Reincarnation Reflections

 

An onion,  that's it. 

All those layers. 

Just when you think you can name yourself,

you discover new layers, you’re forming a new skin,

a new ring.  But there's a core.

And where does that core start?

 I've been reading Beyond Reincarnation by Joe Slate Ph.D.   I'm a fan of the work of Dr. Slate, a psychologist, teacher,  and researcher into the paranormal and spiritual, who developed group as well as self-hypnotic methodologies to explore consciousness that are highly effective.

In the 80's I was fascinated with reincarnation, underwent some life regressions through both group  and individual process, and I continue to  be fascinated, although I no longer pursue regression experiences.  I suspect  because, at 71, I'm close enough to having to summarize  and wrap up this incarnation to worry much about previous ones!  

I do believe that the research, and better, experience of "life regression" is so important, because it can experientially as well as conceptually  free people from the fear of death.  My experiences of past life regression, along with my many encounters with spirit communication and friendships shared with mediums I have known, as well as listening to those who have had near death experiences, has done so for me.  Negative religious propaganda, like "eternal punishment in hell",  or "suffering because you have bad karma", etc.  has created so very much personal and social trauma.  "Carne" is Latin  for "flesh" or "meat".  "Re-incarnate" - to become physical, carnal.   How extraordinary the hypnotic experience was,  to discover there are  "other people" within "you".  As the Buddhists say, in light of such visionary experience, "where is the 'I'?"

"Old Masks" (2018)

I think that the deepest, most timeless moments I remember  (outside of  the  intimacies and conflicts and  discourses of relationships that "grow a soul")....are those  visionary moments I have been privileged to experience, some spontaneous, most voluntary.   In the realms of visioning  many-layered possibilities and truths reveal themselves in ways that cannot always be understood in  a concrete, "in-carnated" sort of way.   Or even in a temporal way.......one cannot think of visioning as structured in a time progressive way, any more than one can understand a dream as occuring in "time".  There  is no time in dreams. 

In the 80's I belonged to a group that met weekly to explore spiritual exercises, meditation, and past lives.   I  also worked with a counselor  who did past life regression.  Our group used tapes from  Robert Monroe (the Monroe Institute)  tapes.  I read anything I could get my hands on, from Edgar Cayce to Roger Woolger*** and others.  The most meaningful discoveries I made on that subject  I have  continued to learn from, again as one learns from dreams - they  return throughout one's life.  Dreams exist outside of time or space as we understand it in our waking lives, and I believe  the structured experience of time  is much of what the   "in-carnate" experience is about.  Time is different in dis-embodied experience (a medium told me this is one of the reasons "earthbound spirits" hang around houses - they have no sense of time as we do).  

I find that my visioning experiences  remain for me as vivid and lucid in memory now as they were 30 years ago or longer.  They are footnotes on the unfolding story of my experience.   Their meaning unravels to reveal patterns as the story unwinds, the story being my life.

What made  reincarnation work striking for me  was how very mundane what surfaced usually was.  I have an excellent imagination as a trained artist, but alas, I never turned up a lifetime as Cleopatra, or a priestess of lost Atlantis, or a great Renaissance artist.  I would have enjoyed that!   What came up were scenes  of  impoverished lifetimes, short lifetimes, and lifetimes in which I was a servant, slave, or otherwise indentured to a group or individuals. As well as a  more primitive tribal lifetime, in which I had more status, possibly as a kind of shaman or a herbal healer.

untitled drawing (1975)

Which, when you think about it, is basically what most human lives are and have  been.   Only a few elite have ever had the freedom  to define their own lives and/or  the lives of others in powerful or creative ways, and if you were a woman or a minority of some kind, your chances were even less so.   Perhaps, I might add, consensus and egalitarianism was more so in tribal societies, or pre-patriarchal societies.  But certainly,  for what little we know of history and the advance of civilizations, for the commoner, life was pretty constrained, and it was always framed by hunger.

I remember very clearly, for example, a regression to a lifetime as, apparently, a young foot soldier. By the way, the regression process, for me, was always like having little glimpses into particular segments of a life, segments that had particular meaning.  In this case, the regressionist  asked that I look at my legs, and I saw that   I wore some kind of knee length tunic, had sandals and brown skinned, hairy legs.

