White Wolf

Mother of wolves
Hunter of hearts
You are the antidote
To the wolf in man

Never tame
You gentle our wildness
You help us turn packs
Into families.

Killer of fear
Cleanser of souls
You shear away
What is dead, or meant to die

You bring light from dark.
On the night your scary twin
Eats the moon,
You give us white fire.

On your bicycling legs
With your flawless compass
You take us into the shining heart
Of the Peacemaker.

Over the black rubble
Of our guilt and shame
You spread a clean mantle
Of fresh-fallen snow.

Your clear eyes read
What belongs to us and what does not.
You know better than we do
What it takes to be human.


This poem is in my collection Here, Everything Is Dreaming, published by Excelsior Editions.

Mountain of the Dreamers

Today I go up to a very special mountain where I have led very special gatherings over twenty years. It is a place where the Deer energy is strong and where dragons are sometimes seen. Here I test-fly new techniques and lead group journeys to explore many interesting territories in the multidimensional universe

     Here is a poem I wrote about the experiences we have shared on this mountain. This is traditional Mohawk Indian country, so the first words are in Mohawk, addressing the ancestors of the land:

Aksotahi, Raksotahi,
Grandmothers, Grandfathers,
We remember you, we honor you here
we feed you with tobacco and laughter and tears
we ask your blessing and protection for all our journeys.

Spirit of the Fire, we give you our old skins
you turn our despair and anger into cracklings
you carry our heart’s desires to the high ones

Dreamer adrift in the shadows:
When you fall through a hole in your world

you can come here to dance a new world into being.
When the moon is eaten out of your sky
by the men with hungry caterpillars in their hair
you can come here to grow it back.

There'll be days when you have to struggle to get here,
climbing out of flooded subways, plowing through snowbanks.
There'll be times when you forget the way.
There'll be nights when you can't believe this place is real
and you let it fade from your heart like an exhausted dream.

You may lose the mountain, but the mountain will find you,
calling in the voice of the wind, in the color code of fall leaves,
in the taste of rain, in an old song on the radio, 

in a poem urgent to be born, in the dream you cannot slay.
Hawk may give you a feathered sign, and wings to follow it.

White wolf may call you here, into the light of the Peacemaker,
where your soul is healed in the garnet heart of this mountain,
and your inner compass is restored, and you rediscover yourself 

in the best of all families, a family stronger than blood,

and the extraordinary is easy because we allow it to come through.

The dream people are always here for you.

Photo of Robert opening fire ceremony on the mountain by Jeanne Cameron.

The coming of the Peacemaker

Say my name in the bushes and I will stand here again.
- promise of the Peacemaker

The shining one comes from a land across the water, from the True North. He does not enter this world in an ordinary way. He comes through a young woman who has never known the touch of a man. She has been chosen by an extraterrestrial god as the landing place for an envoy who is being sent to save humans from themselves. His human grandmother dreams his identity and his mission.
    He comes from his Earth-in-the-Sky in a time of terror when the minds of men are darkened and confused . An immense power if darkness has occupied the twisted body and diseased mind of a sorcerer-tyrant called Thadodaho, the Entangled One, and his hydra-shadow falls everywhere across the land. Humans have fallen lower than any beast, killing and raping and eating one another.
    The god-man grows up fast. Fast is essential, because he is needed urgently. He flies into the killing fields across an inland sea in a vehicle humans cannot understand. He spreads the good word that we are all related and should treat one another as kin. He announces himself as the Peacemaker. His first apostle is a fallen woman who feeds and fucks with the killers but is transformed by the shining one's radiant light, weeping tears of cleansing joy and recognition.
    But the Peacemaker is hard for most people to understand. He needs a Speaker. he goes to the house of a fallen man who has lost every vestige of his once-noble self and now devours his own kind. The Peacemaker shows the cannibal his own shining face in a mirror. The fallen man becomes Hiawatha, the Awakened One.
    Together, Hiawatha and the Peacemaker survive many ordeals and spread the word that we are all kin. They gather a gentle host, and bird-men fly ahead, scouting the way. They confront the dark sorcerer and break his power. Instead of killing the Entangled One, they cleanse and renew his mind, and raise him up to be the first of the men of good minds, the lords of the new-born Confederacy. The chiefs are crowned with deer antlers by the woman who has become the Mother of Nations, the Queen of Peace.
    One of the world's greatest experiments in enlightened government and federation has begun. It will shame and awe divided American colonists into dreaming up their own plan that evolves into the Constitution of the United States. But the story is bigger. It teaches us that psychic forces are at the root of hatred and violence, and that resolving our conflicts requires us to reach out to cleanse and heal those whose minds have become darkened and confused. It reminds us that, even in the darkest moments of human history, there are saving powers that seek to rescue us from ourselves and recall us to the soul's purpose.
    The Peacemaker's mission is for all people, and it is for now as well as then. There is still a Hiawatha in the roll call of the chiefs of the Six Nations. Though the Peacemaker returned to the Real World above the sky when his work in the Shadow World was done, he promised us that he will return when he is called by people of good minds. "Say my name in the bushes, and I will stand here again,"

Text adapted from Dreamways of the Iroquois: Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul by Robert Moss. Published by Destiny Books.

Graphic: Hiawatha confronts Thadodaho. Drawing by Seth Eastman after an Iroquois original, in Henry Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (6 vols., 1851-7). Photo (c) Robert Moss

Mountain of the Dreamers

Aksotahi, Raksotahi,
Grandmothers, Grandfathers,
We remember you, we honor you here
we feed you with tobacco and laughter and tears
we ask your blessing and protection for all our journeys.

Spirit of the Fire, we give you our old skins
you turn our despair and anger into cracklings
you carry our heart’s desires to the high ones

Dreamer adrift in the shadows:

When you fall through a hole in your world

you can come here to dance a new world into being.
When the moon is eaten out of your sky
by the men with hungry caterpillars in their hair
you can come here to grow it back.

There'll be days when you have to struggle to get here,
climbing out of flooded subways, plowing through snowbanks.
There'll be times when you forget the way.
There'll be nights when you can't believe this place is real
and you let it fade from your heart like an exhausted dream.

You may lose the mountain, but the mountain will find you,
calling in the voice of the wind, in the color code of fall leaves,
in the taste of rain, in an old song on the radio, 

in a poem urgent to be born, in the dream you cannot slay.
Hawk may give you a feathered sign, and wings to follow it.

White wolf may call you here, into the light of the Peacemaker,
where your soul is healed in the garnet heart of this mountain,
and your inner compass is restored, and you rediscover yourself 

in the best of all families, a family stronger than blood,

and the extraordinary is easy because we allow it to come through.

The dream people are always here for you.

                                         - Gore Mountain, November 4, 2012

Photos by R.M. from our fall gathering on the mountain.