Imhotep and the Bears

 

Dreams can introduce us to areas of knowledge and open spiritual connections we might not otherwise know about. A woman in one of my courses received the name Imhotep in a dream. She knew it was Egyptian but knew nothing about Imhotep himself. She accepted the research assignment and discovered that in ancient Egypt, Imhotep, whose name means "comes in peace,” became associated with medicine and healing. In the late period, Cleopatra's time, the shrines of Imhotep were sites of dream incubation for healing in the style of the Asklepian temples of the Greco-Roman world. The dreamer’s curiosity deepened. Why was she dreaming of Imhotep? And what did an Egyptian god have to do with the other characters in her dream, in which she found herself in a happy family of black bears, gamboling with them and perfectly at home?
    Historically, Imhotep was famous as an architect. He is said to have designed the step pyramid of Djoser in the 27th century bce. It was only 2,200 years later that he started to be recognized as a physician. That probably came in because of people's dreams. Maybe they dreamed of a physician by that name. Imhotep was celebrated in Cleopatra's time as a physician whose sanctuaries were places where dreams healed.
    At Saqqara, on the west side of the Nile from the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, there was a temple of Imhotep where people went to dream or have their dreams interpreted by professionals. In Karnak, in a vanished temple of Imhotep, at one time there were no fewer than fifty priests responsible for dreamwork. There are records of a very knowledgeable dreamer whose name was Hor. He was actually a priest of Thoth and used to dream amongst the mummified ibis birds in the temple of Thoth. But when it came to reading an important but confusing dream, the priest of Thoth went to "a magician of Imhotep” to get a definitive reading.
   So a modern American woman dreams of an Egyptian deity and a family of black bears. She learns that Imhotep was at the center of a cult of dream healing at a time when ordinary people are gaining access to sites and practices once reserved for royalty and closed priesthoods. What’s with the bears? Their appearance in a dream of an ancient god was both thrilling and strangely familiar for me. In the first years when I was leading public dream workshops I often placed a statue of Asklepios on the altar at the center of the circle. These gatherings usually started with the group singing a song to call the Bear as healer and protector.
     During one of these workshops, as I circled the room, beating my drum to power a journey to a place of healing, I asked about the possible connection between the Bear – the great medicine animal of North America – and an Old World deity of dream healing. Suddenly I saw the energy form of the bear joining what had become the living statue of the god. The two fused and came together. I understood that one way of seeing this connection is that in the new world, the bear is the equivalent of what Asklepios and maybe Imhotep meant in the ancient world of the Greeks and the Egyptians. I think this perception would have delighted the ancient mind because the ancient mind was forever shuffling things together, making hybrid deities, melding different traditions, borrowing power and “breathing images” from many cultures.
    “You are a natural at this,” I told the woman who dreamed the name of an Egyptian god while dancing with bears.

Illustration: Just for fun! RM with NightCafé

 

 

Ankh at the heart

I am asked to find a symbol for the heart.

    It comes immediately. It is a standing ankh, silver-bright. Waters stream over and around it. I know that its gift is neverending life.
     I remember drinking healing waters from a vessel shaped like an ankh, and holding such a vessel to the lips of those in need of strength or healing.
     I remember an ancient baptism: an ibis-headed god of the Moon and of writing pours the waters of life over the chosen initiate.

     How often have I seen the ankh in the hands of deities, grasping it by the loop, giving meaning to the name the Romans gave it: crux ansata, the handled cross, the cross you can handle.
     The essence of male and female are wound together in its form. Here are the knot of Isis and the djed pillar of Osiris, the womb and the phallus or backbone of the bull.
     I remember other uses for this eternal symbol of life. Of looking through the loop, as through a viewfinder, into the world-behind-the-world.
     Gratefully, I say the old, old words.

I am life
I am love
I am truth

     From life to life, from world to world, there are forms that return.

Note: Egyptologists contiue to speculate whether the form of the ankh was chosen because of its resemblance to a certain phsyucal object. There was popular theory that ut might be modeled on a sandal strap. ings'. The ankh symbol has also been identified wth a girdle knot, a mirror, a double-axe, a penis sheath, and the thoracic vertebra of a bull. The rival comparisons are discussed in Andrew Gordon and Calvin. Schwabe, The Quick and the Dead: Biomedical Theory in Ancient Egypt (Leiden:Brill, 2004) pp.102-4. 

