Crossing a Bridge of Dreams

 

From a thousand years ago, in a slim “I-novel” gusting with moonlight and desire, we have a dozen dreams of an anonymous Japanese woman who was born in Kyoto in 1008. The book itself is untitled; sometimes it is called the Sarashina Nikki (literally, “The Day-Record of Sarashina”). The translator of the Penguin edition, Ivan Morris, decided to import a title from an even older poem, “As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.”
     The author, whose name is unknown, belonged to a remarkable group of Japanese women writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries. We know almost nothing of their lives, not even their names. A modern editor, Ivan Morris, suggests that their extraordinary accomplishments “produced an unconscious resentment among male scholars, with the result that these talented ladies were permanently condemned to anonymity.” One of them was this author’s aunt, who wrote a searing tale of jealousy, Kagero Nikki (“Gossamer Years”).
    By convention, the anonymous author of Bridge of Dreams is called Lady Sarashina,  a name borrowed from a mountainous area she probably never visited. The daughter of a minor provincial governor who resented being posted outside the capital, she led a secluded life, mostly behind garden walls in Kyoto, until she became a lady-in-waiting to a princess at thirty-one. Her court connection may have helped her to marry at thirty-six, very late in her day; she had children. Her prose style was lovely; the poems that punctuate her recollections (an epistolary mode of the time) are mostly forgettable.

    She told no one her dreams and failed to take actions suggested by the early dreams in the series. She later regrets failing to act on her dreams, realizing that they could have steered her life on a better course.
    She loved stories and romances, and the first dreams she records – one features a “handsome priest” – came in the midst of her binge reading of women’s writing like the  Tales of Genji. Some dreams were experienced at temples, to which she journeyed on pilgrimages that were sometimes cherry-blossom tours, sometimes belated efforts to honor dream directions.
    Japanese classical scholar Ikeda Kikan says that "the author of Sarashina Nikki can be regarded as the first person in Japanese literature to have discovered dreams…Her dreams are not fortuitous interludes but are consciously grasped as having a definite, inevitable meaning.” This is the first Japanese book in which dreams play a central role. Life itself has the quality of dream, a flimsy bridge between different shores.
    Sarashina Nikki resembles the modern Japanese genre known as the sh-shosetsu, the “I-novel”, in which the author weaves facts of his life together with imagination.

Illustration: Toyohara Chikanobu, Viewing Maple Leaves in the Tenth Month, 1897

Lick the sky and rule China

The future of an empress of ancient China was foreshadowed by a dream in which she rose to the sky and drank from it. The crucial role of dreams and shamanic experience in imperial China is another chapter in the history we weren't taught in school.

   Deng Sui (81-121) ruled China as dowager empress in the Later Han Dynasty. As a young girl, she dreams that she rises up to the sky. It is beautiful, flawlessly blue. She touches it, moving her hand lightly across the smooth, rounded surface. Her exploring fingers find something shaped like “the nipple on a bronze bell”. She puts this in her mouth and sucks on it like a baby, feeling herself fed and nourished. 

    When she tells the dream to her parents, her father, a high official and royal tutor, calls in a dream interpreter. The professional draws on precedents. He recalls that two of the legendary “sage kings” of ancient China dreamed of rising to the sky before they rose to take the throne. Yao dreamed that he climbed up to the sky. Tang dreamed he rose to the sky and licked it. Both dreamers became emperors, ranked among the “sage kings” because of their wisdom and innovation. The dream interpreter declared that Deng Sui’s dream was “unspeakably auspicious.”
    For a second opinion, a face reader was called. He studied Deng Sui’s physiognomy and pronounced that her features closely resembled those of the sage king Cheng Tang. Therefore her destiny would be tremendous, as the dream seemed to promise.
    Still in her teens, Deng Sui was selected as a consort of the young Emperor He. A slightly older consort, Yin, was raised to the status of empress. Jealous and scheming, Yin hired sorcerers to attack Deng Sui with black magic. When this was discovered, Yin was deposed and Deng Sui took her place on the throne. When the emperor died, she became the regent for his child successor, and ruled China as dowager empress for several years, fulfilling the dream  prophecy.

