Dreaming Awake in the Great Turning

The Great Turning is described by Eco-psychologist Joanna Macy, as the shift from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. There are multiple ways this shift is happening around us as a society, and within each individual, in the midst of undergoing social change and transformation.  Moving into the Great Turning, we encounter stages of Holding, policies, direct actions and legal actions, which help stem the tide of destructive policies and actions harmful to life systems. The second is Structural Change, where we can envision and create new systems. A transformation from Patriarchal systems of “power over” to more Matrifocal systems of “power with”, rooted in sustainability practices, equality, community, and the web of life. The Third focus is Consciousness Shifting, which includes an awareness that we are all in this together, there is no separation (Brown/Macy pg. 5-6). We are all part of this Great Turning, and dreams connect us to the web of collective consciousness, and continue to awaken and inform my actions, of what is mine to do.

In the midst of the changes surrounding us, grief and healing are part of transformation. It is for me a process of honoring and grieving what has been lost, to be able to more fully embody a vision of the future. In 2017, my dear friend Baba Ifayomi was tragically murdered in Dallas, Texas. An African American Civil Rights Leader, initiated as a West African Yoruba Priest, he and I stood shoulder to shoulder many times protesting on the streets, or playing drums and singing sacred songs, or honoring the ancestors with prayers. The night after attending his “Homegoing” Ceremony, Baba appeared in my dream. 

Valley Reed with Civil Rights Activists, Charles Hillman and Olinka Green at Baba Ifayomi’s “Homegoing” Ceremony 

Photo by Andrew Buckley/Special Contributor  Dallas Morning News

Sacred Contract 

I held in my hands a contract, which read at the top, “Civil Rights”. Baba approached and took the contract from my hands. He said, “You don’t have to do this anymore” and gave instead another contract, which read at the top, “Healer”. This dream set my focus more clearly, on what direction I must take to honor my Sacred Contract. I had the sense that my previous contract, was the completion of an ancestral contract, started generations ago, by an abolitionist ancestor whose home was part of the underground railroad. 

The Healing path has shown itself to me in many ways over my life, for my own healing and that of others. The following dream, showed me a deeper realization for my path as a dreamer and healer. 

The Dream World is the Real World

I am in the hypnagogic zone, or the twilight zone as I like to call it, I see a horse very near to me, so close I could touch it, and hear it breathing as we stood together under the night sky. 

I see it’s bushy sorrel colored Winter coat. I am amazed how real this conscious dreaming experience is, and say to myself, the dream world IS the Real World! I know I have said this many times to students as a Dream Teacher. This time seems different, I am getting this deeper awareness and experience of what this means. Now I am standing before the cave of the Goddess, and two frog headed nymphs with luminous blue faces guard the entrance. They hold either end of a Turkish looking sword, between them. They tell me, “Pick up the sword of truth to gain entrance to the cave of the Goddess”. I hear an inward voice ask, “Still the real world”?  I respond, “Yes!”  I pick up the sword of Truth to enter deeper into the wisdom of the Goddess. Now I am walking through a forest hugged meadow along a narrow dirt footpath. I see at my feet, an egg shaped stone in the middle of the path. I pick it up and hold it in my left hand, and find it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. It is covered with moss, and has the seal of the Goddess embedded on its surface. It holds the ancient powers of the Goddess. I now bring my awareness inside the stone, where a golden light streams into the cracks and crevices of this ancient universe. I hear the voice of the Goddess speaking, “You must open up more, and stop being so guarded, let go of your fears.”  I can feel all the places where I have become guarded, from pains of past betrayals. I open myself completely to the Goddess, and allow her golden light to permeate all the cracks and crevices inside my being. I have stepped more deeply onto the path of wisdom and ancient truth of the Goddess.

  “Oweynagat” entrance to the Otherworld, sacred to the Celtic Goddess Morrigan Photo Credit: Valley Reed County Rosscommon, Ireland 2019

Healing the Stories Held in the Land 

I am in an adobe house located in New Mexico, I am standing in the living room, and a beautiful blue crane flies in and hovers just in front of me, and changes into a native grandmother. She asks, “Will you help heal the stories held in the land ? ”  I look at her directly, and see the look in her eyes, and reply, “Yes, I will”. I then question myself inwardly, do I know how to do such a thing? As if hearing my thoughts, the grandmother responds, “You already know how to do this, because you know how to listen”. 

The Blue Crane is the National Bird of South Africa

I took council from this dream, and when I was asked to organize an International Women’s Summit on Nonkilling Cultures, held in Sarajevo, Bosnia in June of 2019, the answer was…Yes, I will. You see, I had been dreaming also of ancient Slavic bird Goddesses and grandmothers. My presentation in Bosnia, was on Healing the Stories Held in the Land, where I shared a dream of collective soul recovery on sacred lands in a place impacted by genocide, located in the Altai Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. I returned to Bosnia in 2025, at the Kolo Memory in Motion Women’s Summit I helped organize, and taught a workshop on healing the stories of the land for transgenerational trauma. I was also invited to teach a retreat in Ireland in 2019, where I offered, “Dreaming with the Speaking Land and Entering the Otherworld”,  this year I am teaching a retreat in Georgia on Earth Dreams, and how are always dreaming, and the Earth Dreams us into being, we are part of her Dream.

