I am driving in the countryside with my friend Wanda, a world-class dreamer who was for 30 years the curator of Sir William Johnson's last home in the Mohawk valley.
She is trying to describe patterns she sees in the sky - perhaps in the play of lightning. I am not content with her descriptions. She switches similes and tells me that one of the sky patterns resembles the movements of a graceful young Thai woman.
Suddenly I see one of these patterns for myself, filling the sky above the treeline in the other direction. Etched by lightning against a dark sepia backdrop, I see a bird-figure from an Egyptian hieroglyph, either falcon or owl. The shape of the head is indistinct, but I sense this is the owl, perhaps the eagle-owl.
I rose from this dream outing during an evening nap just now, to find a lengthy email letter from another friend speculating about my possible connections - within a multidimensional family of selves - to ancient Egyptian initiates who were trained in the art of "far memory", and specifically with Sir William Johnson, the central figure in two historical novels I felt compelled to write after moving to a home in what was his neighborhood (in the 18th century) and dreaming into his life. I was not entirely happy with her descriptions of how these things work, and realized I need to write more about the workings of far memory and the relations between personalities living in different times and a central Self or Oversoul.
And my mind slips a way (the break in the word was unintended, but I'll leave it; "away" can be "a way")...to another scene, and a this-life connection with the eagle owl, the Old World cousin of the North American great horned owl.
I am in Prague, which I visited two years ago. The city is lovely, but the crowds of tourists are exhausting. I take refuge from the crowds in a quiet shady garden next to the Hradčany castle and give myself over to reflections on our connections with other personalities across time, how these "past lives" or "other lives" open to us in dreams and how far memory can be triggered by travel to a certain place, or handling a certain object, or an encounter with someone you are certain you know very well, in a different world.
"Have you met Arthur?" It's a woman's voice that interrupts my musings. I turn to find an eagle-owl on the gloved wrist of a beautiful young falconer. She explains that her vocation is to help rescue injured raptors, and walks me with Arthur into a preserve where there are other birds, including a tiny merlin falcon.
Egypt, Johnson, the eagle-owl. Echoes of Arthur and Merlin. You have other centuries to play with, as Seth reminded us. In dreams of the night and dreams of the day, we meet and interact with our reincarnational selves. It is vital to remember (as Seth also instructed) that these are also simultaneous selves, in the play of the multiverse.
