and finds her courage to reclaim the world heart.  His tears release her, and his heart powers her transformation.

A beautiful retelling of the story, sited by some as an Inuit tale and by others as a Hopi one, goes thus: "There once was a hunter fisherman, who was fishing in a cove far from home, that he didn't realize was haunted. Looking around and seeing no other kayaks out in the water, he thought, 'I have this bay all to myself.' He dropped his bone hook over the side of his kayak and waited. And he was so hungry. And he was so lonely. And he had been hunting and fishing for days on end without finding anything to eat. And so his bone hook went down, down, down, into the deep waters.

Beneath the waters was a skeleton woman, and she lay there on the ocean floor, rolling back and forth with the tide. The bone hook, as it drifted down into the deep waters, caught in her ribcage. Although she tried to move with the currents to disengage herself, the bone hook caught all the more tightly. The fisherman above, felt a tug, and pulled a little more, and saw his fishing stick beginning to bend. 'Oh' he thought, 'I've got something really big on the end of this line that's going to keep me fed for a very long time to come.' As he pulled harder, Skeleton Woman began to drift to the surface of the water. And as he turned back around with his net to catch his 'prize', there she was - hanging off the bow of his kayak, with her long yellow front teeth, and her bald head filled with crustaceans, and sea worms dangling from the nose holes and ear holes of her skull. The fisherman was absolutely terrified! So much so that his ears turned a bright red and met each other at the back of his head. He screamed and paddled fast as he could towards shore. But she was still hooked in her ribcage and so when he paddled and looked back over his shoulder, he saw her standing on tippy-toes racing after him, over the tops of the waters. 'Oh no!' he screamed, 'She is chasing me! She is after me!' And he arrived at the shore, not a moment too soon and scrambled out of his kayak, grabbed his fishing stick and ran for his life. He looked over his shoulder every few moments and sure enough, she was still keeping up with him. The poor fisherman was running in terror as fast as he could and finally he came to his little skin house and dove inside, into the darkness.

And he thought, 'At last I am safe.' He became very still and listened...and the only sound he could hear was his own heart pounding. 'I must have out run her', he thought and after a little while just to be certain, he began to make a little fire, because he was so cold. And then, right across from him, flickering in the light there she was! She was still hooked and all in a tangled mess. Her ankles were over her shoulders and one arm was caught in her ribcage and her pelvis was tilted backwards, and her skull was hanging down below her shoulders. He looked at her and something came over him. He looked a little longer, and tried to still his fear. The more he studied her the more he felt sorry for her. She was in such a predicament. Somehow in this tangled mess she didn't look so frightful as she had before. And he contemplated her...and she did not move. The more he thought about it, she had an almost pitiful, pleading expression.

Like a father would to a child, he reached out and took her ankles down from her shoulders cooing, 'There , there, that's better isn't it? Not so uncomfortable.' He straightened and untangled her, as he sang a little song, as a father would. And soon she was all straightened out. And she had an odd little tilt to her skull that almost made her look grateful. And he mused, 'Well, she's just a skeleton hooked by accident. I'll leave her be this night and then give her a proper burial in the morning. I'll try to sleep now, because I'm so very hungry and sleep is my only escape from this hunger. And he fell fast asleep, exhausted by all the excitement and lack of food.

As often happens when we sleep, a little tear escaped from the corner of his eye and began to trickle down his face. Skeleton woman saw this tear glistening there and became very thirsty. And so very quietly, with the slightest of tinkling and rattling of bones, she got on her hands and knees and placed her mouth there and drank deeply. When she saw that he did not awaken, she slid her hand inside his chest and took out his heart. And she raised it like a great drum and began pounding on it. Boom....boom...boom...and she began to sing flesh onto her bones. She sang with the drum of his heart and long, glossy, black hair grew out of her skull and a full, elegant face and fine hips and all the things that a woman needs began to take shape. And when she was done, she slipped the hunter's heart back inside his chest and looked at him ever so tenderly. She lifted the sleeping skins of his bedding and climbed in underneath and pressed her warm body against his. And they tangled all night long. They wound up more tangled then she had been to begin with. With her legs over his shoulders and all those things that happen when people make love.

