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

 

 

Everyday Dream Archaeology: Imhotep and the Bears

 

Dreams can introduce us to cultures and 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 before he became a god. 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 dream rituals and interpretation. 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. [1]

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 workshops in Active Dreaming, I often placed a statue of Asclepius 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. In my vision I saw that in the New World, the Medicine Bear is a counterpart for 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. She said that when she needed help in healing, she now knew just who to call. 

1. One one ostrakon, Hor, a native Egyptian, left this invocation: I call upon thee  in heaven, in earth, Imhotep…come for a dream, come forth." O.Hor 18, verso, 1–3, 18 trans. J.D. Ray inThe Archive of Hor: Excavations at North Saqqara (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1976), 2 vols.

 

 

The lost books of the ancient Balts

I have been thinking about how we recover vital history that may have been suppressed or simply lost. I lead adventures in dream archaeology in which we combine shamanic journeying, dream clues, and careful scholarship to find missing bones and make them live. The great Lithuanian artist and book illustrator Arvydas Každailis did this for ancient Baltic peoples, including the original Prussians, and their deities with his etchings.Here I recall my visit to his home in Vilnius, where we shared our dreams.

Vilnius, Lithuania, March 2010

Winter still has the Baltic in its grip, and my head is lowered against wind and snow flurries as I navigate the icy sidewalks of the Old Town in search of the small street where Arvydas Každailis has his studio. Two unlit courtyards and five flights of mostly darkened stairs bring me to the cheerful room at the top, crowded with the artist's work, the tools of his etching craft, and ancient statues and artifacts. 

     The artist welcomes me with tea and local brandy, his eyes glinting merrily behind half-moon glasses. Nearing 70, the artist looks like a master craftsman of another era in his suspenders, cardigan and tie. "I know Russian well," he tells me as he accepts a copy of the new Russian edition of Conscious Dreaming. "Thanks to the Soviets who forced me to make guns." Prior to 1990, when Lithuania was the first of the captive republics of the USSR to claim independence, Lithuanian boys were drafted into the Red Army.-

     Leafing through Conscious Dreaming, Každailis recalls dreams that made him grab the pencil and paper he kept by his bed and start drawing immediately on waking. He shows me reproductions of a couple of works from 1967 that were directly dream-inspired. "Old House" shows a multi-layered interior dreamscape of improbable angles and strange corridors; you sense that a deliciously creepy encounter might take place along any one of them. "Beast" is an inchoate, nightmare animal.

     I have come to talk to Každailis to talk of collective dreams of the Baltic peoples, those that were crushed or interrupted by a brutal history that he has been helping, through the power of his artistic vision, to requicken. Walk in some of Lithuania's depleted forests and you will come upon whole groves of horrible carved figures with evil, twisted features that purport to be gods and nature spirits and raganas (witches). These may be products of the deformation of the imagination by those in the Church or the Communist Party who tried to demonize or dismiss the spiritual world of Old Europe. Certainly, they are unlikely to represent the imaginal truths of the old ways.-

    By contrast, Každailis gives us images of the old Baltic tribes and their gods and rituals that look like pages from the lost books of these peoples. He gives us Žemyna , the great Earth goddess of Lithuania, as an immense mothering figure who holds a whole communal banquet within her embrace. He gives us a stag whose great antlers, feathered by birds, form a nine-branched candelabra rising to draw down the light of Heaven. He gives us the goddess Medeina as a warrior armed with a bow and a giant bear at her back. He gives us ducks that fly as messengers between humans and the Upper World.

    In his illustrations for Peter of Dusburg's Chronicles of Prussia, Kazdailis offers a vision of the vanquished as a vital corrective to this medieval apologia for the destruction of the Prussians and neighboring tribes by the Teutonic Knights. The Prussians were a proud Baltic tribe before their name, as well as their land, was stolen by the Germans. Každailis shows simple village festivals, harvests and weddings, and ancient priest-kings and warrior chiefs in days of thunder. Here is Diwans, nicknamed "Lokys" (Big Bear), the fighting chief of the Barta (a Baltic people whose very name has all but disappeared) with helmet and mace; and here he is as a desperate standing bear with an arrow through his neck.
    Here is Kriveis Krivaitis, a priest whose power was as great among Balts (said John of Duisberg) as that of a pope, gripping dual symbols of temporal and spiritual power as he passes judgment on a criminal who has violated the laws of gods and men. No cute stuff here; the convicted prisoner, trussed in ropes along the whole length of his body, will be buried alive in a deep hole. Down inside the Earth, we see the image of a beast of evil confined in a cage of ropes whose patterns suggest interweaving Mobius rings.-

    The artist and I talk of callings - how dreams and synchronicity can call a creative mind to a path of connections with traditions that were previously lost or unknown. Kazdailis recalls that when he was three and four, he spoke a coherent language that no one could recognize or interpret, though he was completely at home within it. Songs in the old Prussian language, revived by a friend of Každailis who has taken the name of the ancient priest, Kriveis Krivaitis, gust through the studio, evoking the blossoming gifts of Earth and the hammer of thunder around the oak of Perkunas, who speaks in storm and lightning.