“We are all of us, dreamed into being. For the Earth lives in a dream”. (Pg. 373, Buhner) 

Shifting Energies

Much is shifting in the Great Turning, including the places on the Earth where sacred vortexes of energies are held. One evening during an intense lightning storm, I was going to bed and noticed a massive lightning storm outside my window. I went on and slipped into bed, tired from my day, and as I closed my eyes, I noticed a presence trying to reach out to me from inside the storm. I was in no mood to open myself to some unknown energy, and declined to respond, kind of like not answering your cell phone, when a call comes in marked unknown.  

I suddenly found myself lucid, inside a massive thunderhead, standing before a vortex of blue lightning. A portal through which a dream visitor was about to step through. The famous 19th century Inventor, Nikola Tesla  (who was born during a lightning storm) arrived to tell me,  “The sacred sites on the planet are changing, and this storm is a transfer of energy, from those sacred sites to Dallas.”  

Blue Lightning – Getty Images

I understood this to be a good thing, and much needed in a place like Dallas, which is known worldwide as the place of the Kennedy assassination, and perhaps a lessor known history as having the largest KKK chapter in the world in 1920.

This transfer of energy from sacred sites around the world, seemed an important way to shift consciousness. I then opened myself fully to the energy in this conscious dream state, and was filled with a blue light of sacred energy, which streamed through my crown chakra and down through the rest of my body. I have an inkling, I am now a receptacle of this sacred energy, and fully open to the shifting energies on the planet. 

When I wrote this essay to present as part of a Dream conference, I wrote this last line, in a coffee shop in Dallas, the electricity has just blown out for no apparent reason, on the entire block. I guess I need to get the hang of this better, or perhaps my dream Tesla, is having a bit of fun with me, he was known to blow out the circuits of entire communities with his experiments! (PBS News Hour)

 

This tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo was taken. 

Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Bibliography

Brown Molly; Macy, Joanna. “To Choose Life.”The Work that Reconnects, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C. Canada, 2014, pg. 5-6, Kindle edition.

Buhner, Stephen Harrod; “Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.” Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming Earth, Bear and Company’ Rochester Vermont, 2014, pg. 373.

“8 things you didn’t know about Nikola Tesla” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla 

 

Dream Doula

Thresholds of coming and going, a dream doula welcomes announcement dreams of birthing something new into the world. A psychopomp as guide to the Other-side, plays death doula to point the departed toward guardians of gateways to the underworld, crossing over the river to ancestral lands into the afterlife, and meeting thresholds of transformation for the ongoing journey of the soul. These profound liminal boundaries of the coming and going of the soul are places where dream doulas await as experienced guides on both sides of this portal of life, death and rebirth.

Birthing dreams may assist in announcing what may be, when given a glimpse in dreams of who is expecting, who is arriving, or any delays in arrival.

Dream Doula 1995

In my pregnancy with my daughter, as I inched towards my due date, she was in a breech position, and I was struggling to get her turned around head down into the birth canal. My OBGYN told me I needed to do something or else she would schedule a C-section. I wanted a natural birth, and so I tried all manner of positions, exercises, and remedies to no end, nothing worked. Finally at my wits end, I incubated a dream asking for assistance in turning her around. Immediately, as I entered a lucid dream, I saw an Asian Wise Woman standing next to my bed. She put her hands on my womb, and each place she put her hands they lit up. She continued to move her hands in the direction of my birth canal, as her hands provided a path of light, and I felt my daughter turn in the womb. She was in a head down position now thanks to the dream doula. She went to leave my side and as she did she stopped and turned to say, you know, your daughter is a fairy queen. I was stunned, and did not know what to make of her statement. Does she come with a manual? I asked. She smiled as she turned to vanish inside the dream.

I went to my OBGYN the next day who was pleased to see I had somehow managed to complete my assignment of getting the baby to turn. After my delivery, I did a follow up with a midwife, and told her about the dream to get the baby to turn. She remarked it is an old midwife trick, done with a flashlight held to the womb, and the baby can see the light shine through and follows the path of light to the birth canal and turns head down.

Thresholds of change for each season or the year, or lunar cycles of new to full moon, are also liminal places of beginnings and coming full circle, where dreams may reflect what has been seeded and what is coming to fruition.

The Psychopomp may assist the departed in locating a portal to the Otherside to cross over or dream into the territory of one’s death as preparation for rebirthing the soul on a home going journey, welcomed by the ancestors.

As Dream Doula we may explore cross cultural welcoming rituals of new family members, and also portals of home going greeted by the ancestors. We welcome and remember, comfort and congratulate on paths leading to the womb of the Earthside Mother, or paths leading to the tomb of the Great Mother. We are welcomed home from Womb to Tomb by Dream Doulas, Fate Weavers, Gate Keepers, and Song Givers of Joy, Celebration, and lullaby. We sing song lines of delivery and travel to the Otherside, for grieving and remembrance, and welcoming the soul home.