When  I was asked to go to an important event, I found myself at a rough table in some kind of smoky,  dark room.  I was with a group of young men, all dark eyed and black haired.  We were drinking some kind of beer, and were joined by an older man with a beard (he actually could have only been about 30 or so, but I was in awe of him).  I was completely delighted that this person of authority would join us.  

Later in the regression, I saw myself killed by a spear at about the age of 17.  I hadn't done anything in that short life really,  and it says something that apparently the most exciting, treasured  thing that  ever happened  was I got to drink beer with a Captain.  Now that is a lot more convincing than had I seen myself on a throne surrounded with gold.  And there were other regressions along those lines with very little self-determination, and much hunger.  

I sound grim, I suppose, remembering this subject.  But actually I think the lives that surfaced in doing that work, and at a time when I was getting my Master's Degree, were important to the empowerment and sense of self I sought as I struggled to become a professional artist and teacher.  It was as if Divine Wisdom needed me to look at those particular lifetimes to heal them in this lifetime of so much more freedom, wealth and privilege.  Which brings one to the idea that we need to balance or heal traumas not only from this life, but from others as well, that there are  patterns that persist within the integral "story" of our souls.

"Form Is Empty" (2008) 

There was a very intense regressive process that occurred with a psychic we worked with as a group in Sedona.  She took each of us into a trance state separately, and in my case, I found myself a young girl of about 16 in what seemed to be  17th century France (it's interesting that I've always been in love with the French language, and pronunciation comes easily to me).  Essentially,  the girl was a peasant in a country estate, and was taken to the manor house by  a youngish aristocrat to become  his servant and occasional mistress, of whom he quickly tired.  She didn't have many choices about the situation, and was placid and resigned.  He was married, and the girl (me) became a nanny to his children.   There was a fire on the estate, the wife was killed, and the aristocrat and family, along with servants, apparently were moved to a city, where I continued my life as a servant in his home.

Eventually he found another wife, a young woman I felt great affection and sympathy for, as he was both negligent and abusive to her.  When carried to the time of death, I was apparently in my 50's, alone and exhausted in a grey room.  I felt "grey".  And interestingly, that sense of being "grey" is my first conscious memory from childhood, until one day I looked down and saw that I was wearing a dress, had little feet, and came to the rather adult realization that I was a little girl!  After that, the "grey" went away, and I became  involved with the experience of growing up.  I do not know if that "grey" pertained to that lifetime in France, I just remember it as a sadness or resignation that I identified as a color somehow.

I remember that the therapist called that an "unclaimed life", that I had cared for other people's husband, other people's children, lived in a house that was not mine, and  had no value to much of anyone other than as a servant.   She said it came up because I needed to understand what it would be like to have "my own" life now, to claim "my own" power, to make my own choices.  This was a theme in these sessions, and now, with the perspective of a long life, I see that it has been a theme running through the life of Lauren Raine.    And the lives of many others, of course.  

There were some surprising regressions that I still ponder over.  In 1987 I began working with crystals, and making crystal jewelry.  One regression that I did with our group (we would share our experiences after trancing) was entirely inexplicable, and yet, still strikes me as lovely.  I seemed to be an old person who was a kind of village shaman or herbalist.  I was so old, or perhaps so on the periphery of the tribe I lived with, that my sex didn't even matter, I couldn't tell if I was male or female in the visioning.  I seemed to live alone  in a hut of some kind that had lots of herbs and bones and rocks I had gathered.  

There was a woman who came to us, a teacher.  She was so different from us, racially and in other ways.  She was from a much more sophisticated culture.  She had fair skin, was tall with dark hair, and wore black, and I was completely in awe of her.  She taught me that everything I believed was wrong, was naive.  One of the things I saw her do was to sit before a big crystal, and placing her hands on it.  As she concentrated,  she "dematerialized" - she and the crystal just disappeared.  And then she came back!

"The Heart Sutra" (2008)

I still have that vision clearly in my mind, and the deep reverence "I" felt for this person.  The last part of that regression concerned me watching her die.  I was with a lot of people, and we were gathered around her, and strangely, I could hear what she was thinking.  Which must mean that I was not incarnate myself!  She was very frustrated to be dying!  She keep thinking that her work wasn't finished, while a multitude of souls were gathered around her in love and in respect.  

