Dreaming with the Fast-Flowing Goddess

At the shrine of Sequana, at the source of the River Seine in the Dijon area of France, ancient Celts came to seek healing dreams in the sacred night. Cloaked pilgrims journeyed with their offerings, which included models of the organs that needed healing, carved from oak or stone. They bathed in the sacred spring, prayed to the goddess, and placed their offerings beside a sacred pool. They entered a long portico or dormitory, hoping that in the night - during sleep or in the twilight state between sleeping and waking that the ancients knew is especially propitious for contact with the more-than-human - the goddess Sequana or her emissary would appear to them.
    No magical power, other than simple cleansing, was attributed to the spring itself, but the waters were regarded as a source of creative flow, and as a portal to the Otherworld and its powers.
    We know the name Sequana from nine inscriptions found in the area. It has been suggested that it means "The Fast-Flowing One". Sequana is the goddess of the River Seine, which flows through Paris, and (according to Strabo) was the patron of the Sequanae, a Gaulish tribe in this region. Her special companion animal is the duck, and in a statue now in the Musée archéologique  de Dijon, a crowned Sequana is depicted riding in a duck-headed boat.
      Only the foundations of the healing shrine of Sequana at her spring, the Fontes Sequanae, survive, but we can glean a great deal about the ancient practice of dream incubation for healing from the contents of two pottery vessels discovered at the site. One contains more than a hundred  carved effigies of eyes, breasts, limbs, heads and internal organs. A second vessel contained more than 800 similar carvings. Pilgrims who needed healing for the parts represented ascended a series of terraces, pausing perhaps to drink from streams and cisterns containing the sacred waters, before reaching the main sanctuary and being admitted to the place of sacred sleep. Grateful travelers paid for inscriptions at the site thanking Sequana for gifts of healing, evidence that we have here a Celtic parallel to the practice of Asklepian dream healing in the ancient Mediterranean.
     What happened to this great precinct of dream healing in the realm of the Goddess when the Church arrived? One guess. The site was appropriated by the Church and re-dedicated to an invented male saint, St Sequanus.
     In reviving the memory of the "Fast-Flowing" Goddess, as we do in my Celtic-themed workshops and gatherings, we step towards cultural soul recovery - and remember a healing practice that can transform our lives.

Image: statue of Sequana in a duck-headed boat in the Musée archéologique  de Dijon.

Dream incubation

Dream incubation has been a preferred way of seeking life direction in most human cultures as far back as we can trace. If you believe that, in seeking dream guidance, you are approaching a sacred source, then you will probably use some form of prayer or ritual as you seek help from that power. 

     In the Greek Magical Papyri (XVIIIb) we read this invocation:

Sender of true oracles
while I sleep send me your unerring skill
to read what is and and will be.

     If we have a big request, it is important to ask nicely. Aelius Aristides, an ancient Greek orator who walked very close to his god – Asklepios, the patron of dream healing – used to phrase his requests as follows: “Lord, I ask for the guidance (or health, or resources) my body requires to serve the purposes of the soul.” A human who asks that way might hope to engage the support of a power behind the scenes.

     The journey to a special place – the shrine of a saint, the tomb of an ancestor, a sacred mountain, an ancient tree – has often been part of a full-dress dream incubation. 

     But in our hurried everyday lives, we can make all of this simple. Are you in need of life direction or a solution to a problem? Are you willing to turn to a source beyond the obvious ones? Then approach the night as a place of possible encounter with a power that can answer your questions and help to heal your life. If you are a person of faith, you may start by praying for guidance of healing.

     You may find it helpful to do something to make your sleeping area more of a sacred place; for example, by foregoing sugar and alcohol for a few hours before sleep, by lighting a candle, and/or by using a special fragrance or placing a little mugwort sachet under your pillow.

     Now you want to set your intention for the night. Make it as simple and clear as possible, and avoid composing a laundry-list of needs and wishes. You can make your request large and spacious:

I ask for guidance on my life path

I open myself to my creative source

I ask for healing

Or you can make it quite specific:

I would like guidance on my job interview.

I ask for healing for my friend in hospital.

I would like to see what will happen during my trip.

I want to prep for the exam.
Should I date the guy I met yesterday?

You will want to be ready to catch whatever your dreams give you whenever you wake. This may involve lingering in the half-dream state after you surface from deeper sleep; this in-between state is one in which important messages often come through.

     If you remember only a small piece from a dream, but your feelings are strong and your sense of direction is clear, you are in luck. Sometimes it is easier to read a plain answer from a short, uncomplicated dream vignette than from a rambling epic, and the energy that comes with a dream is often more important than the specific information it contains.

     If you can’t initially see any connection between the dream your record and the intention that preceded it, be patient and learn to use some detective skills. It’s possible that your dream producers decided to give you something they think you should see rather than what you asked for. All the same, it is always worth playing the game of trying to find a link between the dream and the intention.     

     You don’t want to ask for big messages, let alone big favors, every night. That becomes wearisome to everyone engaged, and can end by trivializing and cheapening the process. On the other had, I see no objection to putting a simple request like the following one to the dream oracle fairly frequently:

Show me what I need to see 

If you try that, be ready for some shocks! Our dream producers see our needs and issues from a different angle than we do.