Perhaps we can call upon the Dream Doula to assist in the collective rebirth we are undergoing right now, to help turn us around in this upside down world. Opening a path of light for us to follow and find our way through the darkness of the unknown and rebirth into a world where ancient women’s wisdom may be the remedy we need to turn things around.

Year of the Red Pegasus in Dallas, Texas

Mnemosyne is the Mother of the Muses. Born of (Gaia) Earth and (Uranus) Sky she weaves culture through oral traditions grounded in the art of memory with song, poetry, story, music, theater, history, tragedy, comedy, astronomy, and dance. The word Museum comes from Muse and is a container of culture, art and history.

In downtown Dallas there is a small park on Main Street called Pegasus Plaza. It is a project created through the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Dr. Gail Smith, an Archetypal Psychologist. She took on the project in collaboration with the Icon of the Pegasus in connection with Dallas. The myth of Pegasus flew down upon the Earth and where his hoof set foot, four sacred springs emerged. It is from these sacred springs the Muses came forth to bring inspiration and culture. Pegasus has flown over Dallas skies since its first arrival in 1934 atop the Magnolia Building, but landed a few times for repairs, and then retook the skies on January 1st, 2000.

The four springs of Pegasus from which the muses were birthed, come from a mountain spring Cassotis on Mount Parnassus, sacred to Euterpe and the other Muses. It flowed between two high rocks above the city of Delphi and in ancient times its sacred waters were retained for the use of the Pythia, the priests, priestesses, as well as the Oracle of Apollo.

The Hippocrene Spring on Mount Helicon, said to have been created by Pegasus’s hoof, was sacred to the Muses and a source of poetic inspiration.

The Spring of Dodona, dedicated to Zeus, was one of Ancient Greece’s oldest oracular sites, where sacred oak trees and rustling leaves were believed to communicate the gods’ will.

The Spring of Amphiaraus at Oropos was associated with dream incubation, where seekers would sleep near the waters, hoping to receive divine messages in their dreams.

These four springs each have their unique powers connected with Pegasus and the 9 muses, that also flows into feeding further gifts of dreaming, healing and oracular powers. Given that Pegasus Plaza was created as a living story of Pegasus fed by a living spring coming from a spiral and moving through a huge quartz crystal for healing, this is a sacred art sanctuary that roots the archetype of Dallas into a deeper story. Perhaps 2026 will be a year where the powers from the unseen world will surface to reveal a culture of healing, dreaming, and love of the arts. The 7 million raised to create Pegasus Plaza on Main Street in downtown Dallas, is certainly is a worthy investment.

The Red Pegasus is the archetype for the City of Dallas
2026 is the year of the Red Fire Horse

We need the powers of Pegasus more than ever before to preserve and protect culture and the arts, as well as the freedom to gather in the public square in Dallas. Recent attempts to sell Dallas city hall to build a casino and sports arena in place of one of perhaps the largest art parks anywhere, and historic city hall building designed by world famous architect IM PEI, reveals our city leaders are under the spell of Medusa rather than inspired by the muses of Pegasus.

When Pegasus park was planned to be built in the 90’s they dug underground adjacent skyscrapers and discovered a natural spring that drew forth to fill the water feature streaming from a large spiral design and a huge quartz crystal. Surrounding the spring are sculptures of each of the nine muses represented in a stone boulder like Baetyls, known as sacred stones embodying a Deity, or as in the case of the omphalomos, the navel of the world, or anima mundi. Dallas aspires to be a world renowned city, and needs to remember its roots as a city of dreams, but it won’t get there by sports arenas and casinos.

The River of Mnemosyne is known as the river of memory. It was said if you drank from here your memories of past lives would return. As we move towards the end of 2025, and review what we lived through, we may want to forget and move on, but Mnemosyne the Goddess of Memory will have us drink to remember so we may see the future clearly. May the spring of Memory take you there to call upon the powers of becoming into the new year for 2026.

Chrysalis of the Soul

The word Chrysalis stems from the Greek “Khrysos” meaning Gold. The form created to contain the stage of metamorphosis from pupae to butterfly, is often seen with flecks of gold on its exterior. A container of Alchemy.

The Art of Transformation

The Soul inhabits liminal spaces such as Dreams, as a bridge between worlds. A space where we may access more than we know, and become what the Soul knows, beyond the everyday concerns of identity navigating the material world, and instead embodying our authentic nature. The Soul is here to help us remember our deeper story, like the wings of a butterfly emerging from the Chrysalis. In dreams, we are not limited to the physical body and can fly beyond time and space. These midnight excursions can prepare us for the transition to the afterlife, when our ancestors come to greet us.

The butterfly appeared in dreams when both my Mother and my Father crossed over. When my father passed, I woke up my teenage daughter to let her know he had died. She was dreaming, and said, I know, he told me, and then she spoke the exact time he crossed over. She later shared this dream with me.

Butterfly Tree

There is a tree in the backyard, covered with butterflies. Grandpa is sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of our ancestral house. Mom and me are there to say goodbye as he nears death. We tell him we love him and hug him goodbye. A butterfly from the tree flies over and lands on his shoulder, and he crosses over. He transforms to a younger version of himself and walks across a river where his mother and siblings on the other side are there to greet him.