I still think on this priestess or whatever she was, and wonder.  Was she from Atlantis?  Was there an Atlantis?  Did people know how to "dematerialize" with crystals?  Was it all just from my imagination, since I was working with crystals at the time?  One of those elegant mysteries.

I do feel that when we seek "vision" through various practices, such as my own experiences of working with healers, psychics, or through guided meditations, or we have significant dreams, or have a spontaneous visionary experience (often brought on by trauma) they are providing information needed for the particular time they occur.  I had my "tribal shaman" meditation while being fascinated with crystals in the 80's, and at that time I was making amulets with crystals. 

"Skin Shedder Mandala" (1987)

I accessed my lifetime as an ignored and exploited servant in France while I was in a short but very abusive relationship with a man that took me a while to heal from.  Ironically, I entered into that relationship just as I was completing my MFA, and receiving attention and praise for my artwork,  and preparing to go into the field of teaching as a professional artist.  I grew up in a family with a father who was both neglectful and abusive to my mother, and as is common in such households, I proceeded in my 20's to have a number of abusive relationships.  I look back at that time, and cannot help but feel that I made myself a "victim" immediately after achieving success and acclaim because success and acclaim was either something I felt unworthy of, or a responsibility I could not endure.  Being a victim, being ignored and neglected  (I call this my "cleaning lady persona") can, in a way, be a miserable yet comfortable place to be, devoid of personal responsibility, familiar and predictable.   In fairness to myself, I was also, in this lifetime as well as perhaps others, taught that my work was not important or worthy - thus I have often found myself denigating or dismissing what was really the best of my talents and efforts.

Throughout my life this has been an issue I have had to deal with, as women especially have to deal with this externalized as well as internalized reality.  I think my experience of seeing a lifetime as a French servant was showing me a deep pattern, with feminist significance as well as personal,  I was working on shifting in this lifetime.  It may well be that the abusive and arrogant man I had that brief but miserable relationship with was the same "aristocrat" I glimpsed in that past lifetime.   If so,  as a "realist of a larger reality", he was my benefactor by playing that role so that I could perceive the pattern.  To grow and learn, and also, to perhaps aid others with that understanding.

"Open" (2010)

***Roger Woolger was a psychologist, therapist, and researcher into Past Lives Therapy, Buddhism, and metaphysics.  His many articles and books are well worth reading.  He also collaborated with his former wife, Jennifer Barker Woolger, in one of my favorite books about the Goddess and Goddess Archetypes, a book that had deep significance for me and which I used in my workshops.  And there is a story I could tell about Jennifer Barker Woolger that concerns synchronicity and the Goddess.

But I'll tell that later.

Reincarnation

Re-incarnate, to become physical, carnal, carna.........I was told by a psychic this summer that I should write.  When I asked about what, he said I should write about my life.......

But what part of  that highly subjective  story  should I write about?  Lately I've been thinking that the deepest, most timeless moments, outside of moments in awe of  beauty and the many intimacies and conflicts and  discourses of relationships,....are for me the visionary moments I have been privileged to experience.   In the realms of visioning,   art manifests to the imagination, and many-layered answers and truths reveal themselves in ways that cannot always be understood in  a concrete, "in-carnated" sort of way.   Or even in an immediately temporal way. 

There was a time in the 80's when I was very interested in re-incarnation.  I belonged to a group that met weekly to do meditation  work, I worked with a psychic who did past life regression,  I tranced with the our group using Robert Monroe (the Monroe Institute)  tapes,  and I read anything I could get my hands on, from Edgar Cayce to Roger Woolger*** and numerous others.  The most meaningful discoveries I made on that subject  I have  continued to learn from as one learns from dreams, they remain and return.  Dreams exist outside of time or space as we understand it, and I think time and space is much of what the   "in-carnate" experience is all about.  And dreams, like  visioning,  remain for me as vivid and lucid in memory now as they were 30 years ago or longer.  They are.......footnotes on the unfolding story perhaps.   Their meaning unravels as the story unwinds, the story being my life.

