Tag: dream

Sustainable Death

On Samhain eve, I dreamed I was in circle at Tejas Witchcamp. I was just home from camp, and missing it deeply – I hadn’t realized being on the teaching team would make re-entry more challenging for me.

In the dream, it was night and dark, and we were beginning the devocations at the end of a ritual. We were seated on the ground, around a fire in the center, 60 people or so. Someone in the center devoked / bid goodbye to the ancestors, and then the ritual stopped. There was this deep silence. The person in the center looked gently and meaningfully at me. And I realized I was there because I’d been invited in at the beginning of the ritual, and now I was being told “goodbye.” I was an ancestor – it was time for me to get up and leave the circle of the living again.

In the dream, I felt much as I did when I woke up. A little silly, a little grateful, a little sad to be leaving, a little excited to see where I went next.

It puts you out of step to be OK with your own death, and recognize every day that you’re drawing closer to it. Yes, everyone is drawing closer to death every day. But I recently had an experience in which an exercise put me and five others in free fall. “What do you do?” the facilitator kept asking as we fell, “You’re still falling. What do you do?” At some point I said, “I get ready to die.” Two others there said, “Yes,” but three said “No!” Then someone pointed out that the three of us who said “Yes” were in our fifties and sixties, and the three who said “No!” were younger. Those who said “Yes” had been making their peace with death, walking with it much more closely for a while. It makes a difference.

So I woke up from the dream and began to consider sustainable death. Sustainable, in that the last thing I’m a part of on this earth, I don’t want to be about poisoning my body and, eventually, the earth. And I need to plan around that now. I’ll be asking Yana and PonyMoon to agree to manage what I can’t plan for. I’ll make some arrangements and get them a plan, and ask them to take it from there.

I was blessed to participate in the green burial of Fern Mary, an elder in the Central Texas women’s community who died some years ago. It was quite an eye opener, the things we’ve forgotten about how to honor and bury the dead. The site was so lonely and peaceful and beautiful – I remember the hole was dug at least 9 feet deep. So deep … everyone attending was earth-based, and there was laughter and wailing, all going on at the same time, everyone safe to express their grief as it was. The woman whose land it was and who oversaw the burial said it was the healthiest funeral she’d ever seen, and I believe it.

A sustainable death, that sustains life. Kind of amused that I have some research to do (the search engine is my friend …). Thinking about what songs I’d like sung. Feeling the distance widening, between those who aren’t at a place to say “Yes” to my dying, while I am nearing that place of “Yes” a little more each day. Do I still have a lot to do, a lot I want to do? Yes, very much so. Since camp, I have a whole new relationship with the spirits of the land to explore.

I’ll get as far as I get with that in this living body, and then I’ll explore that relationship from the other side. And I can’t help hoping that from that place, I hear those I love call me into circle, as an ancestor or spirit, and that I’m able to join you again, for just a little while. Watch for me. I’ll be listening for you.

Setting Fire to the Mountain: Hekate Dreams

Last night I dreamed of Hekate and She said, “Do it. Set fire to it all.” I’ll be teaching at Tejas camp in October. Hekate is the goddess of the camp, so – our team discussions, and my own work, are opening to Her more and more. I always have a sense of Her physically when I work with Her, but She hasn’t had anything to say to me for a long time. Generally, She just stands still and silent at the crossroads, giving me choices, waiting and watching.

I’d been listening to the song “I See Fire” last night. The song has a different effect on me – it sounds like the beauty of fire, to me. A whole mountain on fire, from the inside – that is something that would be worth seeing, I always think when I hear the song. And then I have my usual doubts that come up with fire – yes, but it’s destructive, yes,  but it gets out of control, it kills, it burns. It burns. If you love fire, as I do, you understand the concept of a two-edged sword.

The other elements get out of control and kill, too. But it’s fire most people seem to think of when they think of “danger” and “element”. But a witch, now – for a witch (for this witch, anyway), that’s just what it is to have power. We have power, we’re dangerous, we could use it badly. And – when power is needed, well, we can use it then, too. The same risks I’m willing to take with fire, I’m willing to take to use power. I do try to use both well.

The mythic feel of the dream is lingering, and I’m wondering what Hekate was telling me. As always, when She speaks to me, it’s brief, to the point. I don’t know what She was telling me, specifically. But I saw the mountain in my dream, when She said “Set fire to it all.” I think She is saying that something big needs to be transformed, and it will be such a change that I might hesitate. And She’s saying: “Don’t hesitate.” A dangerous guideline when you’re messing with fire in a big way. But if the Goddess is going to talk to me, in my experience, it isn’t usually about small things.

So I am on the lookout for what I should set fire to. Reminding myself of the way fire sustains – sustaining us with warmth when we need warmth, sustaining my spirit when my spirit needs warming, or ecstasy. Sustaining my community when transformation is called for. Sustaining sometimes by destruction that leaves room for something new to grow.

And mostly, I’m remembering how clear Her voice was in my dream. How in the dream, I loved that She was there with me. Her time is different – I may find out what she meant soon, or later, or in the next lifetime. But I feel blessed that She’s talking. I want to carry Her spirit into camp with me in October, and Her presence in my dreams tells me She’s good with that.

Blessings of fire to us all, at this, the time of the solstice.