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Posts Tagged ‘dreams’

The Slow Blade – Trance/Dream Working

Posted in Clergy Training Program, Initiate's Path, Trance Journal 1, tagged , , , , , , , on December 9, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Writing this up so that I remember it for posterity. Not sure what the end result will be.

I don’t often remember dreams, and when I do they are usually gone within a few minutes of my waking up. This one has stuck with me now for awhile, and I want to get it written down so that I don’t forget it.

*****

I dreamed I was going through an ordeal – in the original sense – a test of sorts, where I had to pass a certain number of gates. I was on a long and winding path, and there were ten total gates that I had to pass through. (It was very important that there were ten.) Each one had a gate guardian who was tending a fire at the gate, and the only way to go forward on the path was to pass through. The gates had tall sides, and were blueish-purple and swirly, like portals, but they were (to my mind) clearly “gates” I had to pass through.

I passed through the first four without incident or really memory. I just know that they felt “easy” and that I didn’t have any trouble getting through them. When I got to the fifth gate, my FB friend Cat Heath was the gate guardian, tending her fire.

Except I couldn’t get through. I threw myself at it and bounced off or slid down or fell. I did this for some time, until I was bruised and battered and lying in a heap at the foot of this impassable gate. And Cat looked down at me and said “Well, clearly you’re not ready for this.”

And I woke up.

My first thought was, “Well fuck, I didn’t even make it halfway through before I failed.”

Sometime later in the day, with the dream still on my mind, I went to lay down and see if I could get back into dream-space and ask some questions and maybe look around a bit, and I was immediately back into the space in the dream, lying at the foot of the fifth gate.

And I asked Cat why I wasn’t ready, and what I needed to do. She looked at me, a little puzzled for a moment, and the said “The slow blade penetrates the shield.” She turned back to the fire.

I hauled myself up, approached the gate, and then slowly – painfully slowly- began to push my hand through the gate. And it worked. After some time, my hand was able to pass through.

And then I snapped back to reality again.

*****

I have taken this to mean that it’s time to slow down, that things will happen in their time (whether I’m talking about my clergy work or my divorce or any other thing in my life). Talking with other priests makes me think that this is especially related to my clergy training, but I think there’s more to it. Also that this isn’t something I can force – that I must – MUST- go slowly and force myself to take the time that it takes to be ready for what is coming next. Which is a hard lesson for me, but I will take it as a good sign that my divination on this has been very favorable since I had the dream.

I am still looking for a good diviner to confirm my suspicions, so if that’s you, please get in touch with me. I’d love to get an outside confirmation on what I think is really going on here.

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Dreams of Interest and (perhaps) Importance

Posted in Cat Vacuuming, tagged , , , , , , , on October 30, 2015| 2 Comments »

I am not, very often, a dreamer. I’ve tried all the usual things – notebooks by the bedside, intentions before sleep, mugwort tea, valerian capsules, etc. I’d blame it on the medicine I take for neuropathic pain that keeps me in deep stage sleep longer, but I wasn’t a dreamer growing up either, so it’s not like much has changed. (I had night terrors as a child/teen, but I only very rarely remembered what they were about, only that I woke up terrified.)

But then, every once in a great while, I have a DREAM. In this case, an exceptionally vivid one that – three hours later – is only just now starting to fade.

In this dream, I was working with an artisan to create a rosary to Cerridwen (I think) and Herne.

This is interesting for a few reasons, beyond just the fact that I remembered a dream very vividly.

I haven’t worked with Cerridwen and Herne for several years. They have a space on my altar still, of course, as a tiny cauldron and a wooden acorn, but they aren’t Gods I typically associate with my current practice. Herne is not far off my current Anglo-Saxon practice, being an English God, and being that it is Wild Hunt Season, but it was curious to hear from Cerridwen. (On a night just after the full moon, on the eve of Samhain, so maybe not so curious.)

Their names are the names that I used for the God and Goddess in my days as a Wiccan. (I am not an initiated Witch, and I am Quite Sure these names are not the oathbound names that witches are affiliated with.)

Now. I’m not exactly much of a Wiccan anymore. I occasionally do Witchy magic, but my following the wheel of the year has a distinctly Druid flavor, and I’m pretty entrenched in ADF and the Anglo-Saxon hearth culture.

But my practice has been pretty stagnant recently, and when I consulted people who are skilled at divination, the common answer was “you’re doing too much, you need to take care of your own practice, find your big Why, and turn inward for awhile.” They also said not to be tempted by “spiritual squirrel syndrome” – where anything shiny and new seemed exciting and worth pursuing. (I asked three diviners, and got three VERY similar answers, from three completely different systems of divination. I’m inclined to trust that answer.)

So why, suddenly, are these Gods from my past knocking at my door again?

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