Dream Archaeology: Power of the Dog and Third Eye Wine

Two small examples of one mode of dream archaeology: following clues from a dream to an ancient culture and turning up evidence or documentation for something that was previously unknown or  incompletely known. First, an incident from this morning that may also be an example of dream precognition: 

May 8, 2022

Dream and Follow-Up

Power of the Dog in Dream Archaeology

I'm excited by essays and materials I find in what at first seems to be a big white-bound bound volume. They include maps and charts and line drawings on an archaeology theme: The Dog. I reflect on related sources I have available to go further on this theme in my own research and writing, including Barry Lopez's fine work "Of Wolves and Men".

Later I am out in the woods with a man who knows them well. He leads the way off the main path to the right. He says the wolves are out, moving clockwise. It seems to be his plan to meet them face to face. I notice he hasn't brought his rifle. I'm willing to trust that he knows what he's doing and that if we meet the wolves face to face it will be a sociable encounter.

WHERE DOG=GOD AND SOUL GUIDE

After recording these and several other scenes, I opened my email and found my daily pdf from an academic website, a paper on canine burials at Saqqara during the Graeco-Roman period by a team from Macquarie University in a collection published by the Czech Institute of Egyptology. [*] It describes the mass burial and mummification of dogs in ancient Egypt, 1,350 at this site alone, tens of thousands at Abydos.

The authors suggest that the primary reason for canine burial here was to provide an organic embodiment of Anubis in his role as psychopomp, guiding souls between this world and the afterlife. The dog buried beside or near humans becomes "an amuletic animal mummy... considered to be either an adequate replacement for, or a valuable complement to the Anubis amulet to ensure the continuing and unbroken assistance of Anubis for the deceased."

The article contains maps and charts and line drawings including the one shown here, of a 2nd century funerary stele from Terenouthis (Kom Abu Bellou), where the deceased is seen in the company of a dog and a falcon, aspects of Anubis and Horus.

So my dream of the archaeology of the dog seems to be a minor example of precognition or clairvoyance. The incoming email enabled me to fulfill part of my dream research assignment right away. I would probably not have made time to read that scholarly article without the dream; I have just a few other reading assignments. We'll see where the wolves are circling later on.

Here is a raw journal report from twenty years ago:

May 15, 2002

Dream

Egypt-Rome: Third Eye Wine

I am with a group traveling through ancient sites. We explore an Egyptian temple. Our female guide hurries the group past a chamber that intrigues me; it contains lovely blue-glazed pottery and a beautiful statue of a winged ba-soul. I tell the group, “This room is a chapel of the Ba.” The guide receives this with respect and acknowledgment. She tells us we will come out into one of the most beautiful vistas on earth.
    I expect to come out onto the Giza plateau. Instead, the scene above ground looks a lot like the Vatican City, outside St Peter’s. I swivel my head to the left, to look back at the huge temple we have just left. In the crowded street, there is some confusion as drivers and other tour guides push their vehicles through the throng. 
    I leave the group to stroll among vendors’ stalls and coffee shops. Three men in the market invite me to join them in a glass of wine. They may be Egyptian. They teach me to say “chess” in their language.
    I enter a dream within the dream. I learn that Egypt’s initiates used a “third eye wine” called Sem or Sekhem-Re. The wine was infused with blue water lilies. This helped to open the strong eye of vision, and to keep it open. 
    I am now able to look through an esoteric text titled “Initiates’ Vocabulary”. It explains key terms for soulcraft in ancient Egypt. There are terms here that are so far unknown to modern scholars.
    There is an obelisk in one of the scenes, perhaps in Rome.

Once again, dreams set us research assignments. Excited by the dream, I searched online and hit the books and discovered that in ancient Egypt, Sekhem-Ra was the name of a fine vintage wine. It took me many years until, researching a new course involving dreaming in ancient Egypt, I came upon reports from field archaeologists that confirmed what I learned in my dream, adding fascinating details of how the Egyptians classified wines and dedicated them to the fortunate dead - and may have infused some wines with blue water lilies.  The stele of Ipuy, a craftsman of Deir el-Medina near Luxor describes how he meets Hathor in a dream. This is apparently the first time a non-royal in ancient Egypt left a record of a dream encounter with a deity. The stele includes the picture of a wine jar capped by blue water lilies and a bunch of lettuce.

