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.

Extrasensory Dreaming

Discovering your Super Powers in Dreams, is one of the most alluring and memorable aspects of dreaming for most of us, beginning in our childhood dreams. We learn we can fly in dreams, and travel to places near and far, in this world and the next. A place where the multiverse awaits exploration. Children are excellent dreamers, because they remember how to fly.

My childhood dream memories have eluded me for most of my life, due to repressed trauma from growing up in an environment of domestic violence and sexual abuse. I only began recalling most of my dreams after I had a pre-cognitive dream which saved my life, when I was in my mid 20’s. Something woke up inside of me from that experience, confirming something my soul already knew, that my life has meaning, and my dreams were there to protect and guide me.

One of the most important elements of dreaming, is the ability we have to dream the future, not only as individuals, but also collectively. This is of key importance in the times we now face, where dark dreams prevail and the profound challenges of global warming are revealed each day. We are truly in this together, and it is in dreams, where we may find the answers to life’s most challenging situations. The key is to have the courage to look into our deepest and darkest places, the creative impulse to soar into our brightest dreams, the discipline to remember and record dreams, the impulse to share them with others, and the inspiration to act on what we find inside.

Active Dreaming gives us tools to learn how to become a conscious dreamer and co-creator in our world, not only for our own life, in this time, but on behalf of others, in other times. We visit the ancestors and practice transgenerational healing and collective soul recovery, by recovering lost wisdom and bringing forth more soul energy into the world.

As adults, we may have left our imaginations and dreams in childhood, as a requirement of growing up. When we do so, we leave behind a vital part of our soul connection, where knowledge of our true nature can be found. Reclaiming the gifts of soul, in connection with our lost dreams of childhood, can provide profound levels of healing and the return of passion, wonder and awe that children experience in a very natural way.

Children also dream with the animal powers, and studies have shown they dream of animals 70% of the time. This connection to animals is important in developing our instinctual nature, that gives us a felt sense of what is safe or not, in our relationships and in our environment. It helps us become skilled at being guided by intuition, and share in some of the specialized skills the animal powers bring forth to help us navigate the waking and dreaming worlds, which are not mutually exclusive, one need not be asleep, to find yourself dreaming!

The powers of intuition with glimpses of possible futures, arrive in dreams as naturally as the dawning of each day, or the approaching twilight of night. The thresholds of day and night, are designed as places where one may experience the opening of one reality into another. A liminal space one can enter consciously, to experience dreaming as a place, where psychic information is readily available. It is a place one can enter, and be coaxed into a conscious dream for the duration of the night.

Spring Equinox Day and Night 2019 Credit: NOAA; NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory

Our nightly dreams can bring creative insights and protective guidance which helps us enter our waking lives from a deeper reality. Want to experience your nightly dreams and waking life on new levels of intuition, creativity and playful enjoyment? Find out more by visiting Chrysalis Healing Arts and discover how to become an Active Dreamer.

 

Black Wolf Eats the Sun

The_Wolves_Pursuing_Sol_and_Mani

In my dream last night on the night of the New Moon and the Solar Eclipse, I encountered what was an aggressively wild black wolf. It came to my peaceful cabin alongside a river where I stood outside. The wolf approached snarling and showing it’s teeth. I was not afraid of the creature, I recognized it’s fierce and wild nature and knew it as a familiar. I welcomed the wolf into my home and as I did, it shapeshifted into a man.  The wolf was there as my protector and ally and would live with me in the wild in my peaceful cabin by the river. He gave me information about who he is, that he is rooted in the Scandinavian stories of my Danish ancestors. Suddenly an army of men from another time approached and took captive of the wolf shapeshifter, taking him to a castle where he was to meet the king. The king demanded the wolf to be his protector and decreed the wolf would now be held there in service to the king. He was kept there because of his powers to shapeshift and the king wanted this power in service to his kingdom, instead of it being used against him. I visited the castle to plead for the release of the wolf, back to my care, in my time.

I explain he is no threat and being held against his will.  The wolf shapeshifter looked at me with loving loyalty in his eyes and gratitude for trying to help him escape. It will now take stealth and planning to arrange his escape, the King will not let him go.

In researching the myths of my Nordic ancestors as hinted to in the dream, I find there are many important stories to consider.  Berserkers were Norse Warriors who fought with a trance like fury and able to shapeshift into forms such as wolf or bear. The King was said to have kept them has his bodyguards.

The story of Skoll, recounts a warg (wolf ) which chases the Chariot of the sun across the sky, and during the solar eclipse is when the wolf catches up to devour the sun. Hati is the warg, who chases the chariot of the moon and devours her light during a lunar eclipse. Fenrir is the son of Loki and foretold to be the one who will kill Odin. He is the Father of the wargs Skoll and Hati who chase the sun and the moon across the sky each day and night. Fenrir is eventually caught by the Aesir ( a clan of Nordic Gods and Goddesses) and bound by magical ties and fettered with his mouth fastened open, from which the river Van (Hope) flows.

The wolves of these ancient tales were surrounded by prophecy at the edge of a time of great changes signaled in by the Eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. The time when Odin would be defeated by Fenrir, as part of his destined prophecy. What hope flows from the mouth of this mythic wolf, that can now flow into our lives as we face great changes in our world? Perhaps that is the river besides which my little peaceful cabin sits in my dream of this time, in the world I now inhabit. I welcome the wolf beside me as a partner and friend. He is misunderstood because of his powers to shapeshift and his wild nature. There are many in power who want to control his powers for their own means. But eventually he will be released, he is not made for war. He is made for wildness. Perhaps that is why he has come, I welcome the wild and I am also a shapeshifter.