Afterwards I go into the house of the ancestors and walk upstairs to a library. There in the library, an Appaloosa horse greets me, and a Native looking grandfather is also there. There are many books in the library, inside the house of the Ancestors.

The following dream came months before my Mother passed.

Midnight Butterfly

I am dreaming with a huge butterfly with wings the color of a deep midnight blue. There is magic in these wings. The butterfly comes through my body and out the top of my head and there are four dimensions of this midnight butterfly seen and felt deeply. It is a feeling of the soul leaving the body, like when I go dreaming. The immense energy I feel in the dream, is a mystery to me of what it could mean.

Later, when my mother is in a coma at the doorway of death from dementia, there are no family members there to say goodbye, everything is shut down due to COVID in 2020. I feel the need to bare witness and say goodbye to our Mother for all of my siblings. I gently rub her arm as I thank her for bringing us all here, and her love and care for us all. I tell her it is ok for her to go. As I am touching her arm, I feel her soul energy move through my arm and into my heart and out the top of my head and see the wings of a midnight butterfly migrate away, carrying the four dimensions of love in connection with her four children, her soul carries this love with her into the afterlife.

What of the ancestors and the patterns of trauma that we inherit across generations? Can these patterns be altered? This dream came to inform me of how this may work.

Butterfly DNA

I am dreaming, and splicing the DNA sequence of butterflies, repairing a weak sequence and sewing it back together with a stronger ancestral sequence. I saw the overall DNA sequence as a fabric folded over and over and over again, with a dense grid material like a window screen.

In the DNA sequence repair, I cut the weak link with my mother’s sewing scissors. My view then became hyper focused, and it appeared like editing a sound recording and mixing it together with the preferred experience. In my dream, I was aware the repair process was about editing ancestral DNA, and the generational migration of the embodied soul path being supported in a stronger way.

Recent scientific research published by the National Science Foundation indicates gene editing butterfly wing color patterns reveal that “removing the gene that produces an RNA molecule that controls where dark pigments are made during metamorphosis inside the Chrysalis, causes butterflies to completely lose their black pigment scales, showing a link between RNA activity and dark pigment development. “

Migration

The butterfly is long associated with the transmigration of the soul journey, and welcomed in Mexico as a return of the soul when the monarch butterfly makes its migration journey. The return is seen as the soul of departed relatives, and remembered through the Dias De Los Muertos ceremonies and celebrations. This migration path of the Monarch may take 3 generations to complete. Once when looking at Monarchs flying over my house in Texas as they flew South, I was able to see the energetic grid they followed to their migratory path home. It reminds me of the layers of screen like material folded over and over I was cutting to edit my Ancestral DNA. This energetic grid connects us all, and is one we can travel in dreams to find our way home.

This migration path lets us know that we are linked to journeys and stories beyond our individual lives, that began long before we arrived, and that we may have the chance to complete a story which began long ago by our ancestors. We all have a soul purpose and a destiny to live out, and this includes our ancestral stories. For many of us this means ending cycles of trauma that have been carried across generations, and also reclaiming gifts brought forth from our ancestors.

Dreams for Sale

I am a dream hawker,

A stalker of stories.

Dissolver of worries,

I bring dreams to light.

I enter mysterious 

Spaces of the night.

The in between 

of twilight dreams,

lucidity is seen.

I am a tracker

of wild places.

A seeker 

of the profound.

Digging up the underworld

For stories covered up.

Souls hidden in history 

Buried, but not forgotten.

Unafraid of the dark.

Searching for sparks

Of inspiration

To light my way.

Intention matters to guide dreams.

Attention matters to recall dreams.

Written words of the night, 

capture unseen realities 

that only the dreaming mind can tell.

Words that keep the timeless art of dreaming alive

to be remembered and reviewed. 

Reality checks for dreams that come true,

I scan mythic narratives that hold us all. 

Interwoven with the mythic mind and far memory

are glimpses of what may come to be. 

I call upon my dreams gently, 

as a partner, to show me 

what I need to know.

Beseeching your healing, 

I travel this time worn path 

of dream incubation. 

Pilgrims of sacred dreaming, 

Come lay in this temple of night.

By Valley Reed

All rights reserved

December 21, 2025

The Most Interesting Man in the World

There are big dreams that stalk us seeking a way into the world. Where do the big stories go when there is no way in? They take refuge in the imagination hovering around our head as ideas that never come to be. They may become part of identity and acted out as a persona, or a myth that lives in the land, and travels in dreams across time and space.

We all exist inside big dreams of past, present and future, and while we have dreams of our own, we are not just tied to our separate wants and needs. We can dream as part of and collaborate with the bigger stories that wish to come through us. We must trust in big dreams in order for them to take root beyond our imagination. We can dream on behalf of others and bring dreams to those who have forgotten or lost contact with their dreams. During times of great change and suffering, it is crucial that dreamers come together and track the dreams that are stalking us. This is where authentic power and everyday magic resides.

I had the following dream after meeting with a small group of women who wished to make plans for a Women’s Summit in Kyrgyzstan next year.

