Shamanic Dreaming™

Carry Brigid’s Flame to Light Your Life & Our World

Module One
Sherri: Hello and welcome, everyone, to Module One of your Shift Network's course
Shamanic Dreaming with Robert Moss. Today's title is "Carry Brigid’s Flame to
Light Your Life & Our World." I'm Sherri, your host.

Robert: Thank you, Sherri. Hello, beautiful dreamers. I loved hearing all those his and
hellos and greetings from all over the world map. We're going to find, are we not,
we are creating a fabulous community for soul, for survival, for good spirits, for
lifting spirits, which we need to do right now. I'm getting shivers as I speak to you
because we are indeed in dark times, aren't we? Our world has stopped for so
many of us. So many are on the edge. So many are suffering unparalleled
challenges, social challenges, economic challenges, moral challenges, under very
questionable leadership. So it's time for us to dream our way through. I say with
great passionate belief that we can dream our way through. Dreaming can get us
through. It's in difficult times like these that dreaming is not some little option for
sort of some new-age pastime over an odd weekend. Dreaming is everyday
practice. You know already, I think, how deep your dreams can go. They can take
you to other worlds. They can help you to remember what the soul is. They can
revive your sense that there is meaning and purpose in life.

Dreams can connect you to the greater powers. That's very much where we're
going with this series because we're at a time when we must invite the friendship,
the alliance, the participation of greater powers in our affairs in this fragile
atmosphere between heaven and earth in which we survive contending too often
with other species. Dreams can connect us with other species. They can connect
us with our ancestors. We'll discover that too. This is about finding our way
through the practice of dreaming, a very advanced and powerful form of dreaming
through the underworld. It's about our individual journeys through the
underworld, and it's about our collective journey and how we can help each other
in these dark times. It's springtime if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. For some
of us going around behind facemask, it doesn't feel quite spring-like as we would
wish.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 1

But it is springtime, and springtime in the mythologies is the time when the god
or goddess rises from under the earth, rises out of death or the place of the dead
and comes up shining, and the world comes back into blossom, back into flower,
back into fruit, back into harvest time eventually. We want to honor this turning
of the year, the spring turning. We want to discover in this course, in our own
dreaming, in our deepening practice, how we too can bring treasures out of
darkness. That's what this course is about: bringing treasures out of darkness,
getting through the underworld journey, remembering what the soul wants for us
and our kind, finding practical tools for survival, takeaways that will help us on any
given day to find resources that we may not have available in an ordinary way and
to tap into that bigger and braver story, which can give us the courage and the
clarity to face the ups and downs of everyday existence.

Our first class is dedicated to Brigid. Some of you know her well. Some of you are
privileged to live with her on her green land in Ireland. She is known, of course, to
all Celts. She is known to many others because she's not a goddess of a certain
department or a certain territory. She is a Great Goddess. She has a great mother
goddess. She's a goddess of nourishment. She's a goddess of life. In her, the life
force is tremendous. She is in the earth and with the earth, and yet she carries a
fire. We can borrow that fire from her that can rise to the highest. She's depicted
being born out of threshold. Her mother is coming or going with milk that is still
warm from the cow. There is Brigid. This is the Christian version of the story. There
are many versions. This is a Christian version of the story. Here's Brigid and here's
a pregnant mother. Her mother is carrying warm milk fresh from the cow. Brigid
is born and there's a red sunrise blazing. The light on her face, on her head, on her
baby head crowning coming out looks as if it's rising to heaven like a tremendous
candle flame.

There in that image from one of those endearing and indelible legends is part of
why we're starting with Brigid. She is a goddess of the threshold and many things,
but she is born out of threshold, a goddess and saint of a threshold. We are, all of
us, more than ever conscious. We are at a threshold. We're at a gateway in life.
This is a liminal space. It's a space of a challenge and also of immense opportunity.
We see in that image of the sun, the red sun blazing from her face and rising like
an immense candle flame towards heaven. We see the possibility of raising what
AE, the Irish poet, and patron and mystic, called the Candle of Vision. We're going
to light candles of vision in our lives, in our minds in this class. Why start with
Brigid? Well, I've given you a couple of reasons. Her feast is an Imbolc in the
contemporary calendar. It's on February the 1st. which we, of course, passed
because she brings spring early. She brings spring actually at the time when the
black thorn sinister with a somewhat sinister reputation, we'll talk about that
later, flowers before it bursts into leaf. The black thorn puts up its array of
blossoms before it comes into leaf. So she is a goddess.

