Author: Denise

(Friday, September 27, 2013)  We’ve been watching the spectacular “Earthflight” series on PBS. The Europe episode included scenes of the migration of brown pelicans. During the show Chris googled pelicans on his iPad and found this from a website on alchemy:

“The active working with the soul forces is perfectly pictured in the Pelican. The Pelican is shown stabbing its breast with its beak and nourishing its young with its own blood. The alchemist must enter into a kind of sacrificial relationship with his inner being. He must nourish with his own soul forces, the developing spiritual embryo within. Anyone who has made true spiritual development will know well this experience. One’s image of one’s self must be changed, transformed, sacrificed to the developing spiritual self. This is almost invariably a deeply painful experience, which tests one’s inner resources. Out of this will eventually emerge the spiritual self, transformed through the Pelican experience. The Pelican was in this spiritual sense a valid image of the Christ experience and was used as such by the early alchemists.”

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alcbirds.html

Tuesday at noon I took my usual walk at Oheyawahi. The sky was brilliant blue without a single cloud. I found myself saddened by the fact that I can no longer view a clear sky without seeing “floaters,” the remnants of damage to my aging retinas. The floaters look a bit like dark birds far in the distance of my vision.

As I came upon the Mendota Bridge I sensed a fluttering in the airspace above my head. A flock of large white birds with dark-tipped wings was flying low over the river, coming in from the west. Their long necks were pulled back like egrets or herons but they bobbed on the wind like balloons. I stopped on the path and looked straight up. More and more small flocks kept arriving; soon the sky was full of drifting white birds. I started to count them: the first formation was over 30 birds so I knew that there were at least a hundred all together. Because of their size I wondered if they were cranes, but I later realized they had to be pelicans. They filled the heavens and I felt as though I was being visited by angels. Blessed.

From Earthflight: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/earthflight/video-pelicans-and-whales/8402/

(The Vampire King is the shadow of the alchemical pelican mother.)

Wednesday’s weather was equally beautiful. On my walk that day, a family of nine turkeys crossed the trail in front of me. Birds are definitely trying to get my attention. I saw three turkeys the day I went to Coldwater Spring. Turkeys also symbolize sacrifice.

From the website on alchemy: “What did the alchemists wish to symbolise by birds? The essential thing about birds is that they, having as their domain the air element, mediate between the earthly realm and the heaven world. The alchemist in observing the flight of birds, recognised in them a picture of the human soul undergoing spiritual development. The soul, aspiring upwards, flying free of the restraints of the earth bound body seeking the heavenly light, only to have to return to the earthly consciousness again after the meditation, the alchemist symbolised by the bird.”

 

(Sunday, Fall Equinox)  Ground-dwelling wasps  (“cicada killers”) built ten huge mounds along my front stone walkway (dwellers on the threshold indeed!)

I watched Lola hunt and kill one and noticed, eventually, that they seemed to have disappeared. So I think she got them all. Today I poured ammonia down the holes to destroy any eggs they may have laid.

I’m done with being stung, metaphorically or otherwise.

(Saturday, September 21, 2013) The Dweller on the Threshold has been very present in my waking life in the last couple of weeks.

A few mornings after the King of the Vampires showed up in dreamtime I got a $129 traffic ticket for crossing the double white lines into the Sane (carpool) Lane. Even though there were two of us in my car.

That afternoon the big boss at work, Jane, gave me a brochure for the “Crossing Borders” studio tour in Duluth and Superior.

On Monday of this week I got a return call from an instructor I had contacted via email about her Qigong classes. I’d read a really good book that recommends supplementing Tai-Chi with Qigong. My Tai-Chi teacher doesn’t teach Qigong, so I found this woman on the internet, who started her own center in south Minneapolis in 1977.

She pretty much read me the riot act, in a cold burn sort of way. She informed me that her teacher told her to never take on a student that has another teacher. I got off the phone with her feeling completely poisoned and shamed. I decided to go to Mni Owe Sni (Coldwater Spring), the sacred springs near Minnehaha Falls to cleanse and purge, as my friend Jeanne says.

When I arrived during the noon hour, eagles circled overhead. I had never been to the site before, so I took a long walk through the prairie grasses and woods. There is one large spring that flows from a pond down to the river, and several smaller pools that do not produce streams. One of these pools was hidden behind a low hill, and I stumbled upon it just as I was getting ready to leave. As I drew nearer to the pool, I recalled a dream from a few months ago where all the senior members of my Tai-Chi center welcome me into the family. Perhaps it is something deeper than etiquette this angry woman was trying to impress upon me.

The shallow water of the tiny pond (more of a puddle, really) was encircled by flat rocks; two mourning doves were sitting on one of the rocks, but they flew up and away as I approached. I sat on their rock and removed my shoes, dipping my feet, hands and face into the clear, beautiful water.

I considered the significance of the doves on the rocks for several days. Two doves appear on the family crest of our Sheehan clan (my maternal bloodline includes Irish and Native American ancestors). An interpretation of mourning dove symbolism from the web: “the veil between spiritual and physical are at their thinnest.” Also, “the primary symbolism of the dove is that of patience and tenderness. Their voice along with the soft hue of their bodies, and the tender glow of their eyes – all lead to thoughts of softness, tenderness and symbols of love.”

Tuesday is Tai-Chi day and at the end of our class my teacher passed around an eagle feather he brought back from his 10-day solo canoe trip in the Quetico (the Canadian provincial reserve that mirrors the Boundary Waters Canoe Area). A new beginner’s class started at 7:30, following our usual 6:30 class. I saw that Eric Christopher, the past life regression hypnotherapist I visited this winter, was in the new class. That struck me as another expression of crossed borders.

Yesterday I was listening to the IASD conference DVD in my car. Research was being presented on “boundary thinness” and its effects on dreams and daydreams. People with “boundary thinness” are more creative and have higher emotional content in their dreams, whether sleeping or waking.