Graphic:  Arvydas Každailis, "Perkūne, dievaiti" (Perkunas God of Thunder), etching to illustrate Prūsijos žemės kronika  (Lithuanian edition of the Chronicon terrae Prussiae) 2003.

Great Mother Bear

 

You feel her under your feet.
You enter her realm through the roots
of the tree that knows you.
She is endlessly nurturing, fertile and abundant.
She will nurse you and heal you as she cares for her cubs.
You can call on her blessing at any time,
once you have found the courage to enter her embrace.

She calms the mad warrior in men.
She strips the berserkers of old skins.
Serve her, and you join the army of the Great Mother
whose purpose is to protect, not destroy.
She will defend you, even from yourself. 

When you call back your lost children,
she will hold you together in her vast embrace
until you are one, and whole.
When you reach across the jagged rifts in your family
to forgive and make well, you feel her rolling pleasure.

Poem and drawing ("In the Grip of the Bear Goddess") by Robert Moss

 

 

Know the myth you are living

 

We all conceal
A god within us, we all deal
With heaven direct, from whose high places we derive
The inspiration by which we live. 

-          Ovid, Ars Amatoria III, 549–550 (trans. James Michie)

 

As some people use the word, myth is synonymous with fake news, or superstition, or outmoded hand-me down beliefs. A myth may be a prevailing worldview – that the earth is flat or the still center of the turning universe, that humanity begins with Adam and Eve, that the world is enthralled by a dark Demiurge. For the Greeks, mythos was the spirit of the play, familiar to the audience yet as unpredictable as the gods in how it would unfold in a fresh drama.

A myth may be a sacred teaching story that explains how the world came into being – and what is beyond it – and why bad things, as well as good, things happen, and what it means to be human. A myth may justify the ways of gods to humans, or those of humans before their Creator. A myth may introduce you, like the major arcana of tarot, to essential members of your archetypal family: to personified forces at play in your life and your universe.

A myth may invite you to consider who among the gods defends you, and who has it in for you. A myth may also be a living reality beyond the realm of facts, a source of truth that cannot be confirmed in a laboratory experiment but may be evidenced by the data of raw experience.

Your dreams can be a nightly screening of gods and archetypes. A dream may be your place of encounter with a Big story that is looking for you. It may call you to a tradition about which you previously knew nothing ."In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his primary, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream," as Joseph Campbell wrote in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Psychologist Betsy Meador was called to study Inanna and her priestess after a dream that involved the prayer flags of the great Sumerian goddess, Queen of Heaven and Earth, that were previously unknown to her.

I was seized by Kali in a terrifying night vision – beginning with sleep paralysis – when I was fourteen. I wrote a cycle of poems in her honor. Later her brother-consort Kala, better known as Yama, became one of my principal mentors, reminding me to consider every life choice in the presence of Death. A little-known Celtic deity came into my ken in a series of dreams in which I was defending my property with a long-handled hammer, like a weaponized croquet mallet. Some shelf elf produced a Gallo-Roman statue of a god with a similar hammer, named in the inscription as Sucellos, which means the Good Striker. He seems to share some qualities with Thor. He is also the consort of a great goddess of abundance, called Rosmerta by the Gauls and Abundantia by the Romans.

We confirm our relationship with a patron deity, or power animal, when it comes to our aid. Athena came to me like this in Anatolia and loaned me her owl eyes. The Bear has come to me like this many times since it claimed me when I found the courage to step back into the space of a dream where it had terrified me.

Myths are a cauldron of stories and symbols that hold superabundant energy for life. You want to become conscious of the myth you are living. If you are unconscious about this, then the myth is living you and you may be driven into confusion and disaster, like Odysseus when his men lose control of the winds. In different phases of life, we may inhabit – and be inhabited by – different myths. We may find ourselves in the play of rival stories. We may be able to match and mix.

The great scholar of religions Wendy Doniger writes about the “seed text”, bija mantra. In her book Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India, she describes how she found this in the story of an Indian goddess, Saranyu, who cloned herself in order to get away from a husband she detested, leaving a compliant Hindu version of a Stepford Wife at home while she ranged free as a wild mare. This story kept after Doniger for decades, prompting her to reach deeper and deeper into its well. Whenever she heard it, she would say, “That’s the story of my life.”

“Myth, by design, makes it clear that we are meant to be something more than our personal history,” declared P.L.Travers, the author of Mary Poppins who was inspired to make Mary a star traveler by a childhood vision of her deceased father turning into a star.