And when morning broke, they left together hand in hand. They never again went hungry and people say, if you are ever out when the whole land is white with snow and the sky is also stark white and nothing seems to move; if you look out into the horizon, and can see two tiny black dots bobbing gently, that is skeleton woman and her hunter." http://www.arnellart.com/LaDeth.htm


We are in a time when the transfer of power from a patriarchal to a matriarchal system is underway.  During this transition we are all being called upon to restore the inner alchemical marriage, the union of male and female within us, to transfer the balance of power to an inner gnosis of the earth.  As rights for corporations have brought about the end of one cycle, rights for the earth will bring us into internal balance so that we may encounter the wedding bliss.  

"The Lovers" by Chris Peters

As an archetypal force potent within our species mind we must all encounter skeleton woman, and she often shows up in our dreams.  Recently, our household celebrated Dia de los Muertes, praying for our dead, clearing their past and anchoring their hearts within to aid us in our own transformations.  Many faery tales and popular stories also contain similar hidden undertones, including Beauty and the Beast and The Sleeping Beauty, where we are not rescued from the dance of destruction which Kali brings, but wherein we embrace our own broken, tangled, and karmic past so that new life, fresh and full of heart, can emerge.  


This is a powerful process, and as we each undergo it, it is important to laugh, the full hearty laugh of a woman and a fisherman in love :)  

Shamanic Purpose

Blood flowing. Earth. Woman.  I am her.  She is me.  We are one.  I don't especially like it.  This is not fluffy, and it is not often fun.  I listen to my friends in the New Age circuit talk about joy and love and the glow of opening up, and yes, I have so many moments like this each day, they are just the normal kind of diamond rolling light from the eyes moments I expect anymore.  What is more interesting at this particular juncture is the something else that is happening to me that has never happened before.  So, let me backtrack....


When I went through the process to become a semazen I  went through hell, and experienced heaven.  My life changed so radically it did not seem possible from the outside looking in.  I let go, and let go, and let go some more, until I wound up washed up on the sunny shores of California, resting for 5 months.  Then, I was tested again.  I fought and fought and fought and created a pathway back to the UK, set up a life here, and cancelled everything except for tea with friends and teaching.  Life opened up so beautifully, the fast rushes of diamond light which gave me glorious ecstasy sort of mellowed, and more grounded visionary experiences came to me through Ayahuasca and through trance dance.  I began to really communicate with and through my visions, and to map otherworlds of a scope I had not known before.  The Buffalo Vision was born.  

Then, last August I participated in a Sun Moon Native American dance.  I wrote about it some earlier.  The dance lasted 4 days, I was a dog soldier helping out, and I had the most powerful visions I have ever had.  They are so astounding that I will not speak of them except to say that they happened.  


Every one of these experiences was initiatory.  I thought that was enough, enjoyed a month off, a holiday in Spain....but it seems that now, our great creator has further plans for me, just as for all humanity.  Right now, as I am working in the capacity of raising consciousness both by teaching and by facilitating at Occupy, a great and mighty earthquake is rendering my soul.  I have never cried like this before!  Weeks solid now, in all of my private moments, and it does not stop.  I am doing ceremony and saying prayers as my intuition is teaching me, and everyday it does not stop.  I am astounded, begging the lord for mercy, saying please, please let this cup pass from me, and I know, I know that the prayer Jesus said on Gethsemane has been said by many many shamans and healers through time and space, and it is a prayer of mighty rendering.  

by Susan Seddon Boulet

This is a phase.  It will pass, as I learn to integrate the new perceptual pathways and the energies moving.  As I understand and use maps for this new terrain, it will settle.  It has happened before, the waves were just a little smaller then.  The spiral widens.  And now, I expect that these phases of the spiral will open and settle in waves like this for probably the rest of my life.  My close close friend was over the other night and she said, You cannot turn back now, or something very bad will happen, you are a star, and I cannot change it for you, only offer you a place to rest. 