"The Demon Lover" (1980)

What made  reincarnation work striking for me  was how very mundane what surfaced usually was.  I have an excellent imagination as a trained artist, but alas, I never turned up a lifetime as Cleopatra, or a priestess of lost Atlantis, or a great Renaissance artist.  What came up were scenes  of  impoverished lifetimes, short lifetimes, and almost always, lifetimes in which I was a servant, slave, or otherwise indentured to a group or individuals.  Which, when you think about it, is basically what most human lives are and have always  been.    Only a few elite have ever had the freedom  to define their own lives and/or  the lives of others in powerful or creative ways, and if you were a woman or a minority of some kind, your chances were even less so.   Perhaps, I might add, consensus and egalitarianism was more so in tribal societies, or pre-patriarchal societies.  But certainly,  for what little we know of history and the advance of civilizations, for the commoner, life was pretty constrained. 

I remember very clearly, for example, a regression to a lifetime as a young foot soldier.  The regressionist  asked that I look at my legs, and I saw that   I wore some kind of knee length tunic, had sandals and brown skinned, hairy legs.  When  I was asked to go to an important event, I found myself at a rough table in some kind of smoky,  dark room.  I was with a group of young men, all dark eyed and black haired.  We were drinking some kind of beer, and were joined by an older man with a beard (he actually could have only been about 30 or so, but I was in awe of him).  I was completely delighted that this person of authority would join us.  

Later in the regression, I saw myself killed by a spear at about the age of 17.  I hadn't done anything in that short life really,  and it says something that the most exciting thing that  ever happened  was I got to drink beer with a Captain.  Now that is a lot more convincing than had I seen myself on a throne surrounded with gold.  And there were other regressions along those lines with very little self-determination, and much hunger.  

"Light is the Left Hand of Darkness" (1986)

I sound grim, I suppose, remembering this subject.  But actually I think the lives that surfaced in doing that work, and at a time when I was getting my Master's Degree, were important to the empowerment and sense of self I sought as I struggled to become a professional artist and teacher.  It was as if Divine Wisdom needed me to look at those lifetimes, which brings one to the idea that we need to balance or heal traumas not only from this life, but perhaps from others as well, that their are  patterns that persist within the integral "story" of our souls.  

There was a very intense regressive process that occurred with a psychic we worked with as a group in Sedona.  She took each of us into a trance state separately, and in my case, I found myself a young girl of about 16 in what seemed to be  17th century France (and it's interesting that I've always been in love with the French language, and pronunciation comes easily to me).  Essentially what happened was that the girl was a peasant in a country estate, and was taken to the manor house by  a youngish aristocrat to become  his servant and occasional mistress, of whom he quickly tired.  She didn't have many choices about the situation.  He was married, and the girl (me) became a nanny to his children.   There was a fire, the wife was killed, and the aristocrat and family, along with servants, moved to a city, where I continued my life as a servant.  Eventually he found another wife, a young woman I felt great affection and sympathy for, as he was both negligent and abusive to her.  When carried to the time of death, I was apparently in my 50's, alone and exhausted in a grey room.  I felt "grey".  

"Spirals" (1985)

The therapist called that an "unclaimed life", that I had cared for other people's husband, other people's children, lived in a house that was not mine, had no value other than as a servant.   She said it came up because I needed to understand what it would be like to have "my own" life now, to claim "my own" power so to speak.  This was a theme in these sessions, and now, with the perspective of some 60 years, I see that it has been a theme running through the life of Lauren Raine.  And the lives of many others, of course.  

There were some surprising regressions that I still ponder over.  In 1987 I began working with crystals, and making crystal jewelry.  One regression that I did with our group (we would share our experiences after trancing) was entirely inexplicable, and yet, still strikes me as very lovely.  I seemed to be an old person who was a kind of village shaman or herbalist.  I was so old, or perhaps so on the periphery of the tribe I lived with, that my sex didn't even matter, I couldn't tell if I was male or female. and it didn't matter.  I seemed to live in a hut of some kind that had lots of herbs and bones and rocks I had gathered.  