On the Egypt-Rome theme: I continue to research the fascinating syncretism between Egyptian and Graeco-Roman religion and practice, from the cult of Isis as described by Apuleius to the creation of hybrid deities like Serapis and Hermanubis. 

[*] Mary Hartley, Alanah Buck, Susanne Binder, "Canine Interments in the Teti Cemetery North at Saqqara during the Graeco-Roman period" in Miroslav Bárta, Filip Coppens and Jaromír Krejãí (eds) Abusir and Saqqara in the year 2010/1 (Prague: Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University, 2011) 17-29.

A dream is a place, and an awakening

Notes on the nature and meaning of dreams from ancient Egypt, where they did a lot of dreaming. 

       Welcome, o dream, the one of goodness,
       which is seen in the night and in the day.

-          - Invocation to Isis in the Chester Beatty Papyrus

A dream is an awakening

Two terms for dream are used in ancient Egypt. The more recent (qd) is translated as slumber. The older and more enduring term is rsw.t whose root means “awakening”. It is written in hieroglyphs with a determinative, at the end of the characters, that appears as wide open eye with makeup. It first appears in Letters to the Dead in the First Intermediate Period. It continues in Coptic. Kasia Szpakowska writes, “In Ancient Egyptian a dream can be considered something one sees upon awakening during sleep or is perhaps the very state of being aware, while asleep.” [ 1]

Awakening in a dream is like awakening after death. It is written of the resurrection of Osiris, “A tired god is waking up.” [2]

The Other World is inhabited by three categories of beings – gods, the dead and dreamers. The sleeper enters the primal ocean of Nun. When he awakens he is “over there”, in the other world, able to interact with its residents. [3] 

 

A dream is a place

Rsw.t is a noun, a substantive, not a verb. It is a space and a state. You see something in a dream. You meet the Goddess, make love, feast or fight in a dream. The most common way to report is to say “I saw a dream” or “I saw in a dream” or  “It came in a dream.” When you have that sense that a dream is a space, it is easy to grasp that if you have been in the space of a certain dream, you could go there again.

There is no verb for “to dream” in Sumerian or Akkadian either. 

The geography of dreams is related to geographies of the Duat, the “Over There”.  A dream is another world.

The “New Kingdom Dream Book”

 Chester Beatty Papyrus, 13^th c BCE

 It was written in hieratic – a cursive form of hieroglyphs - on the recto of a papyrus whose verso (the side with the horizontal fibers, always inscribed first) contained an account of a battle written in the 13^th c BCE.

 It is not clear whether it was written essentially for the dream ritualist – the Scribe of the House of Life (or sesh per ankh) – or for a more general audience. Some of the items warn against entering the inner sanctum of a temple, and are plainly aimed at non-priests. But others prescribe apotropaic rituals for turning away psychic evil from “bad dreams” and seem intended for specialists. As with so many Egyptian texts, this is probably a collation of many separate documents. It may have been consulted by priests advising those who slept in temples to obtain dream oracles and to see the gods and the dead. 

Reading dreams according to the type of dreamer: 

In the New Kingdom Dream Book, dreams are read very differently according to whether they are experienced by “Followers of Horus” or “Followers of Seth” (who are given to violent passion and ill-regulated lives) 

If a man sees himself…. 

The arrangement is orderly. Down the right margin are the words “If a man sees himself in a dream”. The papyrus is read from right to left.

Next comes a summary of a dream. Then the pronouncement – “good” or “bad”. Then the interpretation. 

If a man sees himself… 

       Drinking blood: Good. It means putting an end to his enemies                                 

       Copulating with a pig: Bad. It means being deprived of possessions

       Seeing his face as a leopard: Good. It means authority over his neighbors                                                             

       Copulating in daylight: Bad. His crimes will be seen by his god

       Capturing a female slave: Good. He will get satisfaction.

 

“If a man see himself in a dream eating donkey-flesh: good, it means his promotion”

“If a man see himself in a dream shod with white sandals: bad, it means roaming the earth.”

 

There are instructions on seeing or interacting with the gods and the dead. The worst dreams are those in which the dreamer is judged to be “unjustified” before his deity, or has provoked the wrath of the dead. Some are the best are those in which the dreamer is judged to be moving into closer proximity to friendly gods – as in a dream where the dreamer is climbing a mast, or looking through a window or across a river (into the realm beyond).

 

                Climbing up a mast.                        Good. He will be elevated by his god. 

