Aztec Turquoise Mosaic of Quetzalcoatl from the British Museum
Years ago, a series of dreams had been calling me to come and live in New Mexico. I finally decided to pay heed to these nightly dream callings and went to live at a retreat center called Garden of the Goddess, located on the turquoise trail on a scenic route between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Cerrillos is the official town where I was living, which was at one time the capital of New Mexico, a thriving center of trade and turquoise mining. Cerrillos was located along a trade and pilgrimage route between Teotihuacan, Mexico and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, where parrot feathers from Mexico and Turquoise mined from Cerrillos, New Mexico have been found in Chaco Canyon.
Turquoise became a form of monetary trade between these two spiritual power houses. Turquoise itself was believed by indigenous tribes to hold the spiritual power of the blue sky above, so it is understandable that the stone would be popular in these places of spiritual pilgrimage.
In August of 2013, when I discovered the opportunity to move to New Mexico and live on the Turquoise Trail I had this dream.
Chaco Pilgrimage
I was dreaming about the people of Chaco Canyon, seeing the immense pilgrimage that went on where people traveled to the city to take part in a harvest festival. They wore beautiful colorful clothing complete with parrot feathered headdresses. The pilgrimage came from Mexico as they walked the turquoise trail to Cerrillos and then onto Chaco Canyon where thousands of people were gathering for the festival.
I later discovered what I had dreamed into was in fact was true, my bit of dream archaeology was confirmed during a visit to the local historical museum in Cerrillos, New Mexico, which had an article about the history of the Turquoise trail.
Many of my dreams have featured the energy of the dragon or winged serpent known also as Quetzalcoatl from Mexico, and also the Gila Lizard Monster which is native to New Mexico and Arizona.
LIZARD WOMAN 12/08
I see a map of Arizona, there are rainbow colored arrows pointing from Flagstaff and Sedona southeast at an angle to a particular spot on the map and then the arrows go back up headed northeast. I can hear music playing in connection with the arrows on the map. I can also hear a woman’s voice speaking to me. She tells me it is time for you to accept your own power, it is time for you to wake up! I can see a large tree that has appeared several times in my dreams previously. I then see under the earth in the area on the Map where I was shown, there is a huge lizard that lives under the earth. It is moving and I can feel the energy of it, I can see the scales of its skin and the design of it with red and black in an intricate woven design. The energy that I am feeling and seeing in the dream suddenly is in my throat and then into my heart. I feel my rib cage expand open and it cracks loudly. I am now feeling the energy of the Lizard Woman and she is calling me to her. She says, you need to come to this land. I feel the deep coursing energy of this place in my own body in my throat and heart. I feel the energy of this lizard that has been woven together through story and song through the centuries of the people who inhabit this place. It is a place of deep healing and a place to embody power. EOD
I was deeply touched by this dream experience and felt it was a call from the land itself to come and claim my power.
She’s Got Her Feet in the Stars and Her Head in the Universe 7-28-13
My teacher is talking about my dream and says, “She’s got her feet in the stars and her head in the Universe.” I am now huge like a galaxy spread out like the Milky Way. A power begins to flow into my being that is like a dragon. I am feeling it in my whole being, and I begin to breath like a dragon, and make sounds like a dragon. I find that I have become a Giant Gila Monster, I have red and black designs across my being, and I am the beaded monster. I feel the power of this energy and tremendous healing energy within me. The vastness of my being and the incredible energy of the Gila Monster, carries an intensity and vibration in tuned with a sound and vibration that resonates through me. I become conscious in my dream and notice this as a very real experience. EOD
Upon researching the healing practices of the Gila Lizard associated with the Dine and Arapaho peoples, I found that it does indeed have to do with reading the stars and consulting the star beings, as well as high vibration healing energies that come through the hands of healing practitioners. The spirit of the Gila Lizard comes through the healers, and their hands shake as they confer the healing energies.
It was after having this dream, I knew it was time for me to go back to New Mexico. It was time for me to follow the dragon who is leading me along the Turquoise trail connected to Teotihuacan, Mexico to Cerrillos New Mexico to Chaco Canyon New Mexico. Just before moving out there I had this dream,
8-20-13 Following the Dragon
A long dream where I become conscious at one point when I am there with another woman and we are talking about the dragon underground. I become aware this dragon is under the earth in Santa Fe, and it is this energy that I am connected to that is bringing me there. I am following the dragon. EOD.