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Her fire festival is associated with the early spring, the first coming of spring. What
else is she? She is a universal goddess. Cló Gaelach glossary, this ancient Irish
Gaelic text, Irish text, tells us that her worship was so popular in early times that
all goddesses might be called Brigid. So we know that when we use the word
Brigid, which means something like the high one, the exalted one, we feel the thrill
of feminine sovereignty, of the divine feminine and its universality in that word,
the high one, the exalted one. When we name Brigid, we might be speaking about
all the goddesses. There's this thing about Brigid, which is that she brings
apparently competing or conflicting things together. She is a goddess of the old
religion. She is a saint of the newer Christian religion. There is, for most people
who honor Brigid, no sense of competition between them. I talk to people who
are devout orthodox Catholics; I talk to people who are fiery or very watery
pagans, they don't feel that there's any problem. There's no problem really
between discerning what aspect of Brigid is the goddess and what aspect of Brigid
is the saint.

As we come closer to Brigid, we might find in her stories, in her blessings, in her
resources. Ways of healing competition and conflict in our lives and in the
situations around us. Hopefully, that will be so. She has many aspects. She is a
patron of poets. Poets love her. She's a patron of healers. She has places of
healing. We're going to visit a place of healing like those associated with Brigid in
a journey in this class. She's associated with crafts people, particularly those who
work with metal, which is to say in all of this that she is also a dreamer and a patron
of dreams because, in the Celtic tradition, you see, nothing is prized more in life
than awen, inspiration. Where do you get inspiration? Where do you get creative
power from? You get it, Gerald of Wales traveling the Celtic lands many centuries
ago, you'll get it through dreams. The awenyddian, the Welsh word for the
inspired ones, the seers, the poets, the bards. The awenyddians that Gerald of
Wales mostly get their inspiration in dreams.

They wake with a taste of honey or milk or meat on their tongues or sometimes
feeling that they have eaten a manuscript, eaten a scroll. Brigid is associated with
dreams. In one of the stories, her druid father dreamed her name. He dreamed
the three priests. Apparently, Christian priests came to him and said her name is
Brigid. That is her name. So her story in that version begins with a dream, with a
dream of a druid, and from it comes a goddess who is also a saint. So this is a very
interesting person for us to dream within this first class. All right, I'm going to give
you, extending this monologue and making it a trilogy, which is a very Celtic thing
to do because three is a Celtic number. I'm going to give you three of my personal
experiences through which I feel blessed in announcing Brigid as a mentor and
patron of this class. I hope that you will feel the blessing coming through to you.
I'm going to ask Sherri to put up an icon of Brigid, a well-known one from Ireland.
It's a church icon. I want to tell you a story about it. So here is a religious version
of Brigid from the Christian tradition.

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You'll also see if you feel with it, there might be more going on. I found myself on
a very wet day in Kildare, guided to the Solas Brídhe, which is a sanctuary of Brigid
run by Brigidine Sisters. There we are. There's the icon. It's built in the shape of
Brigid's cross, which is originally made of rushes, and mostly made of rushes as
you probably know, perhaps because, in the old days, they would lay rushes on
the floor of a birthing room where a child was going to be born. Brigid has a close
association with parturition, with childbirth and delivery. I'm guided to this space
and these gentle elderly Brigidine nuns. I feel as I enter this modern sanctuary on
ancient land, I have a sense of goodness beyond any I've experienced at any
structure built by human hands on this planet, I'm not exaggerating, of goodness,
of simple goodness, of healing and reverential intense streaming from all over the
world into this focal point. There is a candle. There is the eternal flame of Brigid.
Sitting in front of flame with that icon on the wall, something happened. I had a
waking vision, eyes wide open. You can think I went crazy if you like. I saw Brigid
rise from her icon. I saw her stand in the space as a radiant figure. I saw the
radiance of a blue mantle. It's blue in this church. Sometimes in the older tradition,
it's more likely to be green. I felt the blue radiance of this mantle spreading like an
aura.