This is the meaning of surrender, to give up ones life to something bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until there is no 'life' left, only no end.  "The time of the lone wolf is over.  Gather yourselves!  All that is done now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration." {Hopi Prophecy}  In a sacred manner, we walk.  In a sacred manner to the east, to the west, to the north, and to the south we walk.  In a sacred manner we walk upon the sky and under the bowels of the earth.  In a sacred manner we walk within our heart, our one beating heart.  I am finding my role and my purpose within new earth, or rather, it is finding me.  I cry now, in celebration, for this is a glorious wedding, and all of us are at the wedding feast.  


Much Love~

Rain-bow Serpent

There is a great phenomena happening, one which happens every 13,000 years.  The earth is switching her magnetic poles.  According to many researchers, both scientific and esoteric, our north and south are changing places.  12,900 years ago, in the wake of the previous switch, a large comet hit the earth.  Barbara Hand Clow, a woman whose work specializes in the Guatemalan version of the Mayan Calendar, speaks of this comet hitting as a great trauma to mankind.  In the wake of this comet many many people died, we had to relocate according to where we could survive - thus changing our relationship to sacred sites and to each other.  Some researchers even speculate that this is the event which caused the submersion of Atlantis into the ocean, and the movement of the Atlantian peoples to different locations across the planet.  In her book Catastrophobia, Clow states that the current magnetic shifts are causing a resurgence of previous traumas in the psyche of humanity.  The systems we developed in order to live in our new world, post impact, have served us well.  They have also escalated to a point where they are no longer sustainable for life on the planet.  The combination of the current shifts and the state of pollution, both of our psyches and our environment, is causing us to re-vision and re-create systems which will serve us better in the next 13,000 year cycle.


As part of this magnetic shift the energies of the earth relocate themselves.  One of these powerful energies is known as the rainbow serpent, or sometimes as the great white serpent.  The rainbow serpent represents the kundalini of feminine earth, and she has been on the move, cross crossing the planet toward her new home, for several decades now.  As she slithers through a region it experiences energetic and political upheaval, responding to her presence, and acting on that impulse in the cycle of death/rebirth, destruction/creation.  It is my belief that this is the underlying reason for many of our recent changes, and that we can expect more and more inventiveness, cooperation, and re-structuring as we pass through the magnetic changes.  Remember, the earth moves in geological time and what seems like a lifetime to us, several decades or more, is a fairly small blip in the scale of 13,000 years.

painting by Jitka Kytka

Cultures previous to ours have also spoken of the movement of the rainbow serpent. The Chumash Indians of central California have a tale that tells of the rainbow Hutash created for her people to move from the islands of the pacific onto the mainland of the American continent.  Likewise, the aboriginal peoples of Australia speak of when the rainbow serpent came to a specific location on their island. "The creator sent the Rainbow Snake, Waugal, down to earth as a life-giving element.  It landed at a place in the southwest of Bibulmun country known as Broiungarup.  Rainbow colours of the Rainbow Snake gave the flowers their colour at the time of creation.  Ar Broiungarap you will always see beautiful rainbows.  Some of the smallest and rarest flowers are only found in this one area.  The Broiungara is a clan.  It is where you get your spirituality and your mortal being.  You can be clan to birds, to a tree, or to flowers.  Your Broiungara is a special being for which you are responsible.  If your Broiungara is a flower, then you must maintain this flower. It also has a responsibility to you. It gives you a beautiful feeling of colour, of its essence which is the link to the Rainbow Snake." From The Encyclopedia of Flower Remedies by Clare G Harvey and Amanada Cochrane


We can also remember that the rainbow plays an important role in the mythology of the Christian tradition.  After the great flood in which most of humanity died, Noah landed his ark on Mount Ararat.  Sending out a dove in search of dry land, the people waited on the boat until the earth was safe to inhabit again.  On the third day, or third phase of the transition cycle, the dove returned with an olive branch in its beak.  A rainbow appeared to Noah and his family as they descended once again to earth, anchoring the promise of peace and that God would never again flood the earth in the same catastrophic way.

