Dream readers and Raven shamans

 

I always scratch my head when I see dream researchers reporting that reading is a rare activity in dreams, or that if you start to read in a dream the text will blur and you won't be able to bring anything away. Perhaps these conclusions are based on the fact that the typical survey group is college kids, who may be less enthusiastic about reading than other sections of the population. Anyway, for as long as I can recall I have read at least as much in dreams as in ordinary reality and this have given me extraordinary leads for my own research, mystery words that prove to be keys to previously unsuspected cultural treasuries, and paragraphs - sometimes pages - of fresh material for my books.

Opening an old journal at random, as I often do., I found an entry from 1996 that put me on the trail of an ancient Hellenic shaman who was reputed to be able to take flight from his own mouth in the form of a raven. Here is my journal entry, edited only for length:

January 28, 1996

Dream Archaeology: Keys from Mantis

I am greatly excited because I have discovered several relief carvings from Mantis, an Egyptian site. Their images were separated in an exhibition or catalog. When brought together, they hold the key to an ancient mystery. Some are fragmentary.
    I go through dictionaries and reference books, working out the connections. I look up meanings for the words Diva (or Deva), Divina and Drostic (“to do with defense of lost causes”). One of the reference books contains verses and a heroic genealogy derived from the Arimaspea.

Waking, I recognize the last reference. The Arimaspea is a lost epic poem attributed to Aristeas of Proconnesus. It describes a people of the north, the Arimaspi, who live in mountains that may be the Carpathians and battled with griffins for access to gold. We know the work through fragments preserved by Herodotus, who says that Aristeas journeyed to fierce northern peoples, “possessed by Apollo”.

 Aristeas was a Greek shaman, living on an island near modern Istanbul, who projected a second body from his mouth in the form of a raven, and was credited with the power of bilocation. I own a book about him by an English classical scholar.

Aristeas was said to have dropped down dead in a fuller’s shop in Proconnesus, on the Sea of Marmara. At the same time, he was seen alive and well at Cyzicus, four hours away by boat, on the mainland. When the news reaches his town, his body – already prepared for burial – is found to have disappeared. 

 In book IV of  the Histories, Herodotus reported of "the birthplace of Aristeas, the poet who sung of these things", 

I will now relate a tale which I heard concerning him both at Proconnesus and at Cyzicus. Aristeas, they said, who belonged to one of the noblest families in the island, had entered one day into a fuller's shop, when he suddenly dropped down dead. Hereupon the fuller shut up his shop, and went to tell Aristeas' kindred what had happened. The report of the death had just spread through the town, when a certain Cyzicenian, lately arrived from Artaca, contradicted the rumor, affirming that he had met Aristeas on his road to Cyzicus, and had spoken with him. This man, therefore, strenuously denied the rumor; the relations, however, proceeded to the fuller's shop with all things necessary for the funeral, intending to carry the body away. But on the shop being opened, no Aristeas was found, either dead or alive. Seven years afterwards he reappeared, they told me, in Proconnesus, and wrote the poem called by the Greeks The Arimaspeia, after which he disappeared a second time. This is the tale current in the two cities above-mentioned. [trans. George Rawlinson]

Two centuries after his death, Aristeas appeared in Metapontum in southern Italy. He commanded that a statue of himself be set up and a new altar dedicated to Apollo, declaring that since his death he had been travelling with Apollo in the form of a sacred raven.

Other details from the dream remain obscure or mysterious. Mantis is a familiar word. In Greek, a mantis is "one who divines, a seer, prophet,"(from mainesthai "be inspired," related to menos "passion, spirit"). But does this correspond to a site in Egypt? Seventeen years after I journaled my report, I have not found confirmation of the meaning of "drostic" (not drastic) that was given in the dream. 

Illustration: "From the Mouth of Aristeas" by Robert Moss

Raven Eye

 

In myth and legend, the raven is many things: trickster and creator, messenger and seer, personification of ravening greed, harbinger of death, companion or form of the Goddess. Here I want to speak about raven as an oracle bird, one that can lend us his or her sight. 

Odin sees far with the help of twin ravens, named Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. They fly all over this Middle World, returning with information. In the Prose Edda, Odin is called "raven god" because of his close association with these birds. 

The raven has an equal role in the legends of Celtic seership. The raven is also the seeing-bird of Apollo, the owner of the most famous oracle of the ancient world, at Delphi. In the Greek story the raven was white until it brought the god the news of the infidelity of his mate Coronis (the Crow-Woman); his fury blasted it until it was black. 