There was a woman who came to us, a teacher.  She was so different from us, racially, and also she was from a much more sophisticated culture.  She had fair skin, she was tall with dark hair, and wore black, and I was completely in awe of her.  She taught me that everything I believed was wrong, was naive.  And one of the things I saw her do was she sat down with a big crystal, and placing her hands on it and concentrating, she "dematerialized" - she and the crystal just disappeared.  And then she came back.  I still have that vision clearly in my mind, and the deep reverence "I" felt for this person.  The last part of that regression concerned me watching her die.  I was with a lot of people, and we were gathered around her, and strangely, I could hear what she was thinking.  Which must mean that I was not incarnate myself.  She was very frustrated to be dying!  She keep thinking that her work wasn't finished, while a multitude of souls were gathered around her in love and in respect.  

I still think on this priestess or whatever she was, and wonder.  Was she from Atlantis?  Was there an Atlantis?  Did people know how to "dematerialize" with crystals?  Was it all just from imagination?  One of those elegant mysteries.

"Me" (1979)

***Roger Woolger was a psychologist, therapist, and researcher into Past Lives Therapy, Buddhism, and metaphysics.  His many articles and books are well worth reading.  He also collaborated with his former wife, Jennifer Barker Woolger, in one of my favorite books about the Goddess and Goddess Archetypes.  Roger Woolger died in 2011.  And there is a story I could tell about Jennifer Barker Woolger that concerns synchronicity and the Goddess, but I'll tell that later.

The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women's Lives

by Jennifer Barker Woolger, Roger J. Woolger

Two Jungian psychologists discuss the influence the classic Greek goddesses have on a woman's psyche and how women can bring the different goddess energies into harmony for greater strength and new insights into their lives.

Asherah and the Tree of Life

A relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) showing an Asherah Tree with male figures holding anointing oils.  The winged figure over the tree is interesting, suggesting to some the "winged Isis", or a precursor to the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Christian "trinity".

 One of the great things about making art, one discovers, is that it's a way of "writing down" one's inner "iconography".  Most of the time, it's a way of just beginning to see (literally) what that iconography of the inner self actually is.  And then the conversation can begin, because the language is being  translated............

For many years I've made  "tree of life" images.  I'm not sure where I got the image from originally.   In early lithographs there was always a woman within the tree form, or the Tree was a backdrop to everything else in the painting (not unlike the Web motif I also became fascinated by in later "Spider Woman"  pieces).  In my 1993 "Lovers" card from the Tarot, or the 1986 lithograph "Axis Mundi" the "tree" is ubiquitious, and later I started making sculptural  torsos, the Mother within the Tree. 

Recently I had reason to learn about  Asherah, the ancient Mother Goddess associated with the early Hebrews and early (pre-monotheistic) Judaism, with  the neighboring  Canaanites, and even earlier origins.  I have not studied this Goddess much, being only vaguely aware of the name.  Asherah  was often represented as a tree, among them the ubiquitous  "Asherah poles" (ashirim)  associated with Her worship in early (pre-monotheistic) Judaism. *** There is evidence that these wooden icons, and possibly, actual trees intentionally planted as icons or shrines)  were meant to be representations of Asherah.  Asherah is  sometimes  referred to as the wife of Yahweh,  whose name became something that could not be uttered, only represented as "the Lord".  The Asherah poles, and eventually the name of Asherah, were banned from worship as Judaism became monotheistic and established the sole deity as male.

Interestingly, with the early advent of Gnostic Christianity, Asherah is perhaps re-born in the form of Sophia, the feminine face of deity, often called the "mother" or sometimes "wife" of Yaweh.  The emblem for Sophia was often a dove.   

I never would have associated the Tree of Life archetype,  which has been a part of my spiritual vocabulary for more years than I remember,  with  Asherah had I not investigated just recently  because of a visionary experience during a healing session.  

I had some energy work done last week with an alternative  healer. Not unlike Reiki practitioners, although her system had a different name, she worked with me for over an hour, helping me to enter into an altered state of consciousness, kind of like a meditation, while she, in channelling energy to work with me, also entered into an open, meditative  state.   As I closed my eyes, the session began for me with the appearance of a white dove that visually manifested right  before my (closed) eyes.  But not a literal kind of bird, more like a sacred emblem, what one might see in a church.   I immediately thought of the "Dove of Sophia",  which is of course associated with  Peace to this day. And as a Christian icon representing the Holy Spirit, it may very well be that the origins of the Dove go all the way back to Gnosticism and Sophia. 