I was transfixed by the images in this dream, the energy was so inviting and mysterious. The next day, I set up the space for the workshop to create a sacred ceremonial space within which to work in the basement of an airport hotel. I put out about 30 chairs and I thought I must be expecting a good crowd. I imagined all the chairs being filled for the workshop. I also decided to lure people into the space down in the basement by playing my Native American flute.
By Valley Reed
The Annual Conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams was held last month in Chicago, Illinois. I was there to participate in a panel on Listening to the Earth Dreaming chaired by Jean Campbell along with Wendy Panier, Jody Grudy & Teresa MacColl, a powerful group of women leaders and dreamers. I also co-facilitated a workshop with Teresa MacColl on Dream Way Finding. I have been a presenter at several of these conferences over the years, including last year in Montreal, Canada where I chaired a panel on Dreaming Across Borders with Indigenous Peoples. The presentation I gave last year is listed on my blog as “The Call of Quetzalcoatl and Dancing with the Moon” which has also been published in Dreamtime Magazine. I flew to this years conference in Chicago directly after attending a week long Dream Teacher Training with Robert Moss in Connecticut at a beautiful seaside retreat. The circle of 18 women was a powerful, grounded group that attended the training and we have all become bonded on this journey we are embarking on together.
The Dream way finding workshop seemed to pick up right where I left off from my experience in Teotihuacan, where I did ceremony with De Leon the keeper of the staff of Quetzalcoatl. It was in response to a prayer I had offered for my father two years ago, who was dying of cancer that I had the dream of an Aztec Gatekeeper who told me he was directing my fathers death. This dream lead me to go the Teotihuacan to do ceremony in Teo at the temple of Quetzalcoatl and the Jaguar Palace. I have been told by a Mayan friend that the name Teotihuacan means “Valley of the Reeds” and my given birth name is Valley Reed.
Teotihuacan The Temple of Quetzalcoatl
My father has since crossed over last fall, and during the past Summer Solstice of this year, which was also Fathers Day, my oldest brother spread my fathers ashes over the Garden of the Gods in Colorado where my father grew up. Teotihuacan is also known as “the place where men become Gods”, so it seems fitting that my Father would finally come to rest in the Garden of the Gods. I wrote about my experience as being a “Gatekeeper” in my previous blog entry and serving in the role of psycho pomp to help my father to cross over into the next stage of his journey.
I found in the workshop on dream way finding we did in Chicago that the journey was continuing. I had a dream the night before the workshop of a mysterious princess or priestess who had a star on her forehead and wore a beautiful transparent veil in shades of blue, which just barely covered her head. In the dream, she handed me a Crystal Skull and also a small crystal spiral. I was transfixed by the images in this dream the energy was so inviting and mysterious. The next day, I set up the space for the workshop to create a sacred ceremonial space within which to work in the basement of an airport hotel. I put out about 30 chairs and I thought I must be expecting a good crowd. I imagined all the chairs being filled for the workshop. I also decided to lure people into the space down in the basement by playing my bamboo Native American flute I had bought at the Mohawk reservation in Montreal last year. The first person to come into the circle through the East was Dr. Tricia Torres an Anthropologist from Guadalajara. We had the opportunity to visit briefly, as she entered the circle and put her offering on the altar my colleague Teresa had set up in the center. Dr. Torres told me she was the Dance Elder for a dance circle of women in Mexico, and they did sacred precolumbian dance. I asked her if she knew De Leon, the keeper of the staff of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan, and told her I had danced with him and his wife as their guest in the annual Moon Dance Ceremony in Mexico City in 2007. She affirmed to me she did know him, I then felt moved to ask her if she could tell me anything about the Crystal Skull. I shared with her that I had a dream last night of a crystal skull and it seemed to me to be from Mexico, or Central or South America. She told me the crystal skull had to do with higher transformational energies. I left it at that and thanked her, allowing her to take her place in the circle and continued to play the flute to help guide other dream wayfinders to our workshop. We managed to fill each of the seats we had set out for the workshop. It was a wonderful mix of bringing the ancient practice of dream way finding through the voices of the elders who Teresa MacColl had interviewed and recorded. Teresa has her Masters through the Indigenous Mind Studies Program at Naropa University now directed at Wisdom University by Dr. Apela Colorado. It is important to follow the protocols of honor and respect toward elders and these ancient practices by honoring the ancestors. Within the protected ceremonial space we had created together, I was able to lead the workshop on a shamanic group dream journey with the help of the drum to dream our way forward.