In dreams and journeys over many years, I have found the raven an impeccable ally when there is a need to see into dark places or see into the future. It has served as an ally in shamanic healing, plucking out the cells of disease. When I look into the raven's eye, I see a screen like a television monitor on which images of things I need to know appear; sometimes I can also travel through the screen, to explore a scene beyond it. 

In seership trainings in my Active Dreaming workshops, I suggest to participants - after they have done some foundation work - that they can borrow the keen sight of twin ravens named Thought and Memory to go scouting the possible future. They don't have to rely on their own intuition or intelligence; they are to let the birds do the work. The quality of the information gathered by raven trackers in these exercises is often remarkable, even when the scouts have had no prior experience of doing anything remotely like this. 

Despite their literary reputation, ravens aren't solitary birds, unless forced to be; they mate for life.  

Here's a poem I wrote to honor some of Raven's gifts:

 

Sun Stealer  

They say you stole the sun. 
This is inexact. 
You hid the light in darkness 
where the light-killers could not find it 
so the sun could shine brighter than before. 

They say you are black
because you are evil and unkind.
They do not say you swallowed
your own shadow and mastered it
at the price of wearing its colors.

Shivering, they call you death-knell,
Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee
because you feed on death that feeds on men.
You strip what rots from what remains. 
You give us the purity of the bones. 

Trickster, they call you. 
Oh yes, you'll do your wickedest
to ensure our way is never routine 
and we are forced to improvise and transform. 
You won't let us swap our souls for a plan. 

At least they don't accuse you of minor crimes.
I praise and claim your gifts 
of putting on darkness to come and go safely 
in the darkest places, jesting with Death.

Illustration: "Two Ravens" by Robert Moss

Le Hêtre: Beech Gate

 

The roots of the beech are living serpents
There is a green woman in the tree gate
her eyes are the green fire of growing things
The winged deer stamps its hooves
impatient for me to go in or go up.
High in the branches, close to the crown,
the raven couple wait for me
but for now my way is down
into the painted cave, past the see stone
where a ruined king came to call me.

For time I do not count I am among the long
luminous elegant people who raised me
when I was away from my body as a boy.
But I will not spend another life with them,
not yet. I feel my way down, ever down
to the shallows of blind fish
where grains of sand sparkle like jewels.

I choose the grain that glows like cinnabar
and it becomes a universe. I see now
how the infinitely large is contained
in the infinitely small, how the high branches
of the world tree in one universe
are the roots of the tree of life in another.

Drawing: "Beech Gate" (c) Robert Moss

 

 

 

In Praise of Raven

 

Sun Stealer

 

They say you stole the sun.

This is inexact.

You hid the light in darkness

Where the light-killers could not find it

So the sun could shine brighter than before.

 

They say you are black

Because you are evil and unkind.

They do not say you swallowed

Your own shadow and mastered it

At the price of wearing its color.

 

Shivering, they call you death-knell,

Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee

Because you feed on death that feeds on men.

You strip what rots from what remains.

You give us the purity of the bones.

 

Trickster, they call you.

Oh yes, you’ll do your wickedest

To ensure our way is never routine

And we are forced to improvise and transform.

You won’t let us swap our souls for a plan.

 

At least they don’t accuse you

Of minor crimes.

I praise and claim your gifts

Of putting on darkness to come and go safely

In the darkest places, and joking with Death.

- from Here, Everything Is Dreaming: Poems and Stories by Robert Moss. Published by Excelsior Editions

Photo: Raven Talking Stick from Pacific Northwest

RAVEN EYE: Sun Stealer

 

RAVEN EYE: Sun Stealer

They say you stole the sun.
This is inexact.
You hid the light in darkness
where the light-killers could not find it
so the sun could shine brighter than before.


They say you are black
because you are evil and unkind.
They do not say you swallowed
your own shadow and mastered it
at the price of wearing its colors.


Shivering, they call you death-knell,
Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee
because you feed on death that feeds on men.
You strip what rots from what remains.
You give us the purity of the bones.


Trickster, they call you.
Oh yes, you'll do your wickedest
to ensure our way is never routine
and we are forced to improvise and transform.
You won't let us swap our souls for a plan.


At least they don't accuse you
of minor crimes.
I praise and claim your gifts
of putting on darkness to come and go safely
in the darkest places, joking with Death.


