Sunday, October 4, 2009

Dreaming on the Amber Road


Vilnius
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I am exploring the streets of the old city of Vilnius. This is an earlier time, because the walls of the city are intact and there are no automobiles or artificial lighting. I pass a number of people, including older women in traditional Lithuanian dress, with embroidered fringes and large, richly ornamented pins and brooches.
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One has an unusual headdress. It contains a glowing orange-golden head that radiates ight. I pass a second woman who has three similar heads suspended above her own, also radiating light. Then I pass a woman who has twelve of these glowing heads shining above her own. The heads look like human heads, but they are half-size or a little smaller. The rich orange color makes me think of jack o' lanterns, but they are certainly not pumpkins.
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I wake awed and intrigued from this dream on Sunday morning, in my hotel room near the Gate of Dawn in the Old Town of Vilnius, where I am in the midst of leading an "Active Dreaming" workshop for 30 Lithuanians (plus a Finn, a Latvian couple, and a young woman from Austria). My intention before sleeping was guidance for the circle for the day ahead. I feel I have received it, though I cannot immediately explain the "head lights" the dream women are wearing. These are clearly women of power. I reflect that I am privileged to have several such women in my workshop, several of them renowned as healers and psychics in this country. I decide that I will share my dream with the group early in the day.

When I open the circle and tell the dream, I am immediately urged by several Lithuanian dreamers to go back inside the dream right away and seek closer contact with the women with the headlights. This group has wasted no time in learning core practices of Active Dreaming such as dream reentry and tracking. Accordingly, I drum for a short time, get my head back inside the dream and realize that the "headlights" are amber, and that amber - the gold of the Baltic, but better than gold - has value far beyond its beauty. The amber heads embody the essential spirit and energy of great ones who are lending their wisdom and light to those who carry on an ancient Goddess tradition as healers and guides. The numbers are significant. They relate to levels of initiation and earned powers. The third woman has reached the 12th level, the highest a human can ordinarily aspire too.
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A much-revered Lithuanian woman healer in the group tells me that the amber heads are also gates. She saw me stepping past the first gates, and then three gates (of gold, silver and gold), bent on something beyond.
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This is fascinating, but we have to move on. There is a lot of dreaming and healing to be done on our second and last say. To minimize the time needed for translation, I introduce a rapid-fire series of seven mini-journeys, aided by drumming, through the seven major energy centers. I explain that while the energy schema we are using may sound familiar from yoga, this has nothing to do with yoga. We will enter a visionary landscape in each of the chakras with the aim of finding a living symbol and the energy of an ally - who may appear vas animal or bird or something else - that we can use in our own healing and may be able to transfer to others.
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The results of this journey were wonderfully productive. I encouraged the group to make personal energy maps, by drawing seven images of the key symbols they found in each chakra. Then, in a follow-up journey, I had them go the place in their energy chart where they found most power, and carry that power to places in the map - and in their lives beyond the map - where there was a challenge, a deficiency or a mystery to be addressed.
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But for now I will stay on the Amber Road. I found things in my own energy chart that I had never seen before, things related to the mythic symbology and ancient practices of the Baltic territory where I was traveling and teaching. I saw a great crowned water-serpent rising from the sea. I saw a great golden beehive dripping with honey, with wild bees buzzing around that were also - on closer inspection - winged priestesses; and knew I was in a Goddess realm. I saw a great amber, and was instructed by a zhyne (priestess) that this was a see-stone that could be used like a crystal ball. She showed me how burning amber is a valid sacrifice, offering a gift of the Goddess to the Goddess herself, and also how the smoke becomes a window into the world-behind-the-world. In the smoke of amber, I saw into the realm of Sleeping Kings - in this case the Grand Dukes of medieval Lithuania who fought invaders and would-be oppressors and wait (like the Arthur of British legend) to be recalled to fight for their land again, on the psychospiritual plane, in the event of a new threat to its survival.
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I was told by the ancient priestess that I should wear amber on my body to maintain a link with her tradition. My translator, Agne - a marvelously gifted linguist, psychologist and artist - gave me no opportunity to duck this assignment. She presented me with the amber figure of a man (a copy of an ancestral figure) on a thong. I am open to fresh discoveries of ancient things on the Amber Road that has opened before me.