In the circle, we called out the names of our ancestors and shared dreams and experiences on dream way finding. I felt called to mention that each person in the circle had found their way there that day, and that it was also an example of way finding. I made the connection with Dr. Torres and that she knew the gatekeeper from my dream that lead me to Teotihuacan. She told me on June 21st during the Summer Solstice her womens’ dance circle had performed a sacred dance to help heal relations between fathers and daughters, the same day my fathers ashes were spread over the Garden of the Gods. The name of the sacred dance these women performed is called the skull dance.
Dr. Torres offered to teach the whole circle the skull dance to close the circle. We all did the dance together beautifully, picking up the steps as though we already knew the dance. The dance was offered as a closing prayer to our dream way finding workshop and offered further closure for me on the journey of my father’s crossing over. The workshop was so magical, and the weaving of the bigger story into the circle was overwhelming to me in the sense of how incredibly blessed I felt to be a part of this work and to be able to dance together into the realm of the ancestors.
In the Fall of 2007 , I was given the news that my Father has cancer. He had stage four lung cancer with a large inoperable tumor, and he is 83 years old. Death is inevitable for each of us, and so the news of my father’s illness brought me closer to the portal of death. It also brought a pain so deep within me I was doubled over as if a knife were piercing my soul. I was feeling pulled deeper into the darkness and pain of these events as if my soul were being pulled down into the underworld. My father had recently given all of his things away and moved in with his Sister in El Paso, Texas. The borderlands, El Paso means “the Pass” and these are lands where the ancient Aztec territory had once reached and ancient petroglyphs of Quetzalcoatl can still be found in the Hueco Tanks area. One night I surrendered to the pull that I felt in my soul, and I said a prayer for a dream for my fathers’ protection and healing. In response to my prayer, I had this dream;
The Call of Quetzalcoatl
I see an Aztec Mandala as a large circular structure built with Aztec Codex tiles. Each tile is connected to a person’s life and there is a tile for each individual soul. I see a spirit presence there who is the guardian of this place, which is a portal to cross into the other world. The first panel I was shown is connected to me and my life. I stepped on the panel with my awareness, and it lit up with golden light and the God Quetzalcoatl, the flying serpent came to life and flew away. Then this gatekeeper guardian spirit told me he was directing my father’s death. He told me my father would be going into the underworld when he passes.
I see a friend with me in my dream and she stays on the perimeter of the circular space that makes up this portal. She is talking with this spirit and he gives her a very large ruby that he takes out of the side of the earth that is the wall of the perimeter. It seems to be some kind of cave maybe or part of a temple or a pyramid. Another part of my dream is showing me another layer where the Aztec Codex tiles are floating up in space like an Aztec temple but on the etheric realm. The spirit offers a simple bowl and sets it on a tile and the bowl flips over to the other side and it disappears immediately. This is a place where offerings are made to the ancestors or spirit realm. I am given the information that if I put my hand on one of those tiles it would disappear just like the bowl. Instead I take out some Milagros which means “miracles” they are small metal medallions in different forms such as a hand or head or a house offered as prayers of healing and protection. The Milagro prayers are received, but they don’t disappear. It shows me the importance of making offerings of prayers in Milagros or tobacco or sage to be received in the spirit realm. The prayers for assistance offers an opportunity for the ancestral spirits to be of service from the other side. – End of Dream
I shared this dream with my friend who had appeared in my dream. She has Mayan Ancestry and speaks Spanish and I told her I felt I needed to go to the Pyramids in Mexico and make prayer offerings for healing. I asked if she would accompany me as my translator since I did not speak Spanish and also since she was one of the people in my dream with me. The next day, we were flying to meet in Mexico City on a quest to the Pyramids in Teotihuacan to explore my dream healing ceremony. We stayed very near the Pyramids where there was a small village, my friend felt she wanted to explore the village nearby that evening in search of a Toltec Elder who might know how we could participate in the annual ceremony of the Aztec Moon Dance. She asked several people in the village if they knew anyone who might help, and finally we were directed to a house where a Toltec Medicine Man lived. We knocked on the door and spoke with a delightful young woman, a cousin who explained he was not there but he could give us a tour of the pyramids in the morning if we came back then. She also explained we would not be able to participate in the Aztec Moon Dance without a written letter of referral, which had to be submitted in advance. She let us know the Moon Dance would be taking place the next day in Mexico City. We left and returned to our hotel for the evening with a plan to return in the morning. It did not look promising for us to participate in the Moon Dance from what this woman had told us, but I left it up to spirit to decide. My sights were set on doing ceremony and making offerings to the ancestors in the territory I believed I had seen in my dream, the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan.