     My source for Deng Sui's dream is an excellent scholarly study of shamanism, religion and poetry in early China: Gopal Sukhu, The Shaman and the Heresiarch: A New Interpretation of the Li sao. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012). This is the first book-length study in English of the Chinese poetic classic, the Li sao, attributed to Qu Yuan, a high official of the kingdom of Chu in the 3rd century BCE who lost his position thanks to the jealous intrigues of rivals.
    The title is translated here as “Encountering Sorrow”. It might also be rendered as "Departing from Sorrow". In his sorrow, the poet contemplates suicide; according to tradition Qu Yuan drowned himself in a river in 278 BCE, an event memorialized by the Duanwu or Dragon Boat festival. Yet the force of the poet's violent emotions is also the departure lobby for vividly described shamanic journeys between the worlds. He rides on dragons and phoenix-like birds, summons elemental powers, talks with gatekeepers of heaven worlds.

I sent Wangshu, the moon's charioteer, ahead as my herald,
And Feilian, the wind god, to the back as rear guard.
Male huan birds were my fore-runners,
And the Lord of Thunder would warn me of the unforeseen.

    The long poem is full of challenges for modern readers, especially in its elaborate floral codes (have as many flowers and herbs ever been named in another poem?) and in the gender-twisting narrative voice; Gopal Sukhu deftly traces the rival paths of interpretation and contributes a new translation with detailed notes.

Graphic: Chinese postcard depicting Deng Sui in Han dynasty hairdo.

Yggdrasil, a Place to Stand

The red fox stands beside the tree gate.
I’m never at ease when he shows himself,
but he is flanked by the black dog,
ever watchful and reliable, a true guardian,
and there seems to be no conflict between them.
This is new. I could take the open door
down through the roots of the world tree
but I am distracted by the frisky moves
of a squirrel that is running down the trunk.

He is as big as an elephant, perfectly in scale
with the tree that rises into the clouds
and could contain cities. His presence confirms
I am at the place where a shaman-god
hung for nine days and nine nights,
sacrificing himself to himself.

Rattling his nuts, the squirrel of mischief
plunges into the Lower World ahead of me.
He is playing his old game, Wake the Dragon.
Fire and stink rise from the roots of the tree.
Earth shudders. The squirrel snickers in glee.
Ratatosk, Ratatosk, Ratatosk.
Here he comes back again.
He scurries up the tree, all the way to the top,
telling tall tales to anger the heaven bird
that keeps watch over all the worlds.

Dragon rises. Branches of the world tree
creak and groan as the eagle shakes out its wings
and comes down, talons eager for battle.
Between them, on a ledge in the tree world,
I see a man in a grey robe, with a broad-brimmed
grey wizard’s hat. There are birds on his shoulders
and a great company of birds all around him.
Lightning is with him. His eyes flash, his hands
spark white fire from the air. His form is never still.
He is the ancient of days, he is the magic man,
he is the young deer prince, antlered and horny.

As the dragon rises to join battle with the heaven bird,
he catches it by the throat with his left hand. His body
twists and buckles as he struggles to hold this power
and raise it. It is pulling him down, tearing him apart,
till he lifts his right hand, palm downward, and the eagle
lands on his wrist as the falcon returns to the falconer.

The balance is  made. The powers of above and below
are joined and turning together, evenly matched.
This is how the game of the world goes on.
The man with lightning eyes is calling me.
Come. Stand where I stand. See what I see.

I am drawn to him as the sparks fly upwards.
On his edge between the worlds,
my body stretches beyond itself,
my mind cracks open like the squirrel’s nuts.
Ratatosk, Ratatosk. There is a role for mischief.
And I have found the right place to stand.

-          October 17, 2014

From a vision while leading a group shamanic journey through the Tree Gate at the Hameau de l’Etoile, near Montpellier. We danced on the mythic edge all week, and my dreams and visions - like those of many in our gifted circle - often turned on Greek themes. But on a certain day, I was hurled deep into an indelible scene that seemed to come from the Nordic imagination.