                Gazing through a window.           Good. His call will be heard by his god. 

                Seeing a god who is above.          Good. It means a great meal.

            His mouth is broken open.              Good. Something that is terrifying in his                                                heart, god  will break it open 

            Writing on a papyrus scroll.            Bad. His crimes will be reckoned by his                                                  god.

            Enfolding wings round himself.       Bad. He is not justified before his god. 

 

It is clear, as in the older non-interpretive texts, that the dreamspace is shared by dreamers, the departed and the gods. 

Ritual for dispelling the energy of an evil dream

The “Horus” section in the New Kingdom Dream Book ends with a ritual to be used by a person who has experienced a dream portending evil. This involves (1) a cleansing action: the dreamer’s face is to be rubbed with fresh herbs moistened with beer and myrrh and with bread, to remove the contamination of the dream. And (2) an invocation of the goddess Isis, addressed as “Mother”; the dreamer tells his dream to the goddess, and the act of reporting is held to turn away the unwanted consequences. 

In the Gardiner translation, Isis says: “Come out with what you have seen, in order that the afflictions you saw in your dreams may vanish.” The ritual ends with a triumphal cry from the dreamer that he has dispelled an evil dream sent against him and is now ready to receive pleasant dreams. “Hail to thee, good dream that is seen by night or day!” [4]

The truthfulness of dreams

The truthfulness of dreams would be accepted and beyond doubt if those who interpret them did not make mistakes

 - Ammianus Marcellinus, soldier and historian, in his vast chronicle of the Roman empire, Res Gestae, written before 391. In it he describes the Serapeum of Egypt, where dream incubation was a popular practice, as one of the glories of the empire. The Serapeum was handed over to the Christians in 391. 

References

1. Kasia Szpakowska, "The Perception of Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt: Old Kingdom to Third Intermediate Period". PhD dissertation, UCLA, 2000. 25

2. Jan Zandee, Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions (New York: Arno Press, 1977) 11. 

3. Erik Hornung, "The Discovery of the Unconscious in Ancient Egypt" in Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology (1986) 18-19

4. A.H. Gardiner, Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. Third Series. Chester Beatty Papyrus. London: British Museum, 1935]

Images

Top: Fresco from the Temple of Isis at Pompei depicting a ritual at the sarcophagus of Osiris. 1st century CE.

Bottom: Egyptians priests performing purification ritual. 13th century BCE.

Hathor Gives Instructions for Traveling without Leaving Home

One of the gifts of dreaming is that we can travle without leaving home, a great benefit in shut-down times of pandemic.This is no secret for dream adventurers across history, who have understood that in dreams we make visits and receive visitations and can practice destination travel in dreaming in many ways. I have been looking again at a fascnating text from Egypt from 3300 years ago in which the goddess Hathor instructs a devotee on howhe can visit her sacred precint without stirring from the place where he is lying down. I'll give a translation or the text, with some commentary, after a few words about dreaming with Hathor in ancient Egypt.

Hathor was beloved of Egyptians, especially around her temple at Luxor (Thebes) towards the end of the 18th dynasty. It is from that time and place that we have retrieved the first non-royal accounts from ancient Egypt of direct interaction with the gods in dreams. Hathor, goddess of love, beauty and motherhood, also gave the promise of access to a happy afterlife in her embrace. She was associated with the cow, ripe and nurturing, and was depicted with a cow head or with cow ears.You did not want to meet her in her warrior mode, however, when she could become the take-no-prisoners Eye of Ra. Goddesses don't stay within a frame.

We have an inscription on a stela attributed to Ipuy, a master craftsmen who livd at Deir el-Media, honoring his direct vision of Hathor. This is the first recorded account of a non-royal meeting a deity in a dream in the vast history of ancient Egypt. It is a  very important landmark in the history of dreaming. Borrowing from the scholarly translations and commentaries, I have produced a fresh version of the key passages and given it the title:

 

Hathor placed joy in my heart

 

Give praise to Hathor who lives in Thebes
kiss the earth before her in all her forms…

On the day that I saw her beauty
my heart was spending the day at her festival
I beheld the Lady of Two Lands in a dream
and she placed joy in my heart
her food revived my energies…

The wonders of Hathor should be told
from generation to generation
the beauty of her face under the sky…
I am bathed and intoxicated by the vision of her
her father Amun shall hear all her petitions
when she rises in beauty
he crowned her with lapis lazuli  
and adorned her limbs with gold [1]

 

Ipuy describes a dream that seems to be something other than a sleep experience. His heart or mind (the hieroglyph jb can be translated either way) goes traveling, probably in the hypnagogic zone. Ipuy was a craftsman, possibly a sculptor, working with a construction crew on a royal tomb. 