The Most Interesting Man in the World. 12/6/2025

Actor Jonathan Goldsmith

There is a handsome man who has a salt n pepper hair, beard and mustache, he reminds me of the beer commercial for the Most Interesting Man in the World. Big dreams float around his head and in his imagination. Gifts of charisma, magnetism, creativity, design, collaboration, strength, wealth, love, fame, and power. Getting a sense of the gifts held in the dreams floating about him, gives me enthusiasm of what is possible, so much energy here.

Like a whisper of a spirit or a muse, I am tracking the invisible movement of what wants to come together. I hear whispers of Kyrgyzstan coming from the land, and a mandala of colors and energy swirling, held in sand. It is the creative spirit of the project swirling like a whirling dervish.

In terms of the projected dreams and imagination coming together, there is a fracturing of energy where it cannot take root under the feet. I feel the mystery of the spirit of place in Kyrgyzstan, and the movement swirling at my feet, the energy held there in sand, and soft colors of orange and gold, yet fractured in relation to big dreams orbiting the head of the most interesting man in the world.

Djinn Dreams Swirling

I hear the whispering spirits held in this root dream, this seed of solace and healing. I feel the movement spiraling around in the sands of time, blowing in the wind inside this tiny globe of destiny. Like a glass menagerie that has been dropped and broken. The sands of time are spinning in the wind, like a dust devil, like a djin, peri, or genii, controlled by the magician head who has dreams of power.

I am witness to the sands blowing and whispers of the spirits of place, the voices of women held underground. The jinn as spirit used for the grandiose visions of man as ruler.

Only the dance can release the jinn, only the movement can root the memory of Women in the land, and culture whose powers are under the foot of the man.

I hear the whispers of women, and dreams of the land, carried on the wind, calling me in their broken reality, to be released and take seed.

So after recording the dream, I was researching the sacred sites in Kyrgyzstan, and came upon this UNESCO Heritage site called Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain in the Fergana Valley, near the city of Osh, at the crossroads of the Central Asian silk roads.

Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain in Kyrgyzstan

The story of this sacred mountain goes, that the ruler Sulaiman, also known as Solomon, the mightiest and wisest ruler of the earth that ever was or shall be, controlled 500 jinns, who he commanded to lift him up and make a throne of the mountain, on which he would rule the region. Today, the mountain is a place of spiritual pilgrimage where seekers come to visit caves with petroglyphs, and mosques built along the path up the mountain. Sulaiman was also known to be able to talk with animals, birds, and have powers of the wind. The story of Solomon is bigger than life indeed, he courted the Queen of Sheba, who it is said, was Queen of Yemen, and that she and her people bow to the Sun. It is also said that the Queen of Sheba was a Jinn, while some thought her a Sibyl.

Cave on the sacred mountain

The project in Kyrgyzstan so far, does not appear to be coming together, we shall see what dreams may come, and actions unfold. I have organized a number of international retreats and Women’s Summits, and each time, it begins with a dream of whispering spirits of the land calling me there.

by Valley Reed – All rights reserved 2025

Two Ravens on a Tree

Enter dreaming each night 

on the cusp of sleep.

Step swiftly into sweet reverie, 

Encounter more than you know. 

Bidden by intentions, 

Dreams respond 

to questions 

that untangle the soul. 

Throw out a rope 

get pulled ashore, 

before you drift 

too far from home.

Drop a line 

to practical solutions, 

when you get caught, 

hung up.

Step inside choices, 

where guidance.  

at the crossroads 

are voices

blowing by

of past and future 

Not knowing why 

which way

or where to go. 

When dreaming, 

the mind drops 

into deep collaboration

with wholeness.

Pouring emotions

into scenes 

and settings 

that can hold all of us.  

Travel in far memory

and curiosity 

to places outside of time.  

Fly with wings above it all

and rise with the winds,

take the long view. 

Take the long way home, 

Searching for truth 

breathing in the smell 

of ancient memories. 

Deeply rooted in trees,

searching for beliefs. 

Forgetting and remembering 

Origin stories.

Ponder along 

forest paths

where birdsongs 

bring happy melodies. 

Every step is deeply felt, 

the weight of it all. 

The well worn dirt path ahead

is easily read 

to find the way home. 

Here there is no hurry, 

it is enough

to stand on the Earth

Be on the path without worry 

you are in the right place,

doing it in the right way. 

take your time. 

Take a breath 

move along 

at your own pace. 

This place is sacred, 

it can hold all of you, 

including dreams.

Recall your ability

to trust yourself 

very deeply. 

Enough to let go, 

and be met by dreams unbidden. 

Enough to come face to face

with what’s hidden.

The glow of your own light, 

in the dark of night,

like the Sun, the Moon

and the Stars. 

The reflection of moonlight

finds the language of trees 

speaking back to you.

Hungry for a deep conversation. 

Light language is what they feed on. 

The language of the soul

is where dreams are found

and this is what I need.

Give a poem, a song, or a dream 

A memory summoned for ages, 

Spiraling and spilling onto pages

These trees keep giving

a living memory.

Interwoven roots 

of blood and bone, 

these boots

do roam.

These boots do roam,

seeking lost memory.

Wondering alone 

so far from home.

Wondering alone so far from home

Spiraling back to the sea

the tide moves in and out.

Where did that song come from? 

Deep in the womb. 

Where did that poem arise?  