COMMENT: The kindness of ravens. Our collective noun for a group of crows is "murder". The word for a group of ravens is even crueler; those who know it speak of an "unkindness" of ravens. Yet I have found the raven to be an impeccable ally in seeing into dark places, and in training frequent flyers in the arts of the dream seer, I often call in the ravenous eye. Be it noted that in working with Raven this way, it is vastly desirable to call in a pair, as Odin knew when he sent off his twin ravens, Thought and Memory, to scout for him. I wrote this poem for Raven at the end of a marvelous adventure in group shamanic journeying, when many of us were able to see true with the help of raven eyes.

Drawing by RM. Acknowledgments to Bernd Heinrich who showed me how to depict a raven fluffing out its feathers in a display in his marvelous book Ravens in Winter.

This tribute to Raven is included in my collection of poems and stories, Here, Everything Is Dreaming, published by Exclesior Editions, an imprint of State University of New York Press.

Your dreams give you myths to live by

I sense the iron inside my body, and I know that it is the dust of an exploding star. The iron in my body connects me with the supernova that created my galaxy, and as I move and stretch I feel the whole cosmology is alive in me. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe is leaving us. I see her starting to rise up off the sun-parched earth where her children in Mexico have been savagely abused. I am saddened to think that the cruelty and ignorance of humans may be losing us the support of higher powers.

I go to my special place in nature, by the white pines along the creek. For the first time ever,I find no solace here. I feel separate from nature, after separating myself from the hurry of people at the office. I try to imagine myself going deep inside the earth and finding refuge there, but today I can't manage that either. What has happened to divorce me from nature? Is it me, or is it all of us?

I am at a train station. I encounter an old woman with her daughter. Their heads are those of ravens. The old woman turns to me and her feathers turn white. The white-capped Raven Woman says to me, "Things are all happening too fast in your world. It's time to lift off. We'll come back at the right time." With this, she flutters up into the air. I realize that from her perspective it's possible to see far across time and space, beyond our present confusion.

I come to a living tree, There is the living face of a woman in the bark of the tree. The tendrils of her hair are like the serpents of Medusa. Now a great bull comes, stamping and snorting, magnificent and scary in his virile strength. As he stamps down, his hooves take root in the earth and little by little, he becomes part of the tree. I am amazed that the bull energy can be rooted and grounded like this. I want to plant this strength around me, in my life.

I am on the track of a part of myself that has been long buried in the ground. I feel the presence of a being that loves me, holding me by the shoulders, gently supporting me. The name of the woman that has been buried sounds like Michelle but is actually My-Shell, the part of me that had to hide and make itself small. I will dig as long and deep as it takes to bring her back to me.

These are summaries, in exact sequence, of dreams and visions that were shared one evening by members of an active dreaming circle that I lead in my home neighborhood. Not only does each report have mythic power; it is possible to read the whole sequence as a single mythic narrative.
     It starts (where else?) with the creation of our world. It dramatizes the perennial danger of the Dark Times that come when human behavior forfeits the support of higher powers and estranges us from the Earth. It introduces uncanny guides and living symbols: the woman who becomes White Raven, the bull (primal power of the ancients, consort of the goddess and preferred form of the gods) who becomes a tree. It brings the story home to us in the invitation to a personal quest for soul recovery, to bring out of the Earth what has been kept safe there through a time of trouble and trauma.

    Australian Aborigines say that the Big stories are hunting the right people to tell them, like predators stalking in the bush. The trick is to put ourselves in a place where the Big stories can find us. We see from the reports I have quoted above that our dreams provide that place, if we show up and remember.

Image by French artist and dream teacher Véronique Barek-Deligny 

Raven at the Gate between Worlds

Raven sits in the doorway between the worlds.
He is black on my side,  white on the other.
Raven says, You have more power than you know.
You don't have to go on repeating yourself forever.

Once you remember that you've had this illness before
and gone through its whole progression
you can choose to release it from your present body
into a parallel world. It is the same with any scenario.

Once you recollect that you came this way
and suffered this consequence on your present road
or the roads of dreaming you can move the chain
to another of the many worlds. There may be a price.

To keep the boy from drowning in the deep blue pool
you may need to pay my counterpart in the coin
of the country, in rum and tobacco, or a black goat.
Talk nicely to your gatekeepers. Show some manners.