Mending soldier's heart

Soldier’s heart, they called it in the American Civil War. It’s the condition of those who have been traumatized by combat. It was called shell shock in World War I, and treated without sympathy, when treated at all. In Spanish, they say of someone with this condition, esta roto, this person "is broken". Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the diagnostic term today, and it has reached epidemic proportions. We see that in the Pentagon's own statistics for suicide.  So far this year, on average, five active duty military personnel have killed themselves every four days; the numbers are far higher for veterans in general.
     Edward ("Ed") Tick, Ph.D., is one of those who is working to heal our wounded warriors. He is director of Soldier’s Heart, a nonprofit organization dedicated to facilitating the “safe return” of our veterans. He has practiced as a psychotherapist for 28 years. He knows that healing trauma requires the care of hearts and souls. He approaches combat trauma as a "soul wounding". He brings the skills of the shaman, the mythologist and the storymaker into his work; he knows that we can heal body and soul by helping each other to find and tell better stories. 

     Two of his books are on my desk as I write, and I treasure both. The Practice of Dream Healing is a spirited guide to the ancient temples of Asklepian healing, and a passionate appeal to integrate this tradition of sacred medicine into our modern healthcare, in the understanding that "encouraging patients to be in relationship with the sacred fosters their healing". Ed's recent book, War and the Soul, is a searing and essential work that lays out a road map for bringing our lost soldiers home: through cleansing and purification, through ritual and dream quest, through storytelling and through claiming the gift that is in the wound.
    We are in desperate need of healers like Ed Tick. He knows that anyone who has gone through profound trauma - whether on the field of battle or on the battlefields of life - will not be the same. Those we have sent to fight our wars will not and cannot be the same as before. A man or woman who has been sent out as a sanctioned killer, with a good chance of being killed, does not come back as a person who can simply be restored to normal functioning and dropped back into regular life. The transformation of character caused by combat trauma is profound and its effects are likely to be permanent. The warrior, returning, is something other than what he or she was before.
    We owe it to our homecoming warriors to offer them more than medications and therapies that address symptoms but not the soul, and Ed Tick knows where to find what they need. He borrows tools and resources from traditional cultures, those of our ancestors and those of indigenous peoples who preserve the shaman's ways. To make someone ready for war, in the primal understanding, you make him half-crazy. You seek to call into him the killing power and war frenzy of an animal predator; thus, in northern Europe, ancient warriors called in the wildness of the bear in order to go berserk (which literally means to put on the "bear shirt"). When the battles are over, a fighter who has been a sanctioned beast in the field must be carefully de-possessed of that killer spirit, cooled down, and also released from whatever other spirits of battle may be with him, including the ghosts of slain comrades and enemies. And he must be helped to speak of what he has lived through.
    I'll be talking of all this with Ed Tick on my radio show on 9/11, the anniversary of a tragedy that has send so many to fight on dubious ground, and has bequeathed a national trauma that is far from healed. I am glad to report that his work is now acknowledged by the  Department of Defense, which enlisted his help this year to introduce 2,000 military chaplains to his soul-centered approach.
     I celebrate Ed Tick as one of those who truly carries the staff of Asklepios, of whom the poet Pindar wrote that he healed "with the words that soothe men's tormented souls".

On the air: Ed Tick is my guest on my "Way of the Dreamer" radio show on Tuesday, September 11. Please join us for a powerful and timely conversation. You can hear the interview live from 12:00-1:00 PM Eastern (9:00-10:00 AM Pacific) via www.healthylife.net, or download from my archive after the broadcast. 

Graphic: Francisco Goya,  Los desastres de la guerra #18  Enterrar y callar ("Bury them and keep quiet")

Beyond Lucid Dreaming on the air July 10th

My next "Way of the Dreamer" show on healthylife.net  is LIVE on Tuesday July 10th from 9:00-10:00 am Pacific time, which is 12:00-1:00 pm Eastern. This is the show where we learn to reclaim the power of dreams, coincidence and imagination as sources of energy,healing and guidance in our lives 

My guest for this show is dream researcher Ryan Hurd, who has made a special study of lucid dreaming and has published an excellent book on Sleep Paralysis distinguished by his suggestion that if you experience this phenomenon and can avoid panicking and relax and stay with it, you may find it is the portal to remarkable discoveries. I know this to be true, and commented on his approach in an earlier article.

     Ryan has recently produced a manual for lucid dreamers titled Lucid Immersion Guidebook and available for download. Ryan edits a lively blog, the Dream Studies Portal, and is contributor to TheDreamTribe.com and a board member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.   

     Themes we'll explore:

• Why you don't have to work hard to enter a state of lucid dreaming
• How to become more conscious in dreams and waking life
• Why lucid dreaming is not the same thing as dream control
• How lucid dreaming can increase emotional intelligence and heal old wounds
• the nature of sleep paralysis and how to overcome night terrors
• how ancient Asklepian practices can translate into powerful dreaming and dream healing today

You can access my radio show archive and download or listen to previous shows here.