The myths we are living now swing on hinges into other lives, whose myths swing back at us. Because our present life dramas are connected with those of other personalities, in other places and times, within our multidimensional family, it is not surprising that “old” gods and “dead” religions feature in our spontaneous mythology, as mediated by dreams and visions and by moments on the roads of this world when we experience a hidden hand, pushing us forward or holding us back, or rearranging the stage set.

Illustrations by Robert Moss. Original mixed media paintings.

Top: Eyebrows of Zeus

Bottom: Faces of Yama

Four Days in the Grip of the Bear Goddess

 

I have known since early in my long sojourn in North America that the Bear is a great medicine animal. A powerful dream that brought me personal healing reminded me that this was not unknown to early peoples in Europe, especially when the ancient way of the Great Goddess was most alive. Here is my unedited journal report from almost quarter of a century ago.

 

April 26 1999

Four Days in the Grip of the She-Bear

A she-bear is among us. I volunteer to deal with her. She is enormous, maybe six hundred pounds. Light in color, lighter than honey-brown. She grips my head in the crook of her arm, and holds it against her, close to her face. We spend four days in this intimate embrace. It is not uncomfortable, but I am aware that at any moment she could break my neck.

At the end of four days, the people who were with me at the outset gather around us again. One is a woman scientist or zoologist. They now have the means to release me. But the she-bear lets me go without a struggle, confident of our relationship. She shambles away into a space that had been prepared for her, in a room off the corridor of an institutional building, a hospital or teaching facility.

When I start talking about her, she returns to look at me. 

“You are Artemis,” I tell her. “I am Osiris.”

On waking, I noticed that troublesome symptoms that had been bothering me for days - headaches and wooziness - had left me. I felt charged with vitality, sure I had received personal healing, and grateful to the she-bear that delivered it.-

I was intrigued by the words my dream self had spoken to her. I could grasp why I might have identified myself with "Osiris", as candidates for initiation and travelers preparing for the next world were schooled to do in ancient Egypt. Osiris is one who dies and comes back, one who is dismembered and re-membered. I could find something of my finite story within his neverending one.-

But why did my dream self hail the she-bear with the name of the Greek goddess Artemis? I hit the books, especially the brilliant early studies of Jane Ellen Harrison, who had an intuitive grasp of the shamanic sources of Hellenic ritual practices. I rediscovered hat throughout ancient Greece, bears were sacred to Artemis. Well-born little Athenian girls danced as bears to Artemis of Brauronia, the Bear-Goddess. Jane Ellen Harrison observed they “could not but think reverently of the great might of the Bear.”-

More generally, Harrison wrote in  Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, "The mystery gods…are never free of totemistic hauntings, never quite shed their plant and animal shapes. That lies in the very nature of their sacramental worship. They are still alive with the life-blood of all living things from which they sprang."-

I looked anew, with the eyes of a dream archeologist, at ancient images of the Bear goddess, including the 2nd century bronze statue of the Celtic bear goddess, found near Bern in Switzerland, who appears in the photo that accompanies this essay. The Romans called her Dea Artio. As far away as Britain, the Arthur, as consort of the Bear goddess, led his men into battle under her standard. In her human guise, in the Bern statue, the goddess offers fruit to her animal self.-

The link between Artemis and the Bear can be tracked through the myths, though we need dream sight to get to the heart of these stories. In the Greek version of the creation of the Bear constellations in the sky - Ursa Major and Ursa Minor - Zeus pursues Callisto, one of the nymphs of Artemis. Callisto keeps shapeshifting; the lusty god shifts just as fast, seeking to cover her in every form. The nymph of Artemis becomes a bear, and now Zeus, as a male bear, wraps her in his embrace and has his way with her. When Artemis later notices that her nymph is pregnant, she flies into a rage and kills her, but quickly repents and places Callisto and her daughter among the stars, as the Great Bear many call the Big Dipper, and the Lesser Bear.

In Praise of Great Mama Bear

 

Great Mother Bear

 

You feel her under your feet.

You enter her realm through the roots

of the tree that knows you.

She is endlessly nurturing, fertile and abundant.

She will nurse you and heal you as she cares for her cubs.

You can call on her blessing at any time,

once you have found the courage to enter her embrace.

 

She calms the mad warrior in men.

She strips the berserkers of old skins.

Serve her, and you join the army of the Great Mother

whose purpose is to protect, not destroy.

She will defend you, even from yourself.

 

When you call back your lost children,

she will hold you together in her vast embrace

until you are one, and whole.

When you reach across the jagged rifts in your family

to forgive and make well, you feel her rolling pleasure.