Don't forget that when you send off disease or disaster
to a parallel world you can stir a parallel self
out of sleep. If he wakes up and remembers you
he may decide to return your gift, with interest.


drawing (c) Robert Moss

Visiting the animal doctor

Utrecht, Netherlands

"Let's go to the animal doctor," I proposed to the wonderful circle of dreamers who joined me for an adventure in Active Dreaming in a space that opened onto the towpath along the Oudegracht, the old canal that runs through the heart of Utrecht. There was a stir of lively interest.
   The directions that I gave for our group shamanic journey were very simple.
   "Go to your special tree," I instructed our dreamers, as they let their bodies relax and their eyes close. "Among the roots you will find a door. It will open into the consulting rooms of an animal doctor. The animal may be quite familiar to you. It could be an animal you don't know so well. Maybe one of your animal helpers will introduce you to a second animal who is a specialist in an area where you need some help.
   "You will receive an exact diagnosis on your current condition - on your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. You will be shown what you need to stay well or get well. Better than this, you may be given immediate help and healing because when it comes to doctoring, the animal physicians don't waste any time."
    When I was satisfied that everyone was fully primed, I started drumming. The results were instant, and quite wonderful. Our dreamers visited their personal animal doctors, and brought back wonderful encounters of what they learned and received.
    One dreamer met a raven in a white doctor's coat who went to work on an infection, pecking out germs and bugs. When he withdrew his surgical beak, a host of "ran worms", as the Dutch call them (worms that appear in great numbers after rain) filled her body, and while this might have alarmed her, she knew they were completing the cleansing as they wriggled inside her. They finally exited her body, shooting out of her pores and every orifice as she had seen worms rising in the grass after rain. Then the raven doctor reappeared to claim his payment, gobbling up all the worms and with them whatever glop they had removed from her body.
    The bear was an animal doctor in great demand. He opened bodies, removed organs that needed cleansing and renewal, and replaced them in a soft bed of ferns or moss, sewing everything up.
    One of the animal doctors was a composite. She had elements of a cow, a giraffe and a hippo - all favorites from childhood - and radiant yellow eyes that projected light like lasers to remove something dark and fearful that one of our dreamers had located in her abdomen. This operation left the dreamer with superabundant energy and confidence.
    One of my favorite reports was from a dreamer who met a hedgehog in a doctor's coat. The hedgehog doctor showed him that his head was covered by cobwebs that had been preventing him from perceiving and dreaming with clarity. The hedgehog stripped away the cobwebs, layer upon layer. He then called in three assistants who turned themselves into living scrubbing brushes and vigorously scoured away any residue, including cobwebby materials inside the dreamer's skull.
    I know I'll be guiding more visits to the animal doctors in my playshops. 

Art: "Moose Magician" (c) Alayna McKee

Sun Stealer

RAVEN EYE: Sun Stealer

They say you stole the sun.
This is inexact.
You hid the light in darkness
where the light-killers could not find it
so the sun could shine brighter than before.


They say you are black
because you are evil and unkind.
They do not say you swallowed
your own shadow and mastered it
at the price of wearing its colors.


Shivering, they call you death-knell,
Death-eater, bad omen, flying banshee
because you feed on death that feeds on men.
You strip what rots from what remains.
You give us the purity of the bones.


Trickster, they call you.
Oh yes, you'll do your wickedest
to ensure our way is never routine
and we are forced to improvise and transform.
You won't let us swap our souls for a plan.


At least they don't accuse you
of minor crimes.
I praise and claim your gifts
of putting on darkness to come and go safely
in the darkest places, joking with Death.


COMMENT: The kindness of ravens. Our collective noun for a group of crows is "murder". The word for a group of ravens is even crueler; those who know it speak of an "unkindness" of ravens. Yet I have found the raven to be an impeccable ally in seeing into dark places, and in training frequent flyers in the arts of the dream seer, I often call in the ravenous eye. Be it noted that in working with Raven this way, it is vastly desirable to call in a pair, as Odin knew when he sent off his twin ravens, Thought and Memory, to scout for him. I wrote this poem for Raven at the end of a marvelous adventure in group dreaming, when many of us were able to see true with the help of that raven eye. I am posting it today because of further excellent adventures in tracking with the help of the Two Ravens in my recent workshop in Frankfurt.

This tribute to Raven is included in my new collection of poems and stories, Here,

Everything Is Dreaming, published by Exclesior Editions, an imprint of State University of New York Press.