Deep behind my eyes.

How did that dream keep? 

I took a deep breath,

plunged into a pool

of wisdom and memory, 

like two Ravens on a Tree. 

Valley Reed 

11/13/25 

All rights reserved

Dream Tracking Ancestor Trails

Tracking my ancestral trails in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado for a tale unfolding that wants to be told. Like ghost trails of history resurfacing, the stories of the land are alive.

I gave a workshop recently, on Dreaming on the Otherside, where we journeyed with the stories of the land, and a dream resurfaced for me from many years ago.

Spirit of the Wind

I see a Native Spirit hovering over the land with a rainbow streaming through his hair. I am on the prairie where fields of oats grow touching them with my fingers as the winds blow. The spirit tells me the legacy of this land will be mine one day.

Prairie Lands

In the journey, I see a herd of wild horses and am told this heard is from the lineage of Spirit of the Wind, the mustang my Grandfather Frank Reed bought from Native horse traders in the areas around Southeastern Colorado where he had a homestead along horse creek in Lincoln County. I then see a herd of buffalo on the plains who are also part of this lineage story.

Tracking Synchronicity

Last night, I came upon a story of Molly Goodnight in the Texas Panhandle who together with her husband owned the Goodnight Ranch in Caprock Canyon. Molly is known to history as a conservationist who was able to save buffalo calves and eventually raised 250 Buffalo on their land, during a time when they were being shot and killed toward extinction, she was quietly saving them. The herd in Caprock Canyon Tx. still remains today from her efforts and is said to be through DNA testing the only original Buffalo herd left in the world. This story reminds me of my dream and journey.

Buffalo herd at Caprock Canyon

Goodnight Cattle Trail

I felt a tug from this story to research the land where my Grandfather Frank Reed and Grandmother Nellie Reed were homesteaders in Colorado along Horse Creek, and my Grandfather was a cowboy along cattle trails in the days of no fences.

I found the cattle trail running along horse creek out of Texas was the Goodnight Cattle trail, which I had just read about Molly Goodnight, known to history as one of the first conservationists for her efforts at rescuing Buffalos.

Goodnight Cattle Trail along Horse Creek

“The Goodnight cattle trail is easy to find because it follows Horse Creek. Entering from the south, Horse Creek parallels SH 71 for a distance. Just before the mesa, Horse Creek turns west Climbing up the hill. It soon turns into a small stream with groves of trees lining the stream bed. It Crosses SH 94 west of Punkin Center. In the spring the prairie is ablaze with the red and yellow blooms of the cacti. It is a small valley the creek has curved out with cool and inviting shade from the trees in the summer heat.”

Tracing the cattle trails of history and dreaming with the Spirits of the land, has driven me into the lands of my ancestors, where lineages include more than human ancestors of Mustang and Buffalo, along the storied trails of the cowboy. It seems fitting this tale comes through the Goodnight Cattle Trail, where dreams surface to reveal ancestral legacy where the stories of the land are alive.

Sources

https://everything-everywhere.com/the-history-of-the-last-herd-of-buffalo-caprock-canyons-state-park-texas/

https://seelincolncounty.com/ghost-riders/#:~:text=The%20cattle%20trail%20followed%20Horse%20Creek%20on,express%20company%20used%20the%20road%20from%20a

Dreams Bidden or Unbidden

Pondering how dreams are sent and by whom? From where or when does my dreamweaver originate? What archetype, what oracle, what memory, what future, what life lived before, what ancestor, what spirit, what soul longing or loss?

When we let the thread of our dreams wrap hold of us we may find the location at the other end spinning a dream as part of the tapestry of the world story, or a galactic birth, or a far memory of the stories held in our bones. The Mothers divining fates past, present, and future, have always been rooted in the Earth Mother, from whose powers the oracle speaks and the threads of fate are spoken, interwoven with the story of the dream of the world. We are always dreaming, and connected to the web of multidimensional reality by the threads of time.

Unbidden

In 2009, I attended a dream conference in Chicago on Listening to the Earth Dreaming. I presented a workshop on Dream Way-finding and while there had this dream unbidden.

Crystal Star Goddess

In my dream, I hear a knock on the door of my hotel room, and get up from my bed and answer the door. I do not realize I am dreaming until I open the door to see in the doorway is a quartz crystal the size of the door, as a portal from another world, through which a beautiful goddess came through and stood before me. She wore a translucent light blue veil loosely over her head, and an eight pointed blue star design shown on her forehead. She held in her hands a crystal spiral which she gave to me, and in the other hand a crystal skull, which she placed in my other hand. This part of the dream repeated three times, so I would know this was real and meant to be. I accepted her gifts and she turned and stepped back through the portal. I received her unbidden mysterious gifts, wondering where they may lead me, or what gifts may unfold.

In Sumerian, Inanna means Queen of Heaven. She was known as daughter of the Moon, and morning or evening star as Venus. Her symbol is the eight pointed star.

Her initiation as high priestess is not complete until she can give up her stations of wealth and power, as she makes the journey into the underworld through seven gateways where she must release more and more of herself at each gateway and surrender to meet her death presided over by Sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the underworld.

From the Great Above, she opened her ear to the Great Below.