- Robert Moss

Painting by James Uxcell

Why We Dream

 

 

"Why do we dream?" asked the blue butterfly girl, looking around the circle of animals she had invited to her tea party by the garden gate. 

"You dream so we can always be together," said Bear, without hesitation. "You dream so you will always have a friend. " 

"You dream so you can see," said Hawk. His golden eyes flashed. 

"You dream so you can learn to be brave like me," said Lion. 

"Nonsense," said Mr. Fox. "You dream so you can tell stories about me." 

"Grandfather," the girl looked into the tea water. "Why do we dream?" 

Grandfather Teller's voice bubbled like a pot about to boil. "You dream because humans are the animals that tell stories about all the others."

RM journal drawing: Garden Gate

Causing a Bear, Scandinavian style

In my courses on healing through Active Dreaming and imagination, we call on Great Mother Bear as healer and protector. The Bear is the great medicine animal of North America and in Native tradition, the most powerful healers are those called by the Bear in dreams and visions. In ancient Europe, the Bear was the king of beasts, and there was a sacred kinship between bears and humans that we can trace from Paleolithic times. The Bear was a form of the Goddess and Athenian maidens danced in bearskins for Artemis, as She Bear, in the festival of Brauronia. Here, drawing on the Icelandic sagas, we recollect something of the warrior history of the Bear, and a shaman warrior of the North who could do much more than put on a bearskin and go wild.


His name is Bödvar Bjarki, which means "Warlike Little-Bear". He has a typical Scandinavian genealogy: his father Bjorn was a were-bear (as a result of a witch's curse); his mother's name, Bera, means "She-Bear". He casts a long shadow through the sagas of the North. He is the perfect warrior, stronger and fiercer than the berserkers ("bear-shirts") who are the champions and bodyguards of kings but must yield pride of place to Bodvar at the royal tables when he makes his entrance, often by knocking the door or wall down.
    While berserkers whip themselves into the fighting frenzy of an angry bear, Bodvar causes a bear. While his father was condemned by sorcery to turn into a bear of uncontrollable appetites in in the daytime, Bodvar is free from the curse of the were-bear; he chooses when to project a second body, in the shape of a warrior bear. This recalls the practice of Northern sorcerers who project fylgjur, "fetches" or shadow selves. The fylgjur are sometimes phantom figures, used to spy on adversaries or confuse their minds, but Bodvar's bear is entirely physical to those who meet it, and invincible among men in battle.   
     Bodvar is the hero of the last chapters of the Icelandic Saga of Hrólf Kraki. He is now the champion of King Hrólf of Denmark. who is leading a tiny force into battle against a vastly larger army that has invaded his lands. As the battle rages, a great bear advances in front of Hrólf's men. Always standing next to the king, the bear kills more of the enemy with a single sweep of its paw than five of the king's best warriors can despatch with swords and axes. The bear seems impervious to blows and missiles. It crushes men and horses with its weight, and rips enemies apart with its teeth.
     Against the odds, things are going well for King Hrólf until Hjalti - a boon companion of Bodvar - notices that his friend is missing from the field. He protests to the king that Bodvar should not be looking to his own safety in the midst of the fray. King Hrólf counsels that "Bodvar will be where he serves us best."
     Not grasping what this means, Hjalti runs back to the king's chamber, where he finds Bodvar apparently "sitting idle", or perhaps asleep. [1] Bodvar is in a state of shamanic trance. Not understanding, Hjalti seeks to rouse him, protesting that it is a disgrace that he is not fighting. "You should be using the strength of your arms, which are as strong as a bear's." In his outrage, Hjalti threatens to burn down the house, and Bodvar in it, unless his friend goes into battle.-
     With a deep sigh, Bodvar rises from his place and complies. After affirming that he is a stranger to fear, and fully aware of his obligations to the king, Bodvar cautions his friend that"By disturbing me here, you have not been as helpful to the king as you intended. The outcome of the battle was almost decided. You have acted out of ignorance...Now events will run their course, and nothing we can do will change the outcome. I can now offer the king far less help than before you woke me." [2]
     When Bodvar goes into battle, the giant bear disappears. Now King Hrólf's army is exposed to psychic as well as physical attack. When the bear was present, the dark arts of the invader's witchy wife Skuld were useless. Now she is able to project her own monstrous animal, a hideous boar that shoots arrows from its bristles. Bodvar Bjarki fights furiously, mowing down enemy warriors like grass. Yet their numbers do not diminish, and he begins to suspect that ghost warriors are fighting among the living. The champions fall, and after them King Hrolf. Because the bear shaman was torn from his trance when the bear was most needed.

[1] In a paraphrase of the famous (but otherwise lost) poem "Bjarkamal" appended by Saxo Grammaticus to his Gesta Danorum. Bodvar Bjarki (here called "Biarco") is in a deep "sleep" from which Hjalti has great difficulty in rousing him.
[2] Quotations are loosely based on Jesse L. Byock's translation of The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (New York and London: Penguin Books, 1998).