Who, like Asherah, was removed from patriarchal monotheistic theology, Her symbols often co-opted to support the later mythos of a strictly male deity without a wife, mother, or, for that matter, a daughter either.

The healer, after the session was over, told me that she clearly saw a Goddess form present during the healing.  She said that the Lady put  a kind of crown or headpiece on my head that was "light filled", and she also cast a kind of  "net of stars" over me (which perhaps means protection (?)     The healer, who is not much familiar with Goddess archetypes,  said that the name she got was "Ashara".  She also mentioned that somehow trees or wood were associated.  I couldn't think of what that meant, until I looked it up on the Internet later, and then (of course!) discovered the Hebrew Goddess  "Asherah".   

I've felt  this year is about healing for me,  healing the family karma which means understanding  familial wounds and changing them into (hopefully) wisdom instead of re-action.  I think this year, with so much chaos and divisiveness in the world as well, has been about the  difficult and disturbing rite of passage of becoming a Saga, an old woman.  A hopeful thought is that, perhaps, this is what is also going on a bit collectively.  Rites of passage, in my experience, are never particularly easy or comfortable, cozy or even predictable.  They are thresholds.

And how is it possible to talk of healing the wounds that are "personal" without seeing that they are also interwoven with what is universal?  Familial abuse is about social abuse as well as the long reach of ancestors, going back, going forward.  Roots.  And beyond that....... the Tree of Life, the roots beneath,  the leaves above.   All things woven.  

Visions, like dreams, have multiple layers of meaning, and like dreams, exist outside of time.  In my experience Spirit communicates in visionary, symbolic, mythic ways.  This visioning was a blessing for me, and something I will continue to contemplate and ask to understand.  

"Asherah" (Artist unknown)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

Asherah pole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An "Asherah pole" is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El. The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate.  The asherim were  objects related to the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom attest, Yahweh, and thus objects of contention among competing cults. 

In translations that render the Hebrew asherim into English as "Asherah poles," the insertion of "pole" begs the question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such a wooden object: "we are never told exactly what it was", observes John Day.[4] 

Though there was certainly a movement against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in the time of King Josiah, (2 Chronicles 34:3) it did not long survive his reign, as the following four kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19)[citation needed]. Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological finds, however, modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the Asherah poles who were the innovators (of monotheism with an exclusive male god).

Asherim are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely אשרה, (Asherah) referred to as "groves" in the King James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as ἄλσος, pl. ἄλση, and the Vulgate lucus, and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text. Scholars have indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (English "Asherahs", translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot) provides ample evidence that reference is being made to objects of worship rather than a transcendent figure.

The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal. The wood was to be used for a burnt offering.

Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as "the Lord") hated Asherim whether rendered as poles: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God" or as living trees: "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make". That Asherahs were not always living trees is shown in 1 Kings 14:23: "their asherim, beside every luxuriant tree".  However, the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King Josiah's reforms in the late 7th century BC included the destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23:14).

Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim [Asherah poles]."  Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had household shrines, or at least figurines, of Asherah, which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains.

Asherah, detail from an ivory box from Mīna al-Bayḍā near Ras Shamra
 (Ugarit), Syria, c. 1300 BCE; in the Louvre, Paris

.

Raphael Patai identified the pillar figurines with Asherah in his book (forward by Merlin Stone)  The Hebrew Goddess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

Visitations, Mediums, and a Mythic Universe......

Luna Moth at my door

"I let my life be guided by a strange language that I call “signs”. I know that the world is talking to me, I need to listen to it, and if I do so I shall always be guided towards what is most intense, passionate and beautiful. Of course, it is not always easy.  If you trust life, life will trust you."

         Paolo Coelho

You know, sometimes the best, most profound  things can't be told, hence the origins of the word "mystery", which is from the Greek, a word identified with the Eleusinian Mysteries  meaning "that which cannot be spoken".  But this is a journal, and so I'll try.....perhaps that inability to express what I experience as a "mythic"  universe has to do with the coming together at times of so many different dimensions, multiple levels of synchronicity, metaphor, and perception.   See?  How do you talk about it  except through poetry, art, or metaphor?