While the inscription begins with generic praise of the goddess, its tone fast becomes intimate and personal, The goddess of beauty, love and motherhood places joy in his heart. He does not give us the details but we feel the stream of love and empowerment. She nurtures and nourishes him. 

Ipuy is not alone in his adoration of Hathor. We also have a stela inscribed for an overseer of the fields of the temple of Amun in his tomb in the village of Deir el-Medina, where Ipuy also resided. The name of the overseer is Djehutiemhab, which means "Jubilation of Tehuti" (a name for the god Thoth). 

Like Ipuy, the overseer was clearly dedicated to Hathor, who also gave the promise of access to a happy afterlife in her embrace. The stela he placed in the chapel of his tomb described how Hathor gave him specific instructions on how to visit the site without traveling there. The goddess’ own words are quoted, and we feel the force of the numinous. Here is part of the text. I have added a title.

 

See your place without traveling

A hymn of the golden one, Eye of Ra, 
who kisses the earth for her ka
A prayer to her beautiful face, applauding her every day...

 

He [Djehutiemhab] said:
“I have come before the Lady of the two Lands,
Hathor, Great of Love
Behold….your beautiful face
and I kissed the erth for your ka
I am a real priest of yours
and I am on the waters of your command.
I don’t cast aside the speech of your mouth
I don’t ignore your teacjings
I am upon the path which you yourself have given
upon the road which you have made.

How joyful it is when the one who enters your shadow
rests by your side!

 

[He now describes how she instructed him on how and where to construct his tomb chapel and blessed him with a full life]

You are the one who has spoken to me yourself
with your own mouth:

[Voice of Hathor]
“I am the beautiful Hely [a pet name of Hathor]
my shape being that of …mother
I have come in order to instruct you
See, your place – fill yourself with it,
without traveling north, without traveling south”

While I was in a dream
while the earth was in silence 
in the deep of the night

 

[He does what she says. Picturing himself in his tomb he concludes]

 

Place your face in order to let me bow down to it
Reward [me with] your beauty
that I may perceive your form within my tomb
in order to recount your power
in order to make young men know of it.[2]

 We notice that Djehutiemhab is in this dream “while the earth was in silence, in the deep of the night”. He is under the “shadow” of the goddess and “rests by her side”. Hathor instructs him in her own voice to travel to a place at a distance – or bring it go him -without moving his physical body. See, your place – fill yourself with it, without traveling north, without traveling south. Active dreamers can do that. Let's notice he is also rehearsing for the big journey that follows physical death. Never too late, or too early, to do that.

References

1.The text of the stela of Ipuy, dating from around 1300 bce, was first published by Helmut Satzinger with German translation: “Zwei Wiener Objekte mit bemerkenswerten Inschriften” in P. Posener-Krieger, ed., Mélanges Gamal Eddin Mokhtar (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, 1985) 249-54.

2. The text from the stela of Djehutiemhab was first published by Jan Assman, with German translation, in "Eine Traumoffenbarung der Göttin Hathor” Revue d'égyptologie 30, 1978, 22-50.I have drawn on the English version and commentary by Kasia Maria Szpakowska in "The perception of Dreams and Nightmares in Ancient Egypt", Ph.D diss., (University of California Los Angeles, 2000) 226-232

Image: Beautiful Hathor in the Louvre. Photo by RM

When you rest your head Egyptian style

Lying on my back with my head propped on a second pillow, it is not hard to imagine that my head is supported by the crescent of an ancient weres, an ancient Egyptian headrest. The crescent is supported by a pedestal so my head is raised the height of a couple of pillows above a bed that rests on lion legs. I can see the paws.
    Instantly a scene forms before me an around me, suffused by wonderful soft blue light. I am lying at the edge of a huge pool. The water is aquamarine and luminescent. The pool is contained inside the hall of a temple or palace.
    Very consciously and carefully, I step out of the body lying on the bed. I am naked, strong and buff.  Beautiful women attendants greet me. My first priority, however, is to bathe in the pool. I enter the water and swim laps. I return to my body refreshed. I notice, unlike dreams in which we seem to live the events of weeks or months in a few minutes of tick-tock time, it took me the same time to swim lengths of the dream pool as it would have done in the physical world.