Art "L'arbre et la brume" (c) Annick Bougerolle

The Rhyme Rats Hear Before They Die

 

Yeats was a great believer in the power of "poet speech" to change minds and circumstances, and of course he was a master. Opening his Collected Poems at random, I found myself rereading “Parnell’s Funeral", in which he draws from a dream of an Artemis-like goddess on horseback shooting an arrow at a star. He moves on to characterize politicians and phases of Irish history. In a commentary, he said he was versifying things he had spoken in lectures in a recent tour of the United States. I came to the lines

All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Bred out of the contagion of the throng
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die. [1]

In a previous reading, in the old Macmillan edition I was given as a prize for writing verse in school, I had assumed the reference to “rats” was another example of Yeats’s haughty patrician dismissal of critics and group think he disliked. This time I was using volume one of the Collected Works, which is enriched by the copious scholarly notes of Richard J, Finneran. Thanks to Finneran, I made this fascinating discovery about the reputed power of poetic “rhymes” even on rats.

In “The Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution” ed. & trans. Professor [Owen] Connellan, Transactions of the Ossianic Society, 5 (1860), the poet Seanchan causes ten mice to die by his satire. In a long note (pp. 76-77), Connellan refers to a paper presented to the Royal Irish Academy in 1853 by James H. Todd “on the subject of the power once believed to be possessed by the Irish Bards of rhyming rats to death or causing them to migrate by the power of rhyme.” [2]

Shakespeare knew something of these things.  In Act III Scene 2 of As You Like It, Rosalind says, “I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras time that I was an Irish rat, which J can hardly remember “. In German folk tradition - which gave us "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" - the rat catcher uses a flute. It seems his Irish counterpart needed no instrument other than his voice box. 

The Irish rhymers often had larger targets than rats and mice. I followed Finneran's lead and read about several instances of Irish bards rhyming to death even Lords Lieutenants of Ireland.

The following is an instance given by the Four Masters at the year 1414 in which an unpopular Lord Lieutenant was rhymed to death by the Irish bards: "John Stanley, Deputy of the King of England, arrived in Ireland, a man who gave neither mercy nor protection to clergy, laity, nor men of science, but subjected as many of them as he came upon to cold, hardship, and famine." Then, after mentioning some particular instances, especially his having plundered Niall, son of Hugh O'Higgin, the annalists proceed to say : "The O'Higgins, with Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who lived after this satire but five weeks, for he died from the virulence of their lampoons." [3]

References

[1] "Parnell's Funeral" in Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume 1 The Poems ed. Richard J. Finneran Second Edtion (New York: Scribner, 1997) p.285

[2] CW vol 1, Explanatory Notes p. 677. n.304.I.28.

[3] Transactions of the Ossianic society, for the year[s] 1853-1858 vol. 5 (Dublin, 1860) p.80.

"I am your double from the jinn"

 

Kuthayyir 'Azzah was born in Medina and died there in 723 after many years in Egypt. He had the ear of caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty, was favored by courtiers for his flattering verses, and was no stranger to the charms of women. He became famous for his ghazals, songs of love and longing, often spiked with the absence of the lady he thirsted for, graceful as an antelope, fleeting as a raincloud over the desert - and unfortunately, wed to another man. His poems survive in palaces including the library of the Escorial in Spain.

When asked for the source of his poetic inspiration he gave a stunning response. He did not mention a lady, or the voices of birds or a rising flood inside him. He spoke of his double in the world of the jinn, a world normally invisible to humans where great games are nonetheless in play.

Asked, "When did you start reciting poetry?" the love poet replied, "I did not start reciting poetry until it was recited to me."

"And how was that?"

"One day, I was in a place near Medina. It was noon. A man on horseback rode toward me until the horse’s breath blew on me. He was hard to make out, quite bizarre. He seemed to be made of smoke, then of brass of brass.  He commanded me to recite poetry. Before I could figure out how to respond, he started speaking poetry to me.  

“I said, 'Who are you?'

“He said, ‘I am your double from the jinn.’

“That is how I became a poet."

As for those songs of longing: poets and dreamers know that yearning for a lover who is far away loosens the soul from its physical bonds and makes it easy for it to leave the body and to travel in its etheric vehicle.

Source: Amira El-Zein, Islam, Arabs and the Intelligent World of the Jinn (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 2017) 126-7.

Drawing by Robert Moss

“Induced Coincidence”

 

 

An episode reported by Gareth Knight, former student of Dion Fortune and leading figure in the Society of the Inner Light. It involves an exchange between an inner guide identified as David Carstairs (first contacted by DF in 1922) and Soror A., a student of Gareth Knight, in 1996.