Graphic: Bodvar's fetch on the field of battle in the shape of a bear, in "Hrolf Kraki's Last Stand" by Louis M. Moe (d.1945).

Claim the gift of nightmares

Dreams are not on our case; they are on our side. This is one of my personal mantras about dreams and (yes) it applies even to nightmares.

     In my personal lexicon, a nightmare is not only a "bad" or scary dream; it is an interrupted or aborted dream. We are so frightened we run away. We wake ourselves up and try to slam the door on the dream experience, hoping that it is "only" a dream and can't get out and come after us.
     This is a very foolish strategy. The challenges we face in dreams are challenges that are being presented by life itself. If we learn to confront the underlying issues inside the dream space, we may be able to prevent those issues from blowing up in our regular lives. This may require us to take action in waking life, based on what we have learned in our dreams; but we will lack the essential data required for appropriate action if we have left the dream broken and abandoned, behind that door we are trying to keep shut.

      Common forms of the nightmare include:

The nameless terror.

The intruder.

Being pursued.

Being attacked by a wild animal.

Suffering an infestation of bugs, spiders or bats.

An unwanted encounter with the dead.

Being attacked by vampires, demons or zombies.

Being overwhelmed by a giant wave or a twister.

Being in a plane crash or an auto accident.

You probably have your own version. We have different lives, different characters, and different styles of dreaming (another reason why you will never find the full meaning of dreams by looking them up in a dream dictionary). My own least favorite dreams are ones in which I am stuck in a place where I don't want to be.

     Whatever the content of the dreams you flee from, the Rx is the same: try to learn to confront the challenge on the ground where it is presented. This requires firm intention and some degree of courage. You want to learn to go back inside a dream you fled and try to clarify and resolve what is going on there. You can accomplish this through the dream reentry technique explained in several of my books, including Conscious Dreaming and Active Dreaming.
      You want to give a name to that nameless dread. You want to know whether the plane crash was literal or symbolic and, either way, what you need to do to avoid it. You want to establish whether that dream intruder is someone who could literally break into your house, or a disease that could invade your body, or an aspect or yourself - maybe even your Greater Self - that is trying to get your attention. If you are scared of dream vampires, you want to think about who or what in your life may be draining your energy; if your dream house is infested, you need to know whether this reflects a condition in your body that may need medical attention.

       I think it's like this: our dream producers are constantly trying to alert us to things essential to our health, wholeness and well-being. When we ignore these messages, they resort to special effects to get our attention. If we persist in ignoring the messages, the problem the nightmares reflect is likely to show up in our regular lives. Nightmares are a gift in the way that a smoke detector going off in the middle of the night - when there is a real fire hazard - is a gift.

       Sometimes we find that what we are fleeing in dreams is an aspect of our own power. When I first started living in rural New York, I dreamed repeatedly of a giant bear that came into my bedroom. He did not menace me, but he was so much bigger than me that he scared me. Finally, I told myself (as I would now counsel anyone) that I needed to go back inside those dreams, confront the bear, and discover why he was in my space. When I did that, the bear caught me up in his great embrace and showed me that we were joined at the heart, reassuring me that when I needed healing for myself or others, he would be there. I later learned that the bear is the great medicine animal of North America, and he has kept his promise.

       I have worked with several people challenged by cancer who fled from sharks in their dreams. When they agreed to swim in those dream water through conscious dream reentry, they were able to claim the shark as an ally in healing. The shark, an impeccable killing machine that rarely gets cancer, is indeed an extraordinary ally in healing cancer. But to claim that kind of power, we are first required to brave up.

       In summary: the best remedy for nightmares is to summon the courage and the necessary guidance and protection to go back in, face the source of the fear on its own ground, and stay with the experience until you achieve resolution. If reentry is no longer an option (because the dream is mostly gone) do things that help you to spit out (literally) and shake off (literally) the negative legacy, ground yourself with the good Earth - and make it your intention not to succumb to dread next time. What we most fear is often what we most need to face,

Art: "Shark Woman" by Aniela Sobieski.

Healing the Fragmented Self in the Arms of Great Mother Bear

 

If we are to be whole, we must gather and bring together the divided aspects of our selves. Some parts of our soul may have been missing for a very long time - from the time of trauma in early childhood, or in the birth canal, or even inside the womb. Dreams will put us on the track of these lost boys and girls, as will a childhood memory. Caring friends, gifted therapists and genuine shamans can help us to bring them home.