Before retiring for the night, I realized we were actually sleeping on sacred grounds with ruins on the property located walking distance to the Pyramids. I made the intention for a dream of assistance for the quest we would embark on the next day. My dreaming was difficult and disrupted, I awoke in the middle of the night with a feeling that chilled me to the bone. It was as cold as death in our room and I could not get warm no matter how many blankets I piled on me. I looked at my companion and she slept peacefully without any signs of discomfort.
Over breakfast the next morning, I described my lack of sleep and dreams to my friend and we determined she would go and seek out the Medicine Man we believed lived in the nearby village while I waited at the hotel. She would then bring him to the hotel for me to meet him and I could tell him my dream. She returned with his wife who spoke some English and I told her with the help of my translator of the dream of Quetzalcoatl that had brought me before her. I spoke of the need to offer prayers for my father. She understood immediately and went to retrieve her husband. Upon our meeting I felt as though my dream was opening up and I was falling back into my dream. I recognized the man standing before me as the guardian spirit I had seen in my dream. This Medicine Man is the keeper of the Staff of Quetzalcoatl and the guardian of this sacred place for his people. He offered to do ceremony at the pyramids with us and asked us both to accompany him and his wife as his guests to participate in the Moon Dance in Mexico City later that day.
Avenue of the Dead and Pyramid of the Moon
Before we entered the sacred grounds of the pyramids, the Medicine Man and his wife offered me colorful stones as offerings of healing for my father and myself. They explained to me that it was through my own healing that these healing energies would be made available to my family. They also gave my traveling companion a stone that was the color of a red ruby, we both looked at one another with a knowing grin understanding this was actualizing a part of the dream. We were on the path of my dream and together we went to the pyramids and offered prayers with traditional Copal and also Sage which I had brought and offered out of respect and gratitude. It is the traditional way as I had been taught in my past years of study practicing ceremony with my teacher, a Lakota Sioux Medicine Man known as Ten Bears. The teacher before me now was an Aztec Medicine Man and he was young as was his wife, and they had nothing but smiles and concern for my well being on my healing journey with them.
We offered the prayers without the flame to burn the sacred herbs as the traditional ceremony would be done. The four of us stood in each of the four directions offering prayers in Nagual the language of the Toltec people. It was sad for me to see the indigenous peoples living in this area on the land of their ancestors forbidden by the government to practice their rituals with an open fire and so the ceremony we did was without flame. After we made prayers, we went to the temple of Quetzalcoatl to open a portal of healing energy. We climbed the steps of the temple in a zig zag serpentine fashion to connect with the energy of the feathered serpent. When we reached the top, the guardian of this portal spoke the sacred prayers and told us to concentrate our energy and open up to the power of Quetzalcoatl. We stood looking down on the ancient carved serpents that covered the temple holding our hands out over the temple breathing in the energy. I could see in my minds eye a V shaped opening occur where golden light poured fourth and then two giant golden serpent eyes were staring back at me. The energy of the feathered serpent had been released and it had made contact with me. I could still feel the energy coursing through my body as we made our way down the many steps of the temple back toward the earth in a serpentine direction.
Keeper of the staff of Quetzalcoatl
Our next destination would be the underground ruins of the Jaguar Palace. I followed my guide as he lead me to the ancient ruins and found myself in the territory of my dream. Inside the underground palace, we were led to a location that had once been a waterfall. It was obvious where the water had once run down where the sides of the earth where smooth. I was directed to stand underneath it, as if the water were flowing today. I leaned my face and body up against the earthen wall under the barren water fall, and I could imagine the once plentiful waters flowing over me washing away all of the wounds of my past. I stood taking in this energy for a long time until I felt my spirit replenished, the water was long gone, but the healing energies of it remained and I was grateful to be in this amazing place. We then went deeper inside the underground ruins known as the Jaguar Palace and I was shown what seemed to be a covering over some kind of opening. When the covering was removed it revealed a dark hole that went deep down inside the earth. My guide pointed down into it as if he wanted me to enter this portal. I looked at him like he was crazy and exclaimed, I am not going inside that! It was so deep and dark you could not see the end! He laughed and had me place my hands hovering over the opening and told me to draw the energy of Mother Earth up into my hands and through my being. I stood positioned over what was an ancient well that lead deep inside the earth and drew from the healing energy of Mother Earth.