"Dream Catcher"

We must remember now that the rainbow serpent is here to support us, as a promise of peace.  As she moves, and her energy rises within us, we can work towards the new cycle of life on earth with love and assurance.  The Bible speaks of the end times in terms of fire and brimstone, death, judgement...but it also speaks of the end of the calendar as a time when "our young men will dream dreams and our daughters will see visions."  The end of the Mayan Calendar is happening even now as we speak, with multiple dates of activation and change occurring rapidly between 2011-2013.  An end is only a beginning.  Matter does not cease to exist, it only changes form.  Today, October 15th 2011, has been called a day of massive convergence by those organizing the occupy movement. It is indeed a day of massive convergence.  As we, all races and spiritual systems, begin work together to re-vision and re-create, let us celebrate!  Aho.

One Love

Childrens' books are some of my favourite literature :)  Beautiful full page illustrations of power and depth, endless invention and possibility, the re-writing of any aspect of self or psyche or quality, happening again and again and again.  I have a large collection, scattered among the shelves of friends worldwide.  A few titles which simply must be recommended include The Rainbow Bridge and Weird Parents by Audrey Wood, Iduna and the Magic Apples by Marianna Mayer, Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin Jr., Let's Call Him.... by Tim Myers, and Bajo le Luna de Limon by Edith Hope Fine.  The one I am writing about today, however, is The Rough Faced Girl by Rafe Martin and David Shannon.  This story stems from a long standing oral tradition among the Mi'kmaw peoples residing along the east coast of present day Canada.  


A coming of age story resting in the Cinderella archetype, The Rough Faced Girl is about a beautiful older daughter who is mistreated in the context of her father's second marriage.  The fathers two younger daughters are given many trinkets and beads, new moccasins and the finest dresses.  The Rough Faced Girl, however, tends to the fire and the cooking and the ashes.  Her inner dignity builds strength in her throughout the book, and in the end her fire-born ability to see and know the larger world of spirit becomes both her joy and her nourishment.  It is a lovely story for any young woman to read.


Often as I walk with nature, noticing the breeze around me, the birds in flight, traces of others footsteps, blossoms which have have gone and returned again - I think of the rough faced girl - how she saw the face of her beloved in the rainbow, in the stars, in the midst of the lake and the seeds and the sigh of the grasses.  I know her feeling, the love connection to all that is, and it makes me very happy. 

In the picture above, the rough faced girl is in a canoe with her beloved.  The other night I too had a dream about a river.  I was fully in the river, it had many bends, beautiful clear water, long river grasses, fish, and I was swimming.  Along the banks there were many scenes: some farm scenes, some stalls offering beautiful textures and colors, some mills with fantastic methods of running themselves.  People were in all of the scenes, lovely people.  And I would swim through them, talking to the people, sunning my face, feeling the water cool and warm and flowing around my body, looking eye to eye with the fish, laughing and free and checking it all out with perfect timeless joy.  I loved them all!  In the end, though, it was a bend full of gold on the water, light-filling-out-all-the-spaces, in which I... climbed ashore.  And laying in the empty open golden fields of tall billowy grasses ~sigh~ I rested.  There, with my beloved.


Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Changing Woman

Changing Woman appears in many of the North American Tribal Pantheons but most prominently in the Navajo and Apache.  In the Navajo she created the four original clans of the Dine Nation and taught the people how to live in harmony and beauty.  She is born of the meeting of dark and dawn, is impregnated by water and sunlight, and gives birth to the warrior twins.  She does not need a husband and creates the people by simply rubbing her skin into little balls which are mixed with white shell. She lives in halls made of turquoise in the west and the east, and is akin to Amaterasu, who lives in a palace of jade.  In Apache lore she is honoured through extensive puberty rites lasting up to four days, and can be seen as the sacramental keeper of hormonal stages and birthing mysteries.  