She plucked the sword that in icon is under her feet, up from under her feet. She
held it aloft, and it became a sword of light. She held it up. She said, "Robert, I do
not stand on this sword only to deny it to the killers. I stand on this sword to be
ready to give the sword of light to the warriors of light who will be required in our
world." I have to say that I had goosebumps would be the understatement of the
year. I carried that energy. I got shivers now, and perhaps you have some shivers
too. I carried that radiant aura of Brigid with me. I carried it into a three-day in-
person training at Howth, north of Dublin, called Dreaming in the Celtic Soul Back
Home. Her light was with us through all of those days. I'm going to read you the
poem that I wrote to honor this particular encounter. It's called Brigid's Flame.

May the radiance of her blue mantle

surround you and protect you
May you burn with her fires:
fire of seership,
fire of craft,
fire of inspiration,
fire of healing,
fire of transformation
fire of heart.
May you always stand ready
to wrest the killing irons
from evildoers and oppressors
and to take up the Sword of Light
in defense of the weak and the just

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May you always be a lover of poets
and commit poetry every day.

So with those words, I hope you will accept something of the blessing of Brigid or
at least my efforts to convey her blessing to you and your loved ones. I mentioned
six particular gifts in that poem because that's what I was asked to do. I was asked
to explain six particular gifts. That was the number two times three. I'm going to
ask Sherri to put up a second image, which is one of my drawings. It is a recent
drawing. It's from the last week. I haven't shown it to anybody except three Irish
women so far. So you're the first to see this. The drawing is called Maire. There
she is. It came from a vision before dawn last week, and already perhaps I should
speak a little bit about a practice I'm going to encourage you to pursue in this
course. When we talk about dreams, whether or not we understand that dreaming
is about more than what happens during sleep, we often make an association
between dream and sleep. A dream is something that happens during sleep, right?
Well, yeah, dreams come in sleep, but dreams come in many ways. One of the
most creative places to dream is that liminal space between sleep and awake. Do
you know what I'm talking about? You're not awake, you not asleep, you're
drifting.

The great guide to that space is actually Tinker Bell from the Hollywood movie of
Peter Pan. Do you remember? When Peter's sad because Tink is going away, he's
going to lose his fairy friend, Tink says something like, "Look for me in the place
between sleep and awake. There I will always love you. There you will always find
me." The place between sleep and awake. Well, I was in that place before dawn
last week. Suddenly I've sensed a presence, and it takes form as this Irish woman,
I know she's Irish, with very fair milky skin, I would say, milky skin and streams,
cascades of red hair. Her light looks like a light summer shift or dress. Later on in
the vision, as she begins to show some of her authority, she's holding something
like a staff and something like a triskelion, the triple spiral, which is one of the
symbols of Brigid and one of the symbols of Celtic spirituality. We have a
conversation. She tells me her name.

Her name sounds like Moira, but it's spelt M-A-I-R-E, which is the Irish version of
Maria or Mary. So that's her name. She's come to tell me things about Brigid, and
to give me keys to the understanding of Brigid. I'll postpone talking about them in
detail until we get a bit deeper into the class. But since this appearance, this
apparition is a very happy one, not only do I feel blessed; I felt mobilized. I tracked
down the leads. I went through my library and other people's libraries for Celtic
stuff. I talked to three women in Ireland who live very close to Brigid, very close
to her landscapes, her wells, her fire, carry her flames, the mounds, the holy
places. As we get deeper into the class, I will use and invite you to use keys given
to me in this direct intervention, benign intervention by someone I will call a
priestess Brigid.

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There is in the picture you can see something like a mound with something like a
white quartz gate or opening at the top of the mound. That was part of the story.
You see symbols of a fawn and an apple and a candle flame, a candle wick, candle
flame. We'll talk about that. You see a bowl. Actually, before I saw the ball, I saw
an immense cow ready to feed whole populations. Brigid has a strong association
with a cow like Hathor of Egypt. She has a cow goddess. So I just wanted to share
with you for a moment that in some of the journeys, in some of the meditations
I'm going to lead, I am inspired and hope to inspire you with direct information,
direct knowledge from someone who came to me as other guides have come in
my life as an emissary from a certain realm, from the precinct of Brigid. I have
great gratitude and great awe for what was made available to me. I'm going to
share it as openly and as freely as I possibly can. We can take Maire down from
the screen, and we can show one more image. It's another of my own drawings.
The morning after that appearance from Maire, I sensed the presence again. I
thought, oh, great! We're going to get something more from the realm of Brigid.

What came up in my room was an immense, beautiful green-gold serpent. Wow.

Now you might say, wait a minute, there's a lot of Irish going on here. There are
no snakes in Ireland. Well, I think the truth of the matter is that when we hