Author: Denise

(Sunday, October 30, 2016) new moon Scorpio / tarot Queen of Swords reversed

I look out into our backyard through the large dining room window. Animals of all kinds are lined up, single file, crossing the yard from east to west. Each species has its own line: rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, varieties of birds. Most distinctive is a straight line of red-tailed hawks. They appear in profile, like images of Horus the Egyptian falcon god. They walk with great dignity across the green field. I am so captivated by their presence that I head outside, entering the backyard from the south corner of the house in an effort to avoid disrupting them.

Lola is with me, equally intrigued, yet not in a predatory way. As I turn the south corner she transforms into a young human female. She is blond, shorter than I, and affectionately hugs my left side. The animals see us and their lines start to scatter and intermingle. They are startled but not frightened enough to begin a mass escape. The hawk line becomes disorganized but not as much as the lines of the other animals. They are at the farthest point of the yard, at the tree line near the pond. I try to count them: there are at least 30, maybe as many as 40 birds of prey.

Day notes:

We have many types of hawks visit our yard but the sighting of red-tails and eagles is fairly rare. I have been deeply saddened, terrified, to read this week that wildlife populations have dropped by 50% since 1970.

The orderly lines of animals feel mystical and beautiful to me, as though they are creating a visual treat, a work of conceptual art, for my viewing pleasure. They know I honor the shamanic and enjoy including them in my artwork.

I was tagged in a Friday Facebook post by my writer friend Jana, who now lives in L.A., in celebration of the 30th anniversary of her design business called Smart Set. A group of us who hung out and worked together there were given little titles, mine was “Paints for love, keylines for money.” A very touching remark. (Keylining is an old craft that has been replaced by digital design.) A flock of brilliant, hawk-like intellectuals started Smart Set.

Horus the Sky God was the son of Isis and Osiris, one of the first stories of immaculate conception. 

Jamie Sams’ book says hawk is the messenger, bringing information from the ancestors and other realms. Pay attention. Birds of prey, birds of pray.

I have two big cat dreams last week: one of a lioness and her cub, one of a black jaguar and Lola.

(Saturday, October 29, 2016) new moon Libra (Black Moon) / tarot ten of swords

When I awoke this morning I knew I’d had a night filled with dreams, although I recalled none of them. I laid on my left side and closed my eyes, waiting to see if any memories would percolate up. The 100% full moon occurs tomorrow in Scorpio (water sign of transformation and the underworld), trine Neptune (the planet that rules dreaming), therefore powerful dreams and a “thinning of the veil” are expected by some folks, just in time for Halloween.

Three fragments bubbled up. In the first, I enter a large, square hall with a polished wooden floor. The hall is hundreds of years old, completely devoid of furnishings, and the high walls contain multiple recessed rooms, each with a bed, each hidden by elegant drapery. The Observer Me sees that I am sleeping in one of the curtained alcoves, dreaming a dream that I first consider to be precognitive. But as I enter more completely into the structure of the dream, I perceive the way we create the fabric of reality through our dreams. Dreams construct, not preview, and that is the value of lucid dreaming: bringing awareness to waking life of the architectural power of dreaming. “Precognition” is more than a vision.

In the second fragment, I am floating in a small wooden row boat in a cove surrounded by steep red boulders. Cornwall? The sea is black, the water still. A small churning begins, right below the surface, next to the left bow of my boat. An infant girl is beginning to manifest in the sea of the unconscious. She twists and turns and giggles. I dip my fingers in the water, intending to scoop her up, to save her from a potential drowning. I am not allowed to do so, for that would interfere with the completion of her manifestation. Her birth. It would prevent her from entering this world, this incarnation. At the moment of my realization, I become conscious of the teaming life beneath the midnight water. Infinite, diverse, eternal.

The third fragment takes place at my grandmother Helen’s white wooden farmhouse. It is Chris’ birthday. The house is full of celebrants. I step outside for a moment, into a gentle mist. I am completely alone; not even a single tree stands in the outer landscape.