Raven shaman: drawing by Robert Moss

Frankfurt journal: Every angel is terrifying

Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany

I can't think of any financial district in the world that announces its dedication to money more flagrantly than in Frankfurt, where a huge neon Euro sign glows in front of the bank towers. One of the dreamers in my Frankfurt workshop shared a dream in which she watched from the roof of her seven-story apartment building, several kilometers a way, as the Deutsche Bank tower imploded and crumbled to dust, followed by all the high-rise towers of high finance around it. "I was safe and my building was untouched," she reported. "I felt my role was to be like a guardian angel and watch over people as they tried to cope with the collapse of their values and their normal structures." Speaking of those values, Frankfurt's downtown business district is cheek-to-cheek with its red light district. Maybe that's because they share the same moral codes.

Side by side on huge plasma screens in the lobby of the hotel where I am leading my workshop (the hotel that promises "Starry Dreams Every Time"): amazing images of (1) a dramatization of an inspection of Adolf Hitler's brain and (2) a documentary about the possible migration of extra-terrestrial life forms on ancient asteroids. Whoa. A nonordinary multidimensional history tutorial, running during the break in our group shamanic adventures in the multiverse.

No, that's not a smartphone. It's a shamanic headphone, one of the pair of ravens I helped members of my workshop for the Frankfurter Ring to invoke to help them track for each other, bringing back life guidance, glimpses of the future, and keys to healing. Odin, who was a shaman before he became a god, relied on a pair of ravens named Thought and Memory to bring him information, sending them out to travel wherever was required. Sometimes they flew so far that he became worried about their safe return. It is said that he was always more anxious to recover Memory than Thought. Another god who relied on ravens was Apollo; interesting that a god of light had black birds at home in dark places as his winged familiars. An ancient Hellenic shaman names Aristeas of Proconessus used to take flight from his mouth in the shape of a raven and was capable of showing up in two places, and two different times, in the same moment. I have dreamed of him too.

Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. That's what I wrote on a card I contributed to our Coincidence Deck in the game we played in the closing session. It's from Rilke, and I  translated this as "Every angel is terrifying." A more literal translation would be "terrible" in the sense in which C.S.Lewis wrote of Aslan: "he is terrible, but he is good". I took a little poetic license - and perhaps Rilke would approve - to make the point that on first contact non-Hallmark angels terrify, by driving us to wake up and step outside our comfort zone and the picket fences of daily ordinary mind.     The workshop member who drew my message from Rilke was originally from Turkey. She found it highly relevant to her intention, which was to find joy in her work and her current life. The deeper powers that are hunting us, seeking to help us recognize and life our life calling, require us to brave up. You'll find the rules of my Coincidence Card Game, and other games for getting life guidance through synchronicity, in my book The Three "Only" Things, published in German as Fingerzeige des Schicksals.

I took a German course as an undergraduate in order to read Rilke and Goethe in the original, but I was lazy about grammar, and regret that my spoken German is so limited. It may grow now that Active Dreaming is growing in Germany, and I have been invited back, and back. I did have the pleasure of learning how to offer my dreamer's wish in German, and of writing it on the flyleaf or title page of many copies of Traum-Heiler, the German edition of Dreaming the Soul Back Home.

 Mögen deine besten Träume Wirklichkeit werden!

"May your best dreams come true" (and may you remember them!)

When crow calls back

So what does this literary crow want me to write about?

How about this:

Crows are marvelous messengers. And like their larger cousin, the raven, they can be impeccable allies in shamanic lucid dreaming and tracking. We know this from legend and folklore.

In the Iroquois story of the real Hiawatha, a force is gathering to challenge the dark power of the tyrant-sorcerer, Tododaho. They need scouts to report on his defenses. The scouts who perform this task, unerringly, are Crow People, shamanic dreamers who take on the form of crows, fly to the tyrant's redoubt, and return to Hiawatha with accurate intelligence. I recount this story in full detail in my book Dreamways of the Iroquois.

Raven has an even larger history as a seer. Odin, who was a shaman before he became a god, works with two ravens, who are found perched on his shoulders when they are not out and about gathering information for him. Their names are Huninn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. When I teach the arts of seership, I often encourage members of my workshops to borrow the wings and the sharp sight of Thought and Memory as they go out on assignment - powered by shamanic drumming - to collect information for a partner. Sometimes the assignment involves traveling a certain distance into the future to scout out a possible future situation or event. Sometimes it requires opening a path for healing, or breaking the terror of a nightmare left unresolved.

We worked this way in my last Active Dreaming workshop in southern France. I noticed that there was an especially gifted shamanic tracker in the group named Anne, who came with a previous connection with the crows, and used it to deliver excellent results.

When we call on an ally, it sometimes calls back. Anne's friend, Jean-Alain, sent me these photos of some recent close encounters.