With or without help, bringing the vital energy of our younger selves home to our present bodies can be a bumpy process. Say you have succeeded in making contact with a child self who checked out of your life many years ago because the world seemed so cold and so cruel. To persuade that younger self to come into your body and your world now, you will need to persuade her that you are safe and you are fun. To do that, you'll need to promise that she will never be shamed or abused again, and that you'll do things and eat things that please her. She may not believe your promises unless you can invoke some powerful helpers. Here the animal guardians can play an essential role, because a young child who doesn't trust you may trust the bear or the tiger that is supporting you.

If you succeed in reclaiming a younger part of yourself, the blessings may include fresh energy, imagination, skills - and joy. But to keep that part of your vital soul with you, you are going to have to make good on your promises over the long haul. There will always be the risk that if that part of you senses a recurrence of an old trauma, or simply finds you drab and boring to be around, she'll try to take off again.

In my personal work in facilitating soul recovery over many years, I have found Great Mother Bear an impeccable ally. She is renowned as a fierce protector of her young, especially against possible harm from the males of the species. On several occasions when a child self was reluctant to come home to an adult self - or was threatening to leave again - I have found that invoking Great Mother Bear can serve wonderfully to confirm or re-make the union.

In a gathering of active dreamers on a mountain in the New York Adirondacks, I introduced a group journey to work with Great Mother Bear in this cause.

We had begun, as we usually do, by finding ourselves standing with a special tree, rooted in the earth rising between earth and sky, drinking the light.

I invited our dreamers to go down through the roots of the tree, into the Cave of the Dreaming Bear. 

"You will find yourself with a family of bears of all ages. Going deeper, you will find yourself with Great Mother Bear. Let her fold you in her deep embrace. You will receive blessing and healing and nourishment in her lap.

"When you feel ready, turn around in the lap of Mother Bear so you are facing out. Extend your arms and invite a younger part of yourself - one that has been missing or tends to go absent from your life - into your own embrace.

"When you feel that younger self in your arms, let Mother Bear fold you both in her great embrace and bring you closer together, so close that you become one." 

After giving these directions, I drummed for the group and each member pursued her own journey down through the tree roots, into the Place of the Bear.

At the end of the drumming, we shared our journey reports. Most of our dreamers reported experiences that were vividly real, comforting and energizing.

"I had the wonderful sense of being rocked in the arms of Mother Bear," one of our dream journeyesrs told us. "When I extended my arms, my four-year-old self came to me. We were then blessed by an amazing family reunion. My favorite grandmother, who died when I was four, came to join us, taking on the appearance of a child of the same age. Then my two daughters, also looking as they did when they were four, came to join the party. I feel like having a birthday party for all of them."

In the Cave of the Bear, another traveler told us, she had "a kind of Goldilocks experience." She met three young bears that shapeshifted into child aspects of herself. They joined her in the family hug, and then they all proceeded to set up a tea party.

One of our dreamers  had the experience of rebirth, of being born through the generous body of Mother Bear.

Another woman in our group had tried, in the past, to reach out to her own four-year-old self who had gone missing because of abuse. In one encounter, that very young self had told her. "I can't be with you all the time because you get too distracted." Then the child self added, fiercely, "All your good ideas are from me and you have to make them happen." At the start of the drumming, the four-year-old reappeared and told her, "I'll spend the weekend with you because this stuff is really cool." She did not consent to enter the dreamer's embrace, within the arms of Mother Bear. Instead, what came was a "golden child" who seemed to be more than a younger self, carrying great gifts of creativity, innocence, and light energy.

Yet another dreamer met a younger self who was urgent for her to go beyond the Cave of the Bear, back to the childhood home where bad things had happened. She complied, and found herself intervening, as her adult self, to close and lock the bathroom door, so her child self would have safety and privacy. She felt deep closure and resolution, and commented, "If you can strengthen the adult, you can save the child."

 Art: Top "Dancing with the Bear" by Robert Moss
Middle: "Drumming Bear" by Cristina Flueras
Bottom: "Dreaming Bear" by Tracy Cunningham

The first Santa

It's that time of year again. In this Yule season every year I repost my story of the first Santaas a Sami (Lapland) noaidi, or shaman, riding his drum and his reindeer between the worlds. I wrote the story in the emergency situation described below.

Near Christmas, I received a cri de coeur from the mother of a young boy named James:

James just found out that his parents stuff his stockings each year instead of Santa Claus. He is crestfallen. I asked him if he remembered a story you told him about a real live, animal-loving "Santa" that lived long ago, and he did, but neither of us could conjure enough details to make a suitable retelling. Could you please give me a reference to find the story of this previous, real-life "Santa"? It just might save Christmas for a certain 5-year old boy who yearns to believe.

