The Twilight Road to Mythic Worlds

When I look through old journals, I am amazed, though no longer surprised, by all the adventures and conversations I have recorded from the twilight state betwen sleep and awake, or between awake and sleep. Many of these were quite spontaneous, unplanned by me, although they were lucid episodes in which, once inside the action, I had the power to choose and navigate and to experiment with changing plots and sometimes worlds.

I have been familiar with this state for as long as I can recall, since early childhood. In many ways, it is my home base. Yet this whole area of inner experience is still largely neglected or undervalued by sleep and dream experts. I have decided to start posting more of my reports and to add quick illustrations if there are none already in my journals. Here's a short narrative from six years ago:

January 2, 2019

Lucid dream in hypnagogic zone

Unraveling the Knot

As soon as I lie down, an inner voice says, Pay attention.

A book is placed in front of me. It looks like a journal bound in brown leather. The text and pattern of the cover, however, are like tree bark. The clasp has the form of a Celtic knot. To open it I must unwind a string, flawlessly, in a certain pattern. A false move will seal the book.

Very carefully I experiment. I am making a double spiral, then a triskele, then a fourfold shape that might resemble a four leaf clover. 

The book opens into a wildly beautiful scene with a castle above a gorge. I run toward the castle, wearing skins. I am armed with a bow and a sword. A great water bird rises. Surly swamp creatures seek to oppose my path. I bat them away with my sword which blazes light. I see a waterfall in the gorge and understand that this, not the castle, is my primary objective. 

I become a falcon, swooping down into the gorge. I see a red stag above. I know this place though I am coming to it a new way. There are giants above the fall, observing. For an instant I am with them. I know these great ones as ancient allies. For now my assignment is below.

I fly through the hard spray. I am cleansed and restored to a human form. I see again the mouth of the cave of the ancients. I remember the stone that opened a portal of blue light when I braved up to a nightmare of hissing black snakes - and then accepted a call to join in an ancient battle with a dark tyrant sorcerer. I will be here again.

Illustration: "With Falcon Into the Gorge" by Robert Moss

Celtic metamophoses

Your gatekeeper is a horned god
who stands back to back with a second self. 
You enter a field of metamorphoses.
You may turn into the curl of a wave
or a waterbird in flight or a wild bull.
You may sprout leaves or tusks or antlers.

Fish becomes man, dog becomes dragon.
You reach for a flagon of unmixed wine.
When your hand closes on the handle,
it becomes the hound that is chasing a duck
that swims into your mouth on a red river.  

Long-beaked bird-headed men spring from a cross.
Gold and silver and bronze glint at the throats
and on the forearms of queens and heroes.
Everything is in connected, everything in flux,
vital energies change form and surge beyond form. 

Here art is a technology of enchantment;
it can seize your mind and bind it like ivy.
Obscure shapes become tendrils, endlessly looping,
making knots without end or beginning,
with no strings you could pull.  

The boar runs before you and around you.
Be careful. You pause to hear the hot howl of war
from the throat of a boar-headed carnyx.
Swords and shields, iron and oak, ash and bronze.
Shields with hidden powers, serpents coiled at the grip. 

   

You find your end in the great silver cauldron from the bog,
when you brave the stare of all those gods you cannot name.
You swim in bull's blood down to the mystery at the base,
where a naked woman warrior exults, sword in hand,
over the body of a dying bull. His potency will be transferred,
with the rush of his blood, to those who willed this ritual.

Image: Base of the Gundestrup cauldron. This richly decorated silver vessel, thought to date from the 2nd or 1st century bce, was found in a bog near Gundestrup in Denmark.

Celtic metamorphoses and the technology of enchantment

London

Your gatekeeper is a horned god who stands back to back with a second self.  You enter a field of metamorphoses. You may turn into the curl of a wave, or a waterbird in flight.
    Fish becomes man, dog becomes dragon. You reach for a flagon of unmixed wine and when  your hand closes on the handle it becomes the hound that is chasing a duck that swims into your mouth on a red river. Long-beaked bird-headed men are alive on a Shetland cross. Gold and silver and bronze glint at the throats and on the forearms of queens and heroes.

I am thrilled at the British Museum by by the amazing exhibition "Celts: Art and Identity", despite stumbling in, unshowered, from a redeye flight from the US. The art of the Celts reflects a collective imagination in which everything is in connected, everything in flux, vital energies change form and surge beyond form.
    Some of the patterns are visual riddles. Some were designed, as Alfred Gell proposed, as "a technology of enchantment" [1] designed to capture minds and bind them like ivy. You feel that as the shapes become tendrils, endlessly looping, making knots without end or beginning, no strings you could pull. 

Some images are mysteries to dream on. Is that a bull's head with bulging eyes hidden beside the boss of the "Battersea shield"?     
    What is going on with the "ears" on the so-called Glauberg statue, dug up from a warrior grave in Hesse? Are they stylized horns or antlers, or leaves, or bunny ears, or the Moon worn as a neck rest? Symbols of hypersensory power - especially clairaudience - or the nimbus of Awen (inspiration) whose symbol he wears at his throat? Are these primal shamanic headphones? What would you hear and sense if you wore them?    
    I remember a dream of thirty years ago in which I was watching over my "family" of ancient deer as they grazed in a fertile, unspoiled valley. I felt the strength and weight of my antlers, larger than a moose's horns, and rose with the sense of power and connection.
    I look again at the statue. What is going on with that leaf-like shield over the abdomen? I think of how spirit men in my native Australia open the tjurni - located at the abdomen - to release the dream soul to go traveling. Sometimes they use a hand motion in doing this. Is that what the Celtic figure is doing with his left hand, under the shield - releasing a spirit self to go traveling, as dream shamans have always done?

The boar is everywhere, running before you and around you. Be careful. You pause to hear the hot howl of war from the throat of a boar-headed carnyx, with great leaf-like ears, recalling the statue.
    Swords and shields, iron and oak, ash and bronze. Shields that are plain at the front but have  hidden powers at the back, in the coiling serpents at the grip. Shields with glaring eyes at the front, with hidden faces of raging bulls or angry birds.   
    You find your end at last, craning over the great silver cauldron from the bog, braving the fierce stare of all those gods you cannot name. You find yourself swimming in bull's blood down to the scene of mystery at the base, where a naked woman warrior exults, sword in hand, over the immense body of a dying bull. His magnificent potency is evident, but it is about to be transferred, with the rush of his blood, to those who have willed this ritual.

How far did the Gundestrup cauldron travel to its sodden burial in Jutland? Some maintain that the scale and complexity of the silverwork reveals the hand of Thracian (or Dacian) smiths far to the south-east, in modern-day Romania.[2] There are elements - elephants and the half-yogi posture of the famous antlered god - that suggest contact with peoples even farther east.  

In my end is my beginning.

References

1. Alfred Gell, "The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology. In Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics" in  J. Coote and A. Shelton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992) 40-66.

2. A.K. Bergquist and T.F. Taylor, "The Origin of the Gundestrup Cauldron" in Antiquity 61 (1987)10-24