Tag: Great Mother

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.

Red and Not Red

The moon sheds herself into the water

The moon sheds herself into the sea

The moon sheds herself under the mountain

And all will be red, be red, be red.

Our Lady of the Dark Country – Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Ochre Base Coat and Virgo Constellation

A Dream from last Spring had me doing some research because part of the dream was precognitive, and I wanted to know the deeper messages coming through.

I am at my office, where I work as a grants manager. My desk is pushed against the wall, and my things on the desk are placed haphazardly about, and I cannot find my laptop. I start to panic, because that is where all my work is found. I yell at the painter, “Where is my laptop?” Instead of answering my question, he points to the wall and asks me to have a look. He says this is the base paint, Red Ochre. I look and see the wall is painted an Earthy Red color. He holds up a paper, and says this is what it will look like when finished. On the paper is the starry night sky with the constellation for Virgo on it. I begin to realize that is what my home office looks like, I have goddess paintings on the wall, one of Cybele with Lions on either side, and one of the Sleeping Goddess of Malta.

My Feelings upon waking from the dream – frustrated with all the rearranging, and angry I couldn’t find my laptop, there is also a feeling of having an office as a place to call home. The same week I had this dream was when the chaos of DOGE cuts were made known which made everything uncertain in the grant world, and who would have a job at all. My dream seemed to show me there was something deeper going on here, something ancient, perhaps an initiation.

Reality Check – Definitely change is happening, with federal funding cuts, and the office being remodeled. I don’t actually have an office in the building where our company is located on the 10th floor of a high rise building. Office remodeling began a few weeks after the dream, which I had no prior knowledge of previously, although I visited the office recently and everything was pushed up against the walls and in disarray (just like my dream). I work from home and rarely come to the office.

I did a deep dive into Red Ochre, and it tracks back to over 500,000 years, when our ancestors used it in connection with rights of passage, ceremonial body painting, or sacred art on cave walls. It was interesting to find how the word ochre in several lands means, “red and not red” (2).

This deep Earth red ochre seems to be direct communications with the primordial Earth Goddess as the base coat for ancient memory. Neolithic burials may have used red ochre pigments symbolically, either to represent a return to the earth or possibly as a form of ritual rebirth, in which the colour may symbolize blood of the Great Goddess (3).

“In early cultures, the colour’s resemblance to blood linked it to fertility, life and growth, a symbolism that has persisted throughout the ages. Evidence also suggests early cultures were attaching magical, symbolic properties to the potent pigment – it was scattered over the graves of the dead as a form of respectful ritual, seeping into the ground and even staining their bones, signaling a return to the earth or rebirth in the afterlife.” (1)

The other part if the dream is a mystery on becoming, in the Constellation Virgo where the Goddess of the Harvest is seen. Demeter as Earth Mother and Persephone as Maiden whose journey into the underworld makes her a Queen, her return brings the turn of the Seasons. A turn of the wheel to enter the dark time of the year.

She carries a shaft of the golden wheat, a symbol of the Harvest and a rights of passage into the Greater Elysian mysteries with Demeter and Persephone. This year, Virgo season started with the new moon on August 22nd the first of two new moons in Virgo, and also beginning Eclipse Season with a Lunar Eclipse and Blood Moon in Pisces September 7th. A partial Solar Eclipse on September 21st is followed by the Fall Equinox September 22nd to end Virgo Season. These are days of secret initiation.

Elysian Mysteries

It is during September that the Greater Mysteries take place over the week of the Fall Equinox from Sept. 21-27. This year, a week that also includes a Solar Eclipse in Virgo. The Greater Mysteries are held in secret, by pain of death of those who break a sacred vow. Eclipses are a time when the shadows reveal what has been hidden. Perhaps this Solar Eclipse will find Women stepping out of the shadows and reclaiming their agency and their voice, like the Women survivors who came forth to demand justice and release the names of the high powered predators whose identities have been hidden.

The constellation Virgo is Kore the Maiden Persephone, who holds a shaft of grain. The grain itself is a sacred offering of the harvest mysteries. The Greater Mysteries prepares us to take a journey into the unknown with ancient wisdom held in secret, cultivated and kept safe for generations. It prepares us to have a good death, where we will not suffer an afterlife existence, but cross over to the Elysian gardens of peace and tranquility.

References

1) Red Ochre the Color of Survival https://blog.fabrics-store.com/2020/04/28/red-ochre-the-colour-of-survival/

2 ) What the Ancient Pigment Ochre Tells Us About the Human Mind. – https://www.discovermagazine.com/prehistoric-use-of-ochre-can-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-humans-1775

3) Giulia Battiti Sorlini, “The Megalithic Temples of Malta”, Por Anthony Bonanno, Archaeology and fertility cult in the ancient Mediterranean: papers presented at the First International Conference on Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean, University of Malta, 2–5 September 1985, p.145.