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.

From the lost books of the ancient Balts

Vilnius, Lithuania

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. He 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.

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.

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.

Photo by Robert Moss