I wonder now whether the Egyptian headrest was designed with the aim of facilitating lucid dreaming, a certain mobility of consciousness between the worlds. Headrests of this kind are still in use in hot countries in African where they may serve to cool the user by lifting the head so that air can circulate freely underneath. In elite Egyptian houses, the headrest may also have served to protect elaborate ladies’ hairdos.
     A little research informs me that the Egyptian headrest was sometimes loaded with figures and designs– a carving of the dwarf warrior god Bes, or of the hippo-crocodile demigoddess Taweret, lion statuettes – as apotropaic defenses, to keep ghouls and ghosties away.
     Is it also possible that the headrest was meant to help facilitate awakening into a dream, including the dream of the afterlife? There are hints in some of the funerary texts. Headrests were buried with the dead and spells were assigned to them. Some of the spells in Coffin Texts, designed to help the deceased make a successful passage into the afterlife, make explicit reference to the headrest and compare it with the sun’s rising in the horizon. Coffin Text 232 reads: “A spell for the headrest. May your head be raised, may your brow be made to live, may you speak for your own body, may you be a god, may you always be a god” (R. O. Faulkner translation).
     In the famous Egyptian Book of the Dead spell 166 states is announced as a “spell for a headrest (to be put under the head of Osiris N.). Doves awake thee from sleep; they alert thee to the horizon. Raise thyself, [for] thou dost triumph over what was done against thee. Ptah has overthrown thy enemies. It has been commanded to act against him who acted against thee. Thou art Horus the son of Hathor, the [fiery] Cobra [of] the [fiery] Cobra group, to whom a head was given after it was cut off. Thy head cannot be taken from thee hereafter; thy head can never be taken from [thee].” (T. G. Allen translation).

     The hieroglyph for wrs (headrest) resembles the hieroglyph ws (awaken) and they may both be related to rswt (dream).

Hieroglyph for wrs, headrest

Winged soul in the sky

I have been a speaker at a conference attended by a group of dealers in art and antique jewelry. I was impressed by the beauty of jeweled belts that two of them have in their stock; they tell me the best of these come from Jordan.

    Now I am outside. The world around me is shimmering. I marvel as the landscape becomes a field of crimson, streaming like silk. High above, to the left, I see a golden winged figure. Is it a golden bee, or a hummingbird?
    Ba.
    Clear as a bell, the one syllable is spoken in a beautiful feminine voice.
    I remember Egypt, and how the ba soul, seen as a human-headed bird, takes flight from the heart. The gods of Egypt, the neteru, have ba souls too. The sun-god Ra, as I recall, has seven and they take many forms. The benu bird the Greeks called the phoenix is a ba of Ra.
    I rise before the sun, thinking of the sun god, because of that vibrant field of red, and that glorious golden winged soul.

I found this dream report dated March 31, 2012, when I opened an old journal at random today. It is one of hundreds of dreams of ancient Egypt and its mindset - l'imaginaire égyptien  - that I have recorded from as far back as I can remember. In dreams, the ancestors are calling, calling. Ancestors of our bloodlines, and of the lands where we live or travel, and of traditions to which we are connected across space and times. Our dreams will show us where we need to clear ancestral karma, and where we can claim an empowering connection with the wise ones. Go deep enough in dreaming and you will understand that outside liner time - to which dreamers are not confined - all these connections are playing right now.

Image: Gold and enamel ba figurine from Ptolemaic Egypt, sold at auction at Christie's on April 26, 2012. 

Feeling Blue

I am in love with the whole spectrum of blue. Even the names excite me: aquamarine, azure, chicory, cobalt, cornflower, cyan, Egyptian blue, electric blue, French blue, hyacinth, ice blue, indigo, midnight blue, ocean blue, royal blue, sapphire, sky blue, teal, ultramarine. Colors of sea and sky, of blue fire and lightning, of great blue morphos winging through rainforest, of memory, of saudade, of Touaregs in flaring blue robes against hot desert sands, of home among the stars.

    Our lives are dyed in the colors of our imaginations, said the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius. Mine is deeply dyed in blue, running into violets and turquoise, purple and malachite. The marriage of blue and green delights and excites me.
    One of my favorite scenes from nature is of bluebells popping up through lush green grass under ancient beeches in a forest in England.

