Category: Denise

(Saturday, June 11, 2016)

I went to check on Lola. She was sitting on the front step, quietly watching a painted turtle, who was about three feet or so away from her. How odd that both a tortoise and a hare appear today.

One spirit animal website says turtle is the oldest symbol for mother earth, and one of the ways into the realm of faery. A directive to use water and earth energies (clay!) to create harmony and flow.

I am reading “The Woman in the Shaman’s Body.” In the first chapter Dr. Tedlock describes a dream of a turtle she had at the age of four. Her Ojibwe herbalist grandmother interpreted it to mean that she would follow a shamanic path. Dr. Tedlock is also the only researcher I have come across that defines waking dreams (omens, waking dreams, visions) and sleeping dreams (personal, prophetic, archetypal, nightmares, lucid).

I put turtle in a bucket and brought her back down to the water.

(Saturday, June 11, 2016) moon: first quarter Virgo / tarot: six of wands

I have a dream that feels as though it lasts all night. It is real, vivid, but so long and full of so many people and places that I only recall a vague “plot” overview.

My husband and I are in a country in Eastern Europe, maybe Bosnia. We have come to present a workshop. We are in a home with a large family. We hear that a battle has started nearby, war is on the way. Discussion ensues about how long the fighting will last. I feel we must flee to the west and south. My husband and I and others take to the road, on foot.

We travel far, through many towns, buildings, meeting many peaceful people. We end up in a place where we feel safe, where there is no fighting. I prepare to give our workshop to a small group of children. I have brought with me the white clothing that my husband and I wear when we are flying in the sky. I change into white, below an open window. I crouch a bit so as not to be seen undressed by the kinder.

Day notes:

Lola is pronouncedly lazy this morning, so I wondered why she is sleepy on such a perfect summer day. Then I found the head of a baby rabbit on her rug. It makes me sad, but the environment to support bunnies in the neighborhood is limited, of course. Mama and Papa Bunny are very large and have lived in the back yard, along the pond edge, for many years.

Chris is at the Chicago Blues Fest and he just called. He said 69 people were shot on the south and west side over Memorial Day weekend.

(Friday, June 10, 2016) moon: waning crescent Virgo / tarot: seven of wands

I went down to my home office to work this morning and a female goldfinch flew right up to the window, perching delicately on the ledge, gazing into the room with focused curiosity. She looked directly into my eyes – she was not more than two feet from me.

I found a detailed entry online by Ted Andrews about the spirit animal aspect of goldfinch. He says black and yellow invoke the archangel Auriel, who oversees nature spirits, faeries, elves and devas. The presence of goldfinches indicates the awakening of activities of the devic realm. My yard is always full of those tiny golden birds, they are as common as robins or crows. Andrews says goldfinches like border areas, the liminal, the “Tween Places.” They build their nests of thistledown. Thistle was used to invoke Pan. I am reminded of the faery king, The Man with the Thistle-Down Hair, in the book/video “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.”

I hope to start my next clay piece when I go on staycation the last week of June. Something small enough that I can complete it in a few months, and enter in the dream conference art show next year. It will be two pieces that hang on a wall, so I may need to mount them on a board if it is accepted. The larger piece will be Edie the Herbalist, from a dream I had a couple of years ago now. In that dream, I walk up a flight of faery stairs in Edie’s home after she offers me a cup of tea. In the sculpture, she will be holding a teapot in her open hands, which will be on fire. Her skin will be blue, her hair black, her eyes silver. Also in the dream was a library in Edie’s home that held the history of the entire community. The Akashic Record (or the morphic field as Rupert Sheldrake calls it). Floating above Edie’s head will be a small book with pages that turn. On each page will be the name of a presence I have met in my dreams: Edie, Jeanne (d’Arc), Madam Renault, Sir George, Benjamin (Franklin) and Harry. Three females, three males. I wonder now if Harry said that was his name to assure my understanding that he is a Magician, like Harry Potter. Who knows? He looks like a middle-aged Merlin.

Ryan Hurd recommended books by the anthropologist Barbara Tedlock, PhD (keynote speaker at the 2009 IASD conference in Chicago). I picked up her book “The Woman in the Shaman’s Body” from the library today. I plan to dive into that tonight. Surely Edie is a woman shaman, at the very least.

Just now I remembered my recent dream with the golden linen (flax) blanket.