I have walked with her myself on many occasions, and I love her dearly. In my experience of her she is a young woman in her first feathers and earrings in the east, moves into maturity and encounters her transformative powers in the south, bears fruit and then becomes old in the west, and dissolves into wind in the north.  She sometimes has a white dog at her side who walks with me and her songs blow softly past my ears with the lilt of pollen in the wind.  In 1999 I co-created a dance for her with my dear friend Lawrence.  An apron of turquoise draped across my body and a sash of gold hung across the top of the stage.  I walked with tiny graceful steps a path of spirals, I met my animal helpers through her, and I was simply vulnerable and real on the stage set, giving birth, struggling, encountering the duality of humanity in my twins. Because of her connection to white shell and the seas of the east and west I used an abalone shell for burning sage.

Many women love and venerate her, paintings, sculptures, and songs abound in her honour, and my daughter is named after her: Aurora, goddess of the dawn.

"After some period of time a child was heard crying for four days. First Man succeeded in finding a mysterious baby girl.  Below her stretched a Dawn Cord from the east and from the south a Sky Blue Cord, from the west a Twilight Cord and from the north a Cord of Turquoise.  The child was rocking on Dawn and Turquoise Rainbows, supported by these cords. First Man recognized that Darkness was her mother and Dawn her father, and when he took her in his arms he found a small White Wind in her right and a small Dark Wind in her left ear, placed there by her parents.  She was Changing Woman." From Changing Woman and Her Sisters by Sheila Moon, 1984.  

I love her.

Marbles

This weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in a traditional Sun-Moon Dance.  The dance was co-led by Moon Mother Sammey Jo Harvey and Sun-Father Nick Hurn in the beautiful countryside of Norwich.  The experience was such a major turning point in my subtle interior journey that it may be a few days, or maybe longer, before I am ready to talk about it in full.  For now, here are some words of wisdom from the marvelous moon mother:

"People these days are fascinated with the Indian ways.  Well, when I was a little girl the neighboring kids keep telling me I was a Injun Girl.  I said to them, I am not an Injun Girl!  I went in to tell my mother and she said to me, Well what did you tell them?  I told them, I says, I am not an Injun Girl, I don't have no feathers sproutin' out the top of my head!  You're right, she said, now go along and play."
and
"Everybody I meet these days either considers themselves a shaman, or wants to be a shaman.  I tell them, you want to know what it takes to be a shaman?  Well, go and get a gigantic jar and you fill it with marbles.  Every time you do a ceremony, you take one marble out.  You're a shaman when you either get to the end, or you've lost all your marbles!"

Humor rides a red horse :) 

You Must Dance

Last week when I was on my way to Bollywood Dance class :)  I was delighted to see a pair of indigenous shamans busking in the middle of Bond Street, the high fashion district in London.  

I had 20 minutes to spare, so I went and listened to them.  (The video above is not of the shamans I saw, but it is similar.)  I stood in a state of prayer and allowed their sweet sounds to carry me across rivers and valleys of exquisite beauty.  Birds flew around, people ate ice cream, children danced.  And then one of the shamans looked at me and said, "You must dance!"  I smiled at him and got shy.  A beautiful man bought me one of their CD's and then I rushed off to class.  It will come.  The desire, the passion, the structures and the courage are building within me.  To dance like this, free and full of spirit, outside of my formal training, just dancing my prayer, that will be a blessed moment when I do break free! 

In the new paradigm, dance and music are everything!  Everything is dancing, everything is singing a prayer, music is the heartbeat of life.  All over the world right now people are gathering around fires, in sacred circles, in small groups and in large auditoriums to chant and jam.  Music is the first wave.  The dancing will come.  We will free our heart-feet and let the celebration that we are grow into a universal rhythm. 

I have been having these dreams for twelve years now, dreams of people all over the world dancing together in white. Somehow I am a part of helping that to happen.  It will show up, the door will show up and I will dance on the street with the shamans and in the auditorium as heartbeats chant away.  I will dance in the temples too, and so will you.  We will build our temples again, whether they are of stone and marble or in the sacred groves and forests, or even if they look like nothing we can yet imagine.  And every kind of person will be welcome there because we will all be being healed and coming into our power and our love.  