Moon Dancers
I was feeling lighter with each step along the way of our journey and now it was time for us to travel to Mexico City. My companion and I had decided we would accompany our Medicine guides to participate in the Ancient ceremony of the Aztec Moon Dance as their guests. I was profoundly grateful to them for their generous spirit, and all the love and support they had shown me and my friend. It was here in the Moon Dance Ceremony that I was able to make my prayer offerings for my father. I had brought the Milagros with me, and put the stones that I had been given in a small bag that I carried with me. I danced with the bag during the ceremony, and I was amazed at all of the colorful costumes and the many different people from across the region who arrived for the dance. The Medicine Man and his wife who accompanied us, wore the costume of the black jaguar while his wife was dressed in the beautiful flowing colors of water. I did not come prepared with a costume for the dance, however my friend provided me with a headdress of colorful parrot feathers that she and I wore during the dance. The dance began around 2:00 in the afternoon and it went on until the Sun was down around 8:00 we danced the entire time without taking a break on concrete in the middle of the busy square in Mexico City. There were different Aztec tribes there from across the region and well over 50 dancers who participated. I was accepted as one of the tribe as if I had been there my whole life without hesitation or question. The Moon Dance was so hypnotic and yet I felt so completely alive with the sounds and smells and the movement of the dance. I thought my body would collapse in the waning hours of the dance. I could feel the energy of the dance take over and I was no longer one person struggling against the difficulty of my physical challenges but surrendered to the dance and became one with the movement of a whole community. The energy of us dancing together as one took me and lifted my exhaustion away. I felt lifted ever higher by the energy of this Sacred Moon Dance and I knew my dance was a prayer that was offered to the ancestors of this sacred place.
When the final words of the closing ceremony had been spoken, we all gathered in the square to join in a sumptuous meal of chicken mole, beans and rice with even a shot of Agave Tequila to take the edge off tired muscles. The night wore on as it was getting late and I was ready to return to my hotel to rest and asked our guides to please escort us back home. They had other plans however the ceremony and the night was not yet over! They insisted that we accompany them back to their village to join in a small group of people to do a temascales purification sweat ceremony. They insisted this was a crucial part of the day of ceremony. They had both shown such tremendous concern for my well being all along the way in the course of our journey always checking in to see how I was feeling, and if they insisted on this final step I had to trust them. We arrived at the temascales where the rocks to heat the lodge had already been well heated in a ceremonial fire and everything was prepared. I was given a simple white cotton gown to wear in the lodge. Special herbs were burned over the hot rocks and then poured with water to release the steam. In the lodge we sang songs and prayed deep in the night and into the early morning. Several of those who shared the sweat lodge with me that night kept complaining about it being cold inside the lodge. The Medicine Man whom I had come to love and trust, let everyone know the reason they felt cold was because they were experiencing the trauma they held in their body. This rang a bell for me, that must have been what I experienced in my dreaming the night before when I woke up freezing and was unable to get warm. The Medicine Man checked with me to see if I was cold, I shook my head no. He gave me a warm and knowing smile shaking is head in agreement. The healing was complete. Now I knew I had received healing through the day of ceremony and ritual. I was the only one in the lodge who was not cold.
We then finished the healing lodge and prepared to leave. I gave a donation for the services of creating the space for the lodge and I offered my faithful guides money for the healing I had received. They thoughtfully declined, knowing I was called to them by the dream and through spirit, and it was their honor to be of service. These were indeed people of beauty and faith and love and integrity. They had helped me find the miracles I came searching to find. Now I could take this energy home with me and share it with my loved ones. It was hard to say goodbye to these special people that the dream had answered in response to my prayer but I knew this was a place and a people to whom I would someday return.
My father later died peacefully surrounded by family and I feel strongly that through the dreams and ceremony and sacred dance and prayers offered a pathway that was prepared for him to travel into the afterlife. The day he passed my daughter had this beautiful dream of his death.
The Butterfly Tree
The Butterfly Tree
I see an old two story house with a front porch and grandpa is sitting on the porch in a rocking chair. The family is gathered around and everyone is coming up to speak with him and tell him goodbye. My mom and I go and speak with him and say our goodbyes. We see a butterfly land on his shoulder and then he dies. A tree in the backyard holds many butterflies who now flow around him, as they do he begins to transform from his older self to his younger self of about 40 years old. He looks happy and peaceful. End of Dream
There are stories about butterflies in Mexico that the return of the butterflies each year during the migration are the souls of departed ancestors coming to visit. The Butterfly Tree is a migration of the soul and the end of the journey we call life.
Awaken the Sacred Dream 