"There's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in." ~~~ Leonard Cohen

Once I got on the road synchronicities and insights  have flooded into my daily life - that's what happens when you enter "liminal zones", those places, times, and activities that are transitional, that put us into the creative space of becoming.  Travel can do that, art process and meditation can do it, and critical times in our lives can do it as well.  My wise friend Wendy talks about the "shamanic initiation", those events in our lives that "crack" us open, times that challenge our beliefs and assumptions.  Painful as those times are, they are also times when door open into new vistas of perception and possibility.

In Chautauqua county, my other life floods in, along with the rain and humidity I've missed in the desert.   Lilydale's and Brushwood's  energy is high, and there is  also such joyful elemental energy there, which you feel as soon as you arrive.  Joining a circle at Lilydale, I found my old sensitivity still present, if rusty, and was able to take several "messages"  as well as receiving significant information for myself from the facilitating medium, Stephanie.  She commented accurately on my bad ankle, saying that it was to make me "slow down"......and at a Sunday service, another medium singled me out (even though I was hiding in the back row) and told me I needed to "slow down" again. Hmm.......I need to think about that.

Stopped for several days to visit Wendy, a friend I met in 2003.  Wendy is a true Medium - her sensitivity began  at 4  when she suffered kidney failure and almost died.  She was also struck by lightning as a child.  She believes these two events brought about her sensitivity.  It  took her many years, and a painful childhood, to come to grips with those gifts.  Wendy amazes me, as she lives simultaneously in two or more worlds, all day long, every day - and it's difficult for people who aren't mediums themselves, or well educated in metaphysics and the "paranormal" to understand her.  She's a successful career woman, living in a town and profession where her gifts are completely unknown to her colleagues, and she's also a medium who sometimes chooses to do readings, helps with hauntings, is an artist, and for fun, goes ghost hunting with colleagues. 

I feel Wendy has helped me to understand my own perceptions  a great deal in the course of our conversations.  To work "inter-dimensionally", as mediums do, one must learn to think in,  as Wendy puts it, "Dream Time" terms, which includes thinking symbolically and without the construct of sequential time as we understand it "in the flesh".  For her, spirits are all around, familiar spirits come to help her or just to visit, people in need of help, people who want to contact someone (usually associated with someone close to her).  Sometimes she sages the room because she has energies she doesn't want there, or just doesn't have the time.

She has a "ghost hunter" machine, a little machine that makes white noise.  I sat for half an hour with her while she asked questions, and hear the machine produce scratchy, sometimes lucid, responses, from what sounded like different voices trying to talk through a very bad phone connection.  I clearly heard "hello", "Wendy", and other short phrases.  I also smelled pipe smoke, and Wendy's face lit up.  "That's my Dad" she said.

This past Solstice there was a tragedy at Brushwood - a young woman had heart failure and died suddenly.  I remember seeing this young woman several times before the event, and being unable to stop looking at her for two reasons - she looked  very much like a very young version of my own daughter, very vulnerable, and she also "glowed" - there was a luminosity about her and I couldn't stop staring at her.  When I told Wendy about this sad event, she said that people who are dying always have a "glow" to them.  She said when she sees that in people, she knows they are getting ready to leave, because time, in the spirit world, does not have the same meaning it does here.  When I went to the area she died in, I did prayers to the Mother for her - and was surprised in my meditation there to clearly see the image of a tall woman taking the hand of a young person, and a sense of peace.  What I take from this, having talked with Wendy, is that I also saw this young woman as looking like my daughter because, perhaps, that energy of Mother, her own and the divine Mother, was what was needed to help her spirit.  I am no expert on this highly subjective experience.........

Spending time with Wendy can be intense!  I hope someday, perhaps when she retires, she'll become interested in perhaps living and working at Lilydale, because she's a powerful healer on a multitude of levels, a true shaman.   She gave me a great gift, which it's going to take me time to unfold, although my friend said that in the spirit world, it's "already done", because all time is happening at once.