I remembered a conversation in which I suggested that the original Santa was a shaman of the Sami, a reindeer-herding people of Lapland, reputed to have the power to call up the winds and fly through the air, and that the reason his coat is red is that it was the flayed skin of a reindeer. I have seen Sami drums with images of a shaman flying through the three tiers of the shamanic cosmos on a sleigh pulled by reindeer.
    But while there is a rich ethnography on Sami shamanism, I could think of no source that would be suitable for a young boy. I was not enthused by the idea of introducing a small boy to the theory of certain enthusiasts for entheogens that Santa’s outfit is red and white to match the colors of a magic mushroom, amanita muscaria, that got him flying out of his skull. So I took on the assignment of writing my own version of the first Santa, addressed to a boy in danger of losing his belief in Christmas magic.

Dear James

I heard you found out that it wasn’t Santa who put the presents in your stocking, but people who live with you every day.

     I know this is a shocking discovery, and it would not be surprising if you felt cheated and confused.This is also a very big moment on your journey of growing up. Actually, it’s not big, it’s ENORMOUS.

     You have come to a fork in your road. If you let your feelings of disappointment and betrayal take you down the wrong path, you could very easily end up in the world of the Meanies who don’t believe in any kind of magic at all, and therefore never have any. Go the other way and you’ll come to know that, even if Mommy and Daddy filled the stocking, Santa is REAL. Not only is he real; he is MORE real than you could understand before you found out about the presents. 
     Let me explain. 
     When a story is as important as Santa’s, lots of people will try to tell it their own way. So you’ll hear that Santa was a saint who traveled the world producing marvels and good works many centuries ago. Or that he was a winter king in a great northern forest. Meanies might tell you he was dreamed up by slick advertising men so they can sell more stuff. It’s often said that Santa lives at the North Pole with his elves. Most children I know, and some grown-ups, picture him flying through the sky with a team of reindeer. They are more right than all the rest.

      I am going to tell you the true and original story of Santa. Accept no substitutes.

Long ago and far away, where the sun shines all night on Midsummer’s Eve and never shows its face at Midwinter, a boy they called Dreamer lived with his family among the Reindeer People. They were a simple folk who lived on fish and the fruits of the earth, on reindeer milk and sometimes, in the hungry depths of winter, on reindeer meat. They followed the reindeer through the cycle of the seasons, forever in search of something to eat. They made tools and toys and holy statues out of reindeer bone, and when they danced around their fires, men and women both wore crowns of reindeer antlers.
     Dreamer was an awkward boy. He couldn’t run or move as fast on snow shoes as the others. He wasn’t very lucky at fishing, and he couldn’t lift the great tree-trunks they used for their winter games of log-tossing. They called him Dreamer because his mind always seemed to be wandering somewhere else. He loved the reindeer, and sometimes his mother would find him dreaming among them, arms wrapped in sleep around the belly of a reindeer cow.
     Even the wild reindeer approached him without fear. That was why, one hungry winter, his father made him go out with the hunters, to call the wild reindeer from the shadows of the evergreens. As a magnificent bull reindeer trotted towards him, the boy's father muttered, “Take him. He’s yours.” The boy trembled, with his father’s long bow in his hands, looking into the deep steady eyes of the reindeer.
     Impatient, his father threw his spear. Blood spurted from the great heart of the stag over the boy's chest. He dropped to his knees by the body of the reindeer, asking forgiveness. “We do this so our people may live.”

     His father punished him for his failure to take the kill by forcing him to skin the reindeer with his own knife, and carry the hide back to the village on his shoulders. Staggering under the weight, he wore the reindeer hide bloody side out, so he seemed to be wrapped in a bright red coat.
     That night, while the boy’s father and mother were snoring under their sleeping skins, he woke and looked up through the smoke hole into a field of stars. Through the field, a reindeer was racing on flying hooves. It swooped down through the smoke hole and stood over the boy, so close the steam from its nostrils entered him. He understood, without human words, what he was to do. He was to make a drum, using the hide he had carried back from the woods, binding it to the frame he would carve from an evergreen. He would use a piece of antler as a beater. An old one who lived alone in the woods would show him things he needed to know to make the drum right.

     I don’t know how much you know about drums. This was not the kind of drum you see at a concert, or in a marching band, or in a toy shop. It was the kind of drum you can ride. The boy did not know that until he made it, and learned to tap-tap-tap with his bone hammer until the winds changed and the air was filled with the sound of drumming hooves.

