Night of the Blue Bird

Sometimes all we need from our dreams is one simple image, bringing clarity and direction. In the midst of leading a soul recovery training in France, I set the intention of dreaming on behalf of the group. 

     In the middle of the night, my upstairs room in an old stone house at the Hameau de l’Etoile was filled with blue light. In the spectrum of blues, I would say that the color was azure. Amazed, I found the source of this light in a great blue bird suspended in mid air. The light shone from within it, as if from the heart of a crystal. In that light, I knew that all would be well and that great gifts would come to those who had made the journey to this little village of hope, in the Midi.

    The quality of this blue light reminded me of figures who have appeared to me in other visions of the night, especially one I call simply the Blue Lady, who has attended and prepared me for grand adventures between the worlds. I thought, also, of the blue-skinned deities of Egypt and India. My bird visitor had a crest on its head, bringing an unassertive sense of royalty and grace.

    I carried the wonderful energy of this vision with me as I went down for coffee in the refectory in the morning. “Good morning to your waking soul,” a member of my training greeted me, with a line from Robbie Burns. I shared my simple dream image by the hearth, and we fanned the ashes from the fire ceremony we had shared the previous night into new life. 

Art: Marc Chagall, "The Blue Bird" (1952)

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.