Dreaming with Swans

Among the Dane-zaa of northern British Columbia,  respected spiritual elders or shamans are called Naachin, Dreamers. When young members of the People (Dane-zaa simply means The People) are sent into the wilderness on a vision quest, a Dreamer will watch over them, traveling in his astral body. The Dreamers are the givers of the songs that bring the People together in sacred ceremony in alignment with the spirits of the natural world. A song may be a bridge between worlds. It may confer the gift of understanding the language of birds and animals. 
    As in the Upanishads [1], the Dane-zaa say that a powerful dreamer travels like a swan from and back to the nest of the body. ”The Dreamers are like swans in their ability to fly from one season to another. Like the swans that fly south in the winter, Dreamers fly to a land beyond the sky and bring back songs for the people on Earth.” [2]

I have been looking through my journals for my dreams of swans. Here are a few:

Swan Prince

The great white bird lowers itself, wings outstretched, until it is suspended over the waters, whose currents stream purple and vermilion and royal blue. I hurry to meet it, swimming in air. Now the giant swan transforms into the semblance of a beautiful man. The beak becomes the golden noseguard of a helmet. Is this how the god appeared to Leda?  [February 5, 2012]

Swan Flies from My Third Eye

Drifting in bed between sleep and awake in a hotel in Prague, I feel the start of a headache. It is in the center of my forehead. There is a rush of wings. The pain is forgotten as the great white bird emerges from the area of my third eye. I leave my human body on the bed and fly with it over the Vltava river. [November 8, 2019]

Swan Inlet

I stand in the woods near water's edge. The light over the bay is rosy gold, as are the waves. They move slowly. The water looks heavy and oleaginous. My guide explains that only swans are at home here. Other water birds avoid this inlet and don't swim in it. We watch a swan gliding into the swell, rocking with it, dipping its head and body after fish. 
     Everything is suffused with that golden and rosy light. There is healing and magic here and the secret is with the swans.
    Waking, I put myself back in the scene. I pick my way through roots and vines to stand at the edge of the bay. I take from it and the water in my cupped palm looks like olive oil in a spoon. It is lightly scented, a pleasing aroma. On my tongue it is warm and salted just right, like virgin dipping oil in an Italian restaurant. A swan is watching me closely. Will it share the secret? Can I rise on its wings as I did before?
    I hope that the guide who was instructing me before will answer. But the only voice I hear now is my own. Swans fly over the oily waters in arrowhead formation toward the pink sun on the horizon. [September 21, 2020]

Swan Rising 

As I stir from sleep, I see with inner sight an old stone arched bridge over a green river. Not sure where. I am startled when I see a white swan standing, to my left, on the river bank. He is fierce and strong and definitely male. I think of Zeus and Aengus. He rises on beating wings and we fly together into a seascape of rosy light that reminds me of the light at Swan Inlet. Only Turner could do this scene justice in paint.[September 23,2020]

Notes

1. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, or Great Forest Book, the dreamer moves between worlds and in and out of the nest of the body "like the lonely swan". The dreamer is godlike in the ability to create in the dream state. "In the state of dream, going up and down, the god makes many forms for himself." S. Radhakrishnan (ed) The Principal Upanishads (New Delhi: Indus, 1991) 259. A swan is the vehicle of Saraswati, goddess of wisdom and music. The Sanskrit title paramahamsa, "supreme swan", is reserved for the supremely enlightened.

2. Robin Ridington, “They Dream about Everything: The Last Dreamers of the Dane-zaa” in Ryan Hurd and Kelly Bulkeley (eds) Lucid Dreaming: New Perspectives on Consciousness in Sleep (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2014) vol. 2,174.

Journal drawings by Robert Moss