In a communication in March 1996, Carstairs explains the mechanism by which a 1920s postcard of Ypres fell into the hands of Soror A unexpectedly when she was working on psychic history related to the battle of the Somme in the Great War. The postcard subsequently provided a strong “talismanic link powerfully charged with a sense of [the Master’s] presence’. It was later used in ritual. Carstairs explained that synchronicities are useful for “concentrating the mind”. 

The postcard incident was not the effect of direct control of the physical from the Inner planes. Rather, it was a case of the merging of consciousness in mutual concentration setting up a “kind of energized imprint which straddles the planes”. This generates “a kind of cosmic magnet” drawing in relevant forces, some of which can precipitate synchronicities or “induced coincidences”.. 

The process is not guaranteed to work every time. Carstairs likened it sending a message in a bottle and hoping that it will somehow reach its destination. He suggested it was possible that the card had been wending its way to the student ever since it was first purchased. Through a series of mailings and hand-to-hand transactions, the destiny of both card and final recipient were influenced retrospectively by the Master. 

Time on the Inner planes is not to be linear, the time constraints we experience in the tick-tock world make such an incident look anomalous when in deeper reality it is not. We might see manipulation of the past but the past is not past in the greater perspective. .

 

-     Source: Gareth Knight in Don Fortune and Gareth Knight, An Introduction to Ritual Magic (Loughborough: Thoth, 1997), p. 116

Where Shamans Use Paintings As Prostheses of Gods

"Korean shamans, called mansin, hang bright portraits of the gods they serve over the altars in their personal shrines. These paintings become sites of daily devotion as gods, operating through the portraits, send the mansin inspiration in order to divine, exorcise, heal, and open their clients’ paths to good fortune....

"The paintings must accurately represent the gods who are claiming a particular initiate. Unless they are appropriately portrayed, they will not 'come in', inhabit the shine, and provide a steady flow of inspiration for the mansin’s work...When ordering a painting, the initiate must properly identify the signifying characteristics of the deity she has seen in a dream or vision and have them replicated in the painted image she commissions for her shrine....

"The eyes meet the viewer’s gaze with a bold and penetrating stare, which some find unnerving. A mansin manifesting an imperious god might similarly lock eyes with a client, claiming an unsettling engagement in a place where socially appropriate eye contact is usually oblique...

"Both paintings and mansin bodies may be considered prostheses of otherwise invisible gods whose favor may vary over time."

Source: Laurel Kendall, Jongsung Yang, and Yul Soo Yoon, "God Pictures in Action: Korean Shaman Paintings and the Work They Do" in Ars Orientalis vol. 50 (2020) pp. 157-176.

Illustration: Tiger gods in Museum of Shamanism, Seoul

Eldorado Kite

 

The great bird lifts from my hand

drawn to the sun

on your breath.

I tug on the string,

trying to drag it down,

forgetting what you taught me:

the falcon longs for the wrist of the King.

 

This strange wind is too strong for me.

I am rising with the bird

above all that is fenced in,

urgent to cut the cord.

My tame self panics.

It wants to hide among limits and shadows

where air does not move like this,

in animate waves of intent.

 

Something falls like a worn-out coat

and your breath blows me as a sail

across oceans of sky

to my home in your heart

where falcon and falconer are one.

- This poem, written for a dying friend in Eldorado, New Mexico, is in my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories by Robnert Moss. Publsihedn byExcelsuo Editions/State University of New York Press.

A Neuroscientist Praises the Double

 

French neurophysiologist Alain Berthoz is worth reading on the theme of the double and its role in the origin and functioning of consciousness. He bows to the literature of the doppelganger, while acknowledging that neurobiology offers no adequate theory. Our ability to project a double, he says, is central to our ability to plan and the way we dream:

"I see in our ability to construct a virtual body, a double of ourselves the basis for our capacity to deliberate, that is to create virtual scenarios that involve first us, then perhaps others. This mechanism is probably at the root of our ability to change our point of view, to look at the world and especially ourselves from a variety of perspectives. …

"We have two bodies, the physical body and the virtual body. The virtual body ...is the one we perceive when dreaming. It, too, has a phenomenal reality.

"The duality is part of the foundation of consciousness. I think that consciousness appeared in humans at the same time as the two bodies. Consciousness is the act of the 'second me' watching the first one."

- Alain Berthoz. Emotion and reason: the cognitive science of decision making. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006 pp.207-8

Drawing: "Autoscopy" by Robert Moss