    I keep an azurite crystal in my line of sight and it has sometimes opened and focused my inner sight. I pick it up now and it becomes my spyglass. It shows me a boy standing in the water of a blue lagoon up to his knees.

    My mind is streaming blue memories:

A dusting of blue woad on the breast of a woman warrior who leaped from the pages of a Geoffrey Treece novel to excite me when I was not yet twelve

The heron blue walls of the chamber of an Egyptian king’s star-copahgus, ready for the return journey to a blue star

The blue lake of healing, above mountain mists, where animal doctors bring humans who are judged worthy

The electric blue fire that is the gate to the School of Soul and the Greater Self

A being with the wings of a giant blue morpho butterfly who showed me how people lose their dream souls and how to bring them home.

The journey to the Blue Lake of Healing is described in Dreamways of the Iroquois. The blue morpho being appears in "Dreamtakers" in my new book Mysterious Realities.

Life rhymes, and it hisses

Ann Arbor, Michigan

On Sunday morning, in the midst of leading a workshop titled "Dreaming Like an Egyptian" in Ann Arbor, I stopped for breakfast at a Whole Foods store. As I munched my mini-baguette - my favorite breakfast - I talked to my coordinator and a couple of wonderful dreamers who were attending the workshop about the significance of snakes in the Egyptian maps of the Otherworld. Snakes appear all over - as adversaries, as protectors, or simply as guardians whose function is to make us brave up and prove we are ready to progress to the really good stuff.
    When Ra journeys on his solar boat, accompanied by Creative Utterance (Hu), Insight (Sia) and Magic (Heka) he is shielded and enclosed by the Mehen serpent, whose name means the Enveloper. He is opposed by the cosmic adversary, Apophis, also depicted as a serpent, of the world-devouring kind.
    The Egyptians symbolized awakened psychospiritual power with the wadjet, or uraeus serpent, the cobra that features on the crowns of pharaohs. The raised head evokes the opened third eye of vision and the ability to operate from this center.
    Wadjet is also a snake goddess, patron of Lower Egypt, protector of kings and of Horus, closely allied - in evolving mythology - with both the cat goddess Bast and the vulture goddess Nekhtet. Her name means "papyrus-colored".
     We spoke of our own associations with snakes, and the many different ways they can figure in dreams. We talked of the snake's power to shed its skin, and of the importance of the serpent as a symbol for the vital energy of life, the kundalini force, and in medicine and healing.
     After half an hour of this lively, serpentine conversation, it was time to move on to open day two of the workshop. I reflected on how, in our opening session, we had called the serpent energy up through the soles of the feet, through the energy centers of the body, to open the third eye. I had invited our adventurers to do the full Egyptian by picturing the wadjet cobra at the vision center, and then rising from there to fly above the landscape like a bird.
     In the parking lot, right in front of us, we discovered a sleek, powerful convertible painted Egyptian blue. On the front was a silver cobra. On a side panel was a larger cobra that seemed to quiver, ready to strike, against the mirror-bright surface of the car. I walked round the back and found the cobra again, in a crest, and the make of the car. I was looking at a Shelby GT 500. Later research tells me that this is a high performance version of the Ford Mustang, retail price around $55,000, advertising slogan: Coiled and ready to strike.
    Life rhymes, and it hisses.

Synchronicity continued to snake through my Ann Arbor weekend.
    In the last exercise on Sunday morning, I led the group on a deep journey into the afterlife with the dual intention of having timely and helpful communication with someone on the Other Side - a departed loved one, an ancestor, a guide to these realms - and of learning about conditions and transitions of the soul after death. We used an Egyptian gate for the journey, boarding a boat for the crossing. We invoked strong guidance and protection. Each traveler was coached to name herself in the presence of the gatekeepers and to give a clear statement of intention.
    The journey was deep and powerful. One of our dreamers was moved by an immediate encounter with her grandmother, Mildred, who guided her to others. One episode in the journey had shaken the dreamer. She met a version of herself who had died in a parallel reality, years before.
     We talked about her experiences as we crossed the courtyard in front of the Michigan League, past the Triton fountain, under the big clock tower, on the way to lunch.
     We stopped to inspect an extraordinary monster drawn in chalk, with artistry and care, on the paving slabs. The inscription read: Mildred, are you sure this haunted house was rated wholesome family fun?     
      It hardly seemed possible that an unknown chalk artist had left a strange message addressed to "Mildred" and involving the dead for us to find right after our dreamer had met her dead grandmother Mildred.
     The story got even better. After lunch, I learned that another workshop participant had talked to the chalk artist when he was creating his picture and message the previous evening. He told her he was inspired by dreams of his deceased mother Mildred turning into various strange beasts.
     When synchronicity strikes, the universe gets personal, and you know it.