We had been talking about the very convincing  documentary on Animal Planet about mermaids washing up with whales after the navy's horrific sonar testing.  It's a hoax, of course, although tragically the death of so many whales is not.  We were sitting at the table drinking coffee and Wendy's eyes misted.  She said "Excuse me, but someone is here, and I think it's important".  She said that a very tall, thin, very black man in a flat, disc like mask that was black with a white band across the eye holes and a red spot on the "forehead" was standing right behind me.  He put his hands on my shoulders (as a blessing?).  He told her he was something like "samarai" but it was a difficult accent for her to understand, and that he wanted me to help in some way.  He said that I would help to "revive Yemeja". 

Then Wendy said she perceived a large number of people, his tribe.  They were showing her images of the ocean, and offerings to the ocean, fruit, baskets, fish, and small white shells.  Tears were running down her face (Wendy says that when the energy is very intense this happens) and she said that he was thanking me.  Then they were gone.  Wendy said this was "high voltage", and for a while she continued to have tears in her eyes.  For myself, not perceiving this, I said that I was grateful, I thanked him and them, and said that I would do what I could to the best of my abilities.

I think this will unfold in the future, its meanings.  But I reflect that Yemaja, Mother Ocean, is an Orisha* originating in West Africa among the Yoruba people and perhaps others, is often shown as a black mermaid.  The destruction of intelligent life in the ocean, the whales, the dolphins, by navy sonar testing, is very real.  We are, indeed, killing Yemeja as well as the whales.   I am among many artists, mythologists, and activists who are trying to change consciousness about our living earth, to revive the sanctity that our ancestors once had.  Before it's too late.

I looked on Google for flat disc masks such as a tribal shaman might wear, and found that there are indeed many such in Africa, although I have not found one such as Wendy described.  However, I did discover that there is an extensive group of people with a long cultural history called the "Songhai", which sounds quite similar to "Samarai", and some of their domain touched the western ocean on Africa's shores.

*Orisha are Spirits  of nature and are responsible for the rules which govern nature.  Orisha are anthropomorphized with human characteristics for the purpose of understanding their essence and being able to extrapolate psychological constructs.Orisha Worship came to the Americas with the African slave trade over a period of 400 years.   In addition the slaves blended their African practice with the Catholic religion to hide their overt practices from Europeans.  In this manner, the traditions of Lukumi and Santeria were born.

Reflections on Visioning

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

 Lao-Tzu

 I've recently discovered a way to publish, inexpensively, my RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE cards, and so have given myself the luxury of working on a really nice book to accompany the deck.......this project has been in the works for 20 years, so needless to say, I never really thought it would get published, so this is a surprise.  Going back to these cards is like re-visiting a younger self, trying to  understand her.  I can't say I do.  But I do see that,  the minute I re-engaged with this (for me) ancient project, many colored (rainbow) threads of synchronicity began to weave around me!


The Goddess is all about creativity.  Begin to create, throw in some excitement to flavor the mix, and the universe will nudge you along.  So I entirely believe.

I've created 7 new cards, and am having a hard time writing about them.  I'm actually a visual thinker, and writing is always rather excruciating for me.  So, in the midst of a Bon Mot, wham, a power outage. When that happens, there's nothing to do but take a small vacation, so I went downtown to the studio to sweep the floor, since I'm trying to get it rented.

In walked Kristy, who is doing a series of paintings about the Tarot!  She wanted me to see her new painting in the series, and in the course of visiting her studio, she asked me if I was going to be in a show about Water (we think about water a lot, here in the Southwest).......it seemed I only had two hours left  to bring work to the gallery.

 I  rushed to Raices Teller, where a conversation ensued about my experience last year with the Waters of the World ritual at the Goddess Conference in Glastonbury.   I have a vial of the "holy water"  from the ritual, the White Spring and the Chalice Well.  One of the curators asked  if I had anything I could bring to the show about that experience.

Immediately a distinct vision of a little shrine popped into my head, and now I have two days to make it! 

I brought the "Waters of the World" with me on the plane, carrying the essence of those holy places and the joined waters from around the world to share its beautiful blessing.  Now I find myself thinking about "visioning". To be an artist is to make a career of it, but we are all the artists of our lives, and when we engage the mythic mind, we find ourselves woven into the rainbow threads of many other lives as well.  There's  a thread dangling around me these days, as I honestly don't know what to do with my life anymore..........I'm trying to catch it.......over the rainbow...........