Today is a message of hope.  And we are good at weaving dreams out of passion and hope, that is a gift of the human race, and a gift we must harness now.   

"Let your feet beat a life-giving rhythm for all peoples, regardless of race or national boundary, regardless of whether we're human or whether we're the trees, the air, the fish, the birds, the buffalo, the bear, the crow. We come out of hiding, we come back from the dead, and we dance, and our dance is a prayer, and our songs and our rhythms and our breath give life...In the beginning, they say, God put a rainbow in the sky, to let us know that Spirit never forgets. Now is the time for us to put a rainbow across the earth, to let God know that we, too, remember." from Dance to Heal the Earth


Zum Zum :)

Dreams

Dreams, visions, waking dreams, lucid dreams, these are powerful ways of communicating with our deepest selves and the earth.  She reveals us to ourselves through the dream state, if we listen.  I call it being in session.  And I slip into session regularly throughout the day, every day.  In my experience, over analysis of dreams and visions dosen't help much.  For me, it is the integrating process which reveals the depth of the vision, the potency of the knowledge or wisdom shared.  This blog is part of that integration, as are many other activities.  Tumbling like a shiny ocean smoothed pebble along the shore, dreams accumulate, sounding out connections across years and symbols in beautiful woven patterns far too gorgeous for the mundane mind to invent.  The element of surprise is then evident in the life, lovely little surprises.  New doors.  Always a new door.  "Take a step and you'll be in a world of pure imagination.  Living there you'll be free, if you truly wish to be.." Willy Wonka.

A large portion of the weekends are devoted to following my children's impulses.  This weekend they wanted to make dream catchers.  So we looked it up online make a dreamcatcher, and here they are!  

our first dream catchers

The weave is pretty simple, and before long the children were making them completely on their own.  We now have several to give away, and as long as I can keep some hoops and waxed thread in the house I am sure they will be in creation.  Then, the lovely little buggers created alters in their bedroom underneath the catchers.  This summer, camps and holidays are at a minimum.  Spirit whispered to me, stay home, stay home and teach them ceremony.  After creating several little fire pits, they are learning to build fires on their own, and we are camping in the garden alot.  Earlier this year I introduced them to ecstatic dance and at the end of summer we will help facilitate a Sun Moon Dance not far from our home.  It is marvelously delicious~  It is the fruit of completing the dream.

"Dreaming is a powerful force.  It allows is access to the past and helps with autonomy for the future.  Dreams are the closest thing to shamanic journeys that all of us experience; indeed, spirit messages, or prophecies, can manifest themselves to anyone who pays attention to their dreams.  If we learn to be more mentally aware in our dreaming, we can become more open to healing images.  As we do so, we move beyond a perception of dreams as static entities, mythic texts, or landscapes and toward an understanding of dreaming as a spiritual process of transformation within the poetic landscape of the human soul." From Woman in The Shaman's Body, by Barbara Tedlock, Bantam Books, 2005.

I am dreaming, with you. Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu   

Beauty Way

The Beautyway is a path of healing among the Navajo.  I would like to share with you this story.  In this tale two sisters are to be given in marriages which they do not desire, and so they go to the outskirts of the camp to talk and rest together.  While there they see two distant balls of light and smell wonderful sweet smells.  Following these lights they encounter two beautiful young men adorned with many necklaces of shells and beads.  They follow the two men, only to discover in the morning that they are in fact Oldman Bear and Oldman Snake.  Fleeing the situation, Older sister eventually finds Mountainway and Younger sister finds the Beautyway.  