From the Great Above, the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below.

From the Great Above, Inanna opened her ear to the Great Below. (Kramer, Wolkstein, pg. 52).

Previous to attending the conference, I had a dream of seeing myself as a huge presence on the Earth.

Earth Guardian

I am a huge Earth Goddess sitting on a labyrinth, and my body is partially submerged. My Womb carries the design of the Labyrinth, and holds this ancient wisdom within the Earth, where my womb is also submerged. The labyrinth can also be seen on the Earth surface.

I heard a voice say, “You are an Earth Guardian”. Now, fully embodied in this huge Earth Goddess form, I can see sitting across from me a beautiful Sun God in the form of Apollo, with a golden face and bronze body that glistens like the Sun. I notice Apollo is attracted to me and moving in my direction. When he does this, he begins to move the wheel of time. I move with the wheel of the Seasons and gently tell him, no not like this. Indicating he must follow the spiral path for himself and go deeper to uncover his own mysteries, he cannot take for himself Wisdom held by the Earth Mother. I was able to guard the path of women’s wisdom held in the womb, as an Earth Guardian.

“Earth confounded the Apollonian cult by sending up dreams which revealed unto the cities of mortals the past, and the future. She brought forth the peoples of the dream, and all the tribes of Vision“. (pg. 292 Dashu)

Temple of Delphi

Bidden

Dreams of intention invite energies of Heaven and Earth, across Time and Space. These are dreams we invoke the numinous energies to visit. These are dreams we invite in to revisit dreams from before. These are dreams where we may stalk the past, or the future, with animal spirits, or connect with departed loved ones. These are dreams where we can have a travel plan for where we will go, who or what we may encounter, and what we may do when we get there.

I had heard a description of the Spirit of the Soul described by Michael Meade on his podcast Mosaic Voices, where he describes the Spirit of the Soul as a unique inner spirit or genius that life’s calling is meant to awaken. This had me curious to incubate a dream to learn about the spirit of my Soul. When I incubated my dreaming intention, the dream I had bidden, came through.

Spirit of my Soul

I see an entire wall covered in red roses, and standing before it was a nun wearing light blue and white habit. I was somewhat put off by this religious image, and told her, “You must be so disappointed in me.” Since my orientation is pagan, and animist, and which the Catholic church had burned women for being. My orientation was more as a wild woman, not devoted to a spiritual Icon or Christian beliefs.

The dream I had called upon reminded me of several past unbidden dreams I had over the years sharing my connection to the Mary Mysteries as part of my Soul Origin story. On the day of Annunciation I dreamed of the Virgin Mary, and she showed me her birthing grotto, and told me she would birth four children there, and would be staying here until she had birthed all four.

As a young woman, I encountered the Virgin in a dream where I was in California and saw it was snowing over the Ocean. I stood on a group of boulders overlooking the Bay, in order to gain a better look. It was then she approached and grabbed my arm and wrote symbols in red. One was a crescent with a dot in the center, and the other symbol was two slanted lines, close together.

I asked her who she was and what she was doing, and the Virgin, said, “I am Mary, and here to protect you” I jerked back my arm from her hold, and proclaimed, “I don’t need protection” and she said, “Yes you do”.

As a young Mother, I had a dream with Jesus as a young man, and he held a book in his hands with a dark blue cover. He spoke French when he talked to me and handed me the ancient book also written in French. I asked him to speak in English, since I don’t speak French, and he said, I don’t speak English. I took from him the book he offered, and then heard a booming voice carried across the ages, as the voice of God said, “You originated in the age of the Christos, you were among the Cult of Magdalena.”

This dream came to me sometime in the 90’s when the internet was new, and before books or films like the DaVinci Code, or the countless groups now devoted to Mary Magdalene. Having read many of these books about Mary Magdalene now, I was always left with a deep sense of remembering, and also grieving the loss of the divine sacred feminine.

In 2017, I lead a group of dreamers to journey through the portal of a painting of Mary Magdalene. Inspired by a bidden dream journey I did in collaboration with her. My intent was to ask her guidance to reveal what she wishes to be done to bring forth her energy. She revealed a group ritual, in creating a space resembling a grotto in the underground space of a cultural arts center over looking a lake. We transformed the underground space to look as revealed in the journey, featuring the painting of the Magdalene. Some who attended the gathering had been to the actual grotto sites for Mary Magdalene in France, and reflected the experience we created together, was much like the pilgrimage site. My vision of the journey I guided by the sound of the drum, showed the Magdalene coming through the portal of the painting and walking among us. A golden light from the sunset covered the painting just as the journey began. When the Magdalene moved through the portal she was surrounded by golden light which she blessed on the head of each participant as she walked through the space and walked out onto the water surface following the path of gold light unto the horizon as the Sun went down and the sky exploded into a blazing red sunset. In closing the ritual, we all gathered before the waters edge with red roses in hand and did a closing ritual with offering rose petals to the water as prayers of grace and gratitude.

This dream incubation of the Spirit of the Soul, stirs my unique spiritual essence to join with the deeper wishes of the soul to create spaces for healing, guidance, and wisdom that allows for the mysteries of the deep feminine to be remembered and revealed.