Day notes:

Chris came home from the hospital (femur surgery #3) last night. I came home from Methodist with glitter in my eyebrows. The anniversary of my first meeting with Chris is The Day Of The Dead, November 1.

I’ve been watching “Poldark” on PBS, which takes place at the Cornish coast.

 

I have this dream Tuesday morning, October 11, the day I took Chris to the ER. The day before Yom Kippur. My parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. It has the identical spiritual intensity of my Jacob Wetterling dream.

 

I am standing in the living room of the house where I grew up, facing the large picture window. It’s twilight: the sky overhead is purple-black, but there is a white-magenta-golden glow along the entire horizon. A thin wave of light.

My father is in the street, under the streetlamp to the north of the house, at the base of the hill upon which our house sits. He is flying a kite, or a motorized toy airplane (I am not sure which), high in the sky. I have an instant, deep, multidimensional understanding of the pain and psyche that he shares with Chris. Both were involved in deadly vehicle accidents (my aunt Carol killed by a truck driven by my grandfather when my father was 5 years old, Chris run over by a train and pronounced dead at 19). Both had brilliant mothers who were elementary school teachers (my grandmother Helen decorated her farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with reproductions of paintings by Velasquez and Van Gogh). Both had abusive fathers. This vision is emotionally shocking and healing at the same time.

The kite/airplane string may hold a key, like Franklin’s electrical experiment. Something about the flying object magnetically attracts a star from trillions of light years away, from the edge of the galaxy or the edge of the universe. I do not know.

The star flies in from the west at breakneck speed. It is shaped like the Star of David, a six-pointed star that appears extruded, almost like a thick cookie, a two-dimensional shape that has become three-dimensional. The six-pointed star is filled with other shimmering stars, along the edges and within. It rotates quickly, spinning forward on its axis.

As it passes over the red brick senior high school half a block north of our house, I become extremely anxious. The starship takes a sharp turn towards our street and halts, hovering at our front door. I open the door and view the immense, pulsating star. It seems miraculous to me that such a huge ship fits in our modest neighborhood of small streets and small houses.

My long history of alien dreams makes my first reaction one of fear. Because of this history, I also know that the starship is reading my every thought. I release my fear and open my heart. I communicate love to the luminous white star, and the star loves me in return. Even in the dream I understand that this is a Big Dream.

 

SHIFT: I am standing inside the Great Hall of an ancient stone palace, next to a long stone banquet table. I see my paternal grandparents waiting at the wide entry door. They are there to assist my maternal grandparents up the short-but-steep stone staircase. The stairs are softly rounded from eons of erosion. My maternal grandparents are not as strong or as healthy as my paternal grandparents. But they make it into the ancestral temple.

I turn back to the table and converse with Julie, my beloved maternal cousin from Winona (Dakota for “firstborn daughter,” which I am but Julie is not. Winona was the daughter of Wapasha III. Wapasha II is our ancestor). We talk about the starship. Every resident of the Hall is discussing the star, but most are less captivated by its presence than am I. Including Julie.

 

SHIFT: I head out of the stone palace, into the red brick high school next to my childhood home. My father is ahead of me. We are walking down the corridor where history and social sciences were taught. Here my dream memory dissolves.

 

Day notes:

The star spins, not like a top. Wheel of Fate, Wheel of Karma. Another dream of the Hall of Records, the Akashic.

Dream conferences often take place in my dreams at my old red brick high school. I assume I was headed to a conference at the end of this dream.

A six-pointed star can represent the union of male and female. The macrocosm. As above, so below.

I have dreamt of Ben Franklin. Every stitch in his clothing was visible to me.

In a recent email from Ryan Hurd, he talks about how the fear aspect of sleep paralysis can be transformed into a spiritual, healing experience. Angels and ascended masters, not greys and goblins.