"Young Sister flees toward the west.  She climbs mountains, trudges through mud and water, is stopped at one point by Endless Snakes, is helped by the Weasel People, but is always pursued relentlessly by Snake Man's tobacco smoke.  She grows more and more tired and disheveled.  Then, it seems, it happened that  out of the trees some strange thing extended up which turned out to the Black Rock.  She goes to the top of Black Rock and then sees a pool and its base and goes down to get a drink.  A voice calls, shhh, shhh four times.  In vain, she looks about.  At last she sees someone standing over her, slim of form, painted with bluish white clay, his face painted, a skirt about him, with arm attachments, and a necklace and a rain plume.  He had many beads.  The handsome young man tells her that earth people shouldn't walk around here.  She says she is fleeing old man.  He says that the old man dosen't know the way down in there where the people are living.  The youth taps Black Rock at each of the compass points and the stone tilts over and reveals a land below the earth.  Out of the underearth a ladder extends, and wind rushes from the hole.  Younger sister descends into this crevice in the earth.  As she walks in this lower land she is met by Mountain Sheep people and she plays with them.  She wanders among ruins.  She goes into a cornfield and picks corn.  She comes at last to the home of Snake People.  She makes cornmeal and cooks for them and then they feed her.  While she is staying with Snake People and before she learns the rites there is a series of happenings in which she disobeys instructions given her and has to be rescued and healed each time.  Healing ceremonies are given both for original illness and for the misfortunes that befall her when she disobeys.  These ceremonies are learned by her in all their complex details.  Eventually the Snake People tell her, 'You shall now start for your home.  These songs, with which you have become familiar, and the prayersticks, prayers, and sand paintings, and ceremonies, all of which have become known to you, shall be of use to the earth surface people from now on and in time to come.'  They told her that after the ceremony she would be holy, that her body and the ceremony would become one.  At last she returns 'home' with the full Beautyway rite, learned over a long time, and after many mistakes and great difficulties.  She has been away four years.  It takes her four days to teach her family Beautyway.  It is a very elaborate and careful teaching.  At dawn of the fourth day they face the east and take the rites into themselves.  Snake Woman returns to Black Rock and to the Snake People Holy Ones, to be reunited to them and in some way to Snake Man." From Changing Woman and Her Sisters, by Sheila Moon, Psychological Studies Publishing House, 1984

Coatlique, Aztec version of Snake Woman

In my first Ayahuasca ceremony I had a journey on the Beautyway.  I walked into a pile of earth, a nice hillside of soft sweet smelling earth, and into a tunnel located therein.  I descended into the tunnel and walked for a long time through darkness, the sounds and smells of earth surrounding me.  I recognized at this point a Beautyway journey, and was delighted to continue along the tunnel.  Eventually I came out among vast sweeping meadows, grasses of many shades of yellow and green dancing in the wind, forests extending beyond the meadows, great vistas.  I danced in the meadows in sweet walking patterns and came to a pause somewhere in the middle of all that expanse.  The grasses were soft and the wind was softer still.  The breezes blew upon my heart and face, my hands, and I received them into my body.  I stood with the sun on my face for a long time, and then I asked, what is your gift to me, what shall I bring back to my people?  Two gifts were given me and then I made a heartfelt and spontaneous promise.  The gifts were first the task of being in constant communion with nature, and second a beautiful alabaster jar.  What these gifts have come to mean to me, and how I am incorporating them into my daily life is a deeply personal story, enacted in many ways both spontaneous and thoughtful.  

enormous marble jar inside the Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

I awoke just yesterday thinking of the Beautyway.  I made cornmuffins with walnuts on top of them for breakfast, I offered prayers and burned some incense.  I did my washing and a great deal of writing, some meditation and dance.  In the afternoon we went down to the meadows at the back of our house.  While sitting there with our feet in the river, discussing dinosaurs and boats and such, a sudden rainstorm burst forth from the sky!  We danced and laughed in the grasses and the rain, cow poo and all, smiling and leaping for joy.  Soaked completely through we began to run, and the children led the way home.  All we met smiled as we splashed in the puddles on the road with bare feet, cracking ourselves up.  What a nice gift from Corn Mother and Snake People Holy Ones!  What a nice complement to the mornings prayers.  Aho!