9 comments:

  1. I am enjoying and living - in your words - your adventures in dreaming in Lithuania. Your words and experiences have resonated in my own amber experience in a dream twenty years ago.

    I have been thinking about the women in your dream and, if it were my dream, my association not only with gateways, ancient wisdom, healing, and sacred protection and guardianship but also, symbolically, the ability of a healer to project her power and wisdom to current and future generations who are within the glow of the light's wisdom and power - directed to those who are chosen to be recipients.

    The amber road is offering you new challenges and new directions for wisdom and healing. Onward.

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  2. If it were my dream I would be intrigued by the Empress connection that continues to press itself forward. In the BOTA tarot the Empress has twelve stars above her head like a crown.

    You certainly seem to be getting a lot of heavy duty goddess stuff recently ...

    Interestingly I spent all of last weekend doing a series of seven pathworkings, each relating to one of the colours of the rainbow. Each pathworking was designed to allow the participant to make his/her own connection to inner beings and events.

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  3. Hi Robert and Wanda
    I am interested in your comment(Wanda) about the healing of the generations. Over the weekend I read the palms of three Rumanian woman with very similar "Old souls" hands. Their tea leaves were full of the neccesity for them to work on the healing of their ancestors as well as a huge presence of deceased wise one's in the cup.
    I would be fascinated Robert to hear your stories relating to these woman in particular relating to forms of divination. ( Any good books on the subject?)
    Nicola

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  4. As I am learning about myself, I feel much gratitude for your wisdom and words. I love this technique you described with chakra work and am going to try it as best I can. I had a dream during a forum awhile back about walking with a group of dreamers to an amber lit city. Your insights into amber are rich. I think I will go back and re-read that dream. I also had this resent vision/feeling about this most beautiful and gentle bird, unlike the birds of prey I unusually dream of. I could only see it's face and eye.

    Gratitude

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  5. This post brings to mind a fossilized insect inside of a "see"-through stone (amber?). Possibly keeping the old (mythology/goddesses) intact and visible in today's modern world. I, also, think that the goddesses are quite abundant lately. What messages are they sending to me personally? I would think that it would depend on the individual dreamer/experiencer.
    Margie

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  6. Thanks to all for your comments and encouragement as I follow this Amber Road.

    Nicola, though I share your love of books we are traveling here far outside what has (so far) been recorded, even in Lithuanian. As you'll see from my follow-up post, I'be been privileged to be invited to witness and learn practices handed down by oral transmission in the family of a contemporary "good witch" who is greatly revered in Lithuania. I shall write more about what I have learned. On the bookish front, I'll also be scouring the anthropology and early chronicles for relevant material; this will involve arranging for translations (from Lithuanian) of some key books and documents for the first time. My "
    People of Amber" have given me quite an assigment - but it's wonderful fun!

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  7. I am very happy to see your travel and dreaming account on 'The Amber Road'! I happened to have had a dream snippet on 10-6-09 of an Amber Necklace, which had come loose on its threading... So when I saw this my eyes grew wide!

    In my dreaming, I recall that the 'Amber Road' was a trade route in ancient Europe; but also for me this puts me in touch with my own European heriatage and shows another depening level to the birthing of the Godess energies. Of course I then,was journeying ahead to Garnet Hill where the deer runs and dreams flow, while we are all there; I see us doing some wonderful Amber Goddess Dreaming!
    I am also reminded of a time when I was with a Lakota Elder, wearing an amber necklace. He told me this;
    "The nuggets of amber are the 'Tears of the Trees'and we must cherrish them. They may be used to access ancient ways, when one is worthy."
    Apparently amber can be found in parts of the Northwest,Kansas, and Canada!
    So Dear Robert; I wish you safe travels in all worlds~ And look forward to your travel logs of Dreaming on the Amber Road, for the sake of all the Amber Goddess's!~~Love,Karen

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  8. Dear Karen - So good to hear your voice! The woman healer briefly described in my next article on this blog gave me beeswax and amber and the wood of four special trees to repeat a ritual that she showed me, and this may be part of one of our own gatherings. In the words of her songs, also, amber is described as the "tears of the trees".

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  9. Robert,
    Hi, like Wanda I am enjoying all of your adventures. My daughter has been wearing amber for many years it was great to hear all the ways it is used in the area most known for it. Hearing about the ancient goddesses and the healing properties makes me want to read and learn more.
    thanks, Valerie

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