photos (c) Robert Moss
  
     

Egyptian bird in the sky

I am driving in the countryside with my friend Wanda, a world-class dreamer who was for 30 years the curator of Sir William Johnson's last home in the Mohawk valley.

She is trying to describe patterns she sees in the sky - perhaps in the play of lightning. I am not content with her descriptions. She switches similes and tells me that one of the sky patterns resembles the movements of a graceful young Thai woman.

Suddenly I see one of these patterns for myself, filling the sky above the treeline in the other direction. Etched by lightning against a dark sepia backdrop, I see a bird-figure from an Egyptian hieroglyph, either falcon or owl. The shape of the head is indistinct, but I sense this is the owl, perhaps the eagle-owl.

I rose from this dream outing during an evening nap just now, to find a lengthy email letter from another friend speculating about my possible connections - within a multidimensional family of selves - to ancient Egyptian initiates who were trained in the art of "far memory", and specifically with Sir William Johnson, the central figure in two historical novels I felt compelled to write after moving to a home in what was his neighborhood (in the 18th century) and dreaming into his life. I was not entirely happy with her descriptions of how these things work, and realized I need to write more about the workings of far memory and the relations between personalities living in different times and a central Self or Oversoul.

And my mind slips a way (the break in the word was unintended, but I'll leave it; "away" can be "a way")...to another scene, and a this-life connection with the eagle owl, the Old World cousin of the North American great horned owl.

I am in Prague, which I visited two years ago. The city is lovely, but the crowds of tourists are exhausting. I take refuge from the crowds in a quiet shady garden next to the Hradčany castle and give myself over to reflections on our connections with other personalities across time, how these "past lives" or "other lives" open to us in dreams and how far memory can be triggered by travel to a certain place, or handling a certain object, or an encounter with someone you are certain you know very well, in a different world.

"Have you met Arthur?" It's a woman's voice that interrupts my musings. I turn to find an eagle-owl on the gloved wrist of a beautiful young falconer. She explains that her vocation is to help rescue injured raptors, and walks me with Arthur into a preserve where there are other birds, including a tiny merlin falcon.

Egypt, Johnson, the eagle-owl. Echoes of Arthur and Merlin. You have other centuries to play with, as Seth reminded us. In dreams of the night and dreams of the day, we meet and interact with our reincarnational selves. It is vital to remember (as Seth also instructed) that these are also simultaneous selves, in the play of the multiverse.

The scribe as ruler

New York City

If you have any doubt about the importance of writing in early civilizations, go see the special exhibit titled "Haremheb, The General Who Became King". Horemheb (to give the transcription of his name a more familiar form) has long fascinated me. He was a fighting general, especially skiled in chariot warfare, and as commander of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun's army, he led successful campaigns to defend Egypt's borders. When he took the throne as the last pharaoh of the XVIII dynasty (he ruled from a 1316-1302 BC) he instituted laws that secured the rights of civilians and curbed abuses perpetrated by powerful groups, including the army. He also restored the cult of the old gods that were briefly supplanted by Akhenaton's experiment with monotheism.


In the exhibit at the Met, we meet Horemheb as scribe and agent for Thoth, the god of writing and wisdom. The granite statue at the center of the displays shows Horemheb before he became king. While his face is beautiful and finely chiseled, his body is that of a man grown flabby and stooped through long hours of study. In his lap is a papyrus on which he has written a magnificent prayer to Thoth.



There are many other images of Thoth and his sacred animals, the ibis and the baboon, in the Horemheb exhibit. Excited by these testimonies to the place of Thoth and his magic words in the Egyptian mind, I noticed an extraordinary carving in another room, devoted to Egyptian art from late antiquity, on my way out of the Met. It shows Thoth baptising a pharaoh (who by this time was a Roman emperor) by pouring the water of life, streaming as a series of ankhs from what looks like a scribe's stylus-case.