     Another night came, at the darkest time of the year, when the reindeer looked down through the smoke hole and the wind whispered, Tomorrow. The boy walked alone in the gray absence of dawn to the tree that had provided the frame of his drum. He made himself a nest among soft needles the reindeer had not touched.
     As soon as he touched the drum, the stag appeared, different from before. Now his back was covered by a scarlet saddlecloth. The boy understood what he was meant to do. He swung himself up, as someone else might get up on a horse. There was no bit or bridle; he just held on to the reindeer’s neck as he took off at a terrific pace, heading ever north across frozen marshes and ice floes, into a world of white. Ahead, he saw a huge glowing disk very low on the horizon. It seemed he was flying into the face of the moon.
    The boy found himself in the presence of an immense being that blazed with light. It was like looking at the moon, caught in the bare branches of a giant oak. The boy’s vision changed and he saw a woman more beautiful than anything he had ever imagined, a White Lady crowned with great glowing antlers. He knelt before the Reindeer Queen. She smiled a moon-bright smile and raised him up and held him to her breast like a mother.
     She told him, “Darker times are coming. You will need to become a man quickly, and more than a man, to help bring back the light. When the time comes, I will call you and show you what to do.”

     When the ice broke up, monsters appeared in the inlets where the Reindeer People went to fish. The monsters reared from the waters with the heads of leering dragons, then disgorged terrible iron-clad men bent on killing and plunder.

     The Iron Men stormed over the land. The boy's father, now headman of his village, gathered the herders and the older boys to defend their women and their tame reindeer. Fearing for his son’s life and contemptuous of his fighting skills, he ordered Dreamer to stay with the herd.
     When the din of battle sounded across the hill, and the boy's mother armed herself with a bone knife, the boy took his drum and sat among the reindeer, in the long grass. He tapped with the bone hammer until he felt himself stretch and stretch. Then he was flying with the reindeer, through the arctic rainbow to the palace of the Reindeer Queen.

Bright as the full moon, she told him, it was time to meet Brother Bear. The great bear rose up before him like a shaggy mountain. Dreamer wasn’t afraid, well, not as much as he might have been if the Reindeer Queen had not made the introductions.

     When Brother Bear opened his arms, the boy stepped forward and hugged him hard, though his arms could cover only a tiny part of the bear’s tremendous girth. When Brother Bear hugged him back, closing his mighty arms, Dreamer fell through the heart of the mountain, into the world of battle.
     The Iron Men were baying victory. What landed before them, making thunder in the earth, silenced their cries. Sword-arms and spear-arms ceased hacking and cutting, frozen in mid-thrust. Brother Bear towered between the Iron Men and the herders. He reached down and plucked the invaders from the field like toy soldiers. He tossed them back towards their dragon boats. The remnants of the Iron Men broke and fled, throwing down weapons and plates of armor to speed their escape. Rejoicing, Dreamer's father ran to bring his wife and son the good news. He found the boy sleeping under his drum, among the reindeer. He poked the boy with the toe of his boot. “Dreaming again, eh? Rouse yourself, boy! Come and see how we won the good fight.”
     As the boy struggled to his feet, very wobbly, the form of the great bear began to wobble too, fading to a thin mist, then gone.
     When she called him again, the Reindeer Queen told the boy, “When you are grown, you will be wide and strong and big-bellied, like Brother Bear. And all who see you will smile and be jolly, except men of evil hearts, who will flee before you.”

      So the boy grew to be a man, wide-bellied and jolly, fond of stuffing himself with summer berries and tracking the bees to the best honeypots in the trees. When he tapped on his drum and the reindeer came to take him flying now, they came as a whole team and he road in a sleigh that they pulled through the sky, since he was now too broad to ride on the back of a single animal. Whistling for favorable winds, he traveled far beyond the lands of the Reindeer People.

     His biggest journey began when he was old, in the eyes of men, and the Reindeer Queen called him to tell him that there was new star in the sky, and its light was coming to the Northlands.
     He flew to a place where the wisest of the wise were waiting for this star. He stood with them on top of a mountain, He saw the night sky open like a smoke hole to reveal the new star. Light came down from it like a pillar, and inside the pillar he saw the face of a radiant child that melted his heart.
     He wanted to lay gifts before the child, but he had nothing except his beating heart.
     “Drum for me from your heart,” the star-child told him. “Drum for the hearts of men, to help them open to give and share in peace on this night of the turning year.”

Santa has been doing that ever since. When he drums, hearts open like the roofs of houses, and shining gifts come pouring down.

     Whoever gives in a spirit of love and joy on this special night has Santa inside him, or her.

When Mommy and Daddy were stuffing your stocking, Santa was there with them.

     Now, I know that when you have seen something with your eyes it can be hard to believe a different thing unless you can see that with your eyes too.
      So I want you to know this.
      In a great museum in Europe there is a drum made of reindeer skin. On it is an old, old painting of a man flying through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. I’m not saying this is Santa’s drum. I think his drum is too lively to ever get caught and stuck in a museum. I am saying that whoever painted and used that drum knew how you make flying reindeer, and how you get down chimneys.

Painting of "A Laplander" by François-Auguste Biard (1850)

Etching of Sami shaman with magic drum by O.H. von Rode (1767)

(c) Robert Moss. All rights reserved.