Sources

Dashu, Max. “Women in Greek Mythology, Pythias, Melissae and Titanides, Secret History of Witches Vol. II Book I. Velda Press, 2023.

Kramer, Samuel Noah; Wolkstein, Di ane. “Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth.” Harper Perennial, 1983.

Noticia

Presence, where we enter our own story. Notice what gets attention, in the body, a feeling, a memory, a color, a sound, a texture. I can’t breathe.

Unhinged pushing down, keeping sounds hidden, holding back feelings by pushing down, don’t let them see your pain, don’t let them hear your rage, it will be dismissed. You won’t be missed when you go, because no one really knows you. Just smile, and laugh it off. Why are you so upset? Why do you let it upset you? Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. They don’t really want to hear it, they don’t really want to know you.

In the room a light comes through the window, a shadow falls on the foot, a design on the body as a flitting memory of a tattoo you never had in this body, in this life. A presence of a spirit in the room. How often you notice this coming through, and then write it off as some imagining.

Imaginalis Lunacy

When I dance under the full moon, there are magical designs hidden under my skin and messages come through. I hear the sound Crows make as winds take black wings flying miles upward in the direction of the moon. I feel the presence of Owl hidden at the axis of what is known and unknown. Silent wings of flight towards horizons of day falling into night. Liminal places where bidden and unbidden dreams arise behind eyes shut. I let go of this world and enter the otherworld. Ghosts dance with me, ancestors light the fire of generations to be carried forth in my blood and bones.

Messages coming through

in conversations with you

where nothing is heard

because we have said it all before.

I look to the in between, reading between the lines of what is left unsaid. Conversations in my head, and my heart left to bled.

Back here in the same spot,

we are getting nowhere.

Is nowhere a place like elsewhere,

or is it just a state of being invisible?

If I become invisible by magical ability

when I am stalking power,

that is no where near the same

as being invisible due to gender

race, sexuality, age, or ability.

Maybe it’s been awhile since I have flown to the moon,

I left my feelings strung out everywhere

and now I am in a state of lunacy.

Reeling myself in, I grab hold of the string that’s pulling on me,

Leading me back to reality, I feel where I have been, and what has been lost, and how to begin again at the dark of the new moon. Crow has flown me here before, into the dark where power was hidden, in dreams bidden and unbidden.

Crow gave me the golden key, a circle that fit perfectly into an ancient stone stargate. The gate opened and the light flooded through, never before had I seen such light surround me with a white and blue hue. I have been given Noticia Feminista when 10,000 years of Patriarchy have come to a close, and Women step through the gateway to reclaim what was taken from them through a violent take over. The most violent years of the history of the world, when they almost destroyed the human race, and many more than human relatives. Never again will Women be invisible. Crow has pulled away the darkness of Patriarchy, and the return of Star Wisdom begins again.

The history of the first peoples of the land, is remembered in the Stars and the Earth. A map of memory to open the way to what has been foretold. Crow holds sacred law, the book of Crow states, No harm shall come to the children. Women are held as sacred and protected and respected. Women and children sit at the center of the circle, and the Old Ones, the Grandmothers recall sacred law, as leaders of knowing what was done, what is done, and what shall be. They hold the sacred stories and traditions that create bonds of trust and power as a people. They weave the stories of belonging that can heal the dark times. They weave the world back together when we have become separated from our soul, and the world soul. We cannot find the answers in the shadow world. We must trust the old ones to lead us back to balance with the Earth Mother and the world behind the world. We enter the otherworld to bring balance back to our home again, where we no longer have to hide who we are and why we were born. We return home again with the wisdom of remembering, with the courage to stand Earthside and serve the community.

One cannot plant seeds if you cannot breathe. One cannot grow into the potency of darkness and the unknown if information and progress is the goal. One cannot hold the dreams of humanity if you forgot how to become Bear, for Bear was the first Human. Hu Man, breath of Man, much can be learned from Bear. Bears dream the world into being when everything is cold and dying. In the Spring, Bear breathes life into the Dreams of Winter, and Mother Bears awaken to her cubs feeding from her. She Bear birthed what she dreamed into being.

Whales sing songs that travel the great womb of the Oceans of Earth, a lullaby to coax the dream of the Mother Earth to sing us to sleep and dream with her dreams, a world complete and whole. Whale dreams with one eye open, and remembers to surface and breathe. Snow Geese fly patterns across the sky sustaining the past and in the direction of future generations. Dreams moving in the direction of Winter to Spring, and back again. Chasing a memory of ancestral patterns. The dream is always moving.

Mystery must be given space, a darkness that holds the stars in the sky. A womb of magic, where return and death also reside. The event horizon of memory, before taking the long journey.

When Winter comes, a passageway opens to the middle of a sacred mountain where the book of life is found. Spirits travel back and forth, they come and go over ages, over lineages, over seasons, over prophecy, over stories, over mysteries. It is here that Visions are found, and revealed only to those with a destiny to hold a vision from the ancients. It is a burden to hold a mystery, and decipher its purpose, and how it must be shaped and remade to weave culture and meaning for future generations. This is what happens when one notices a shadow on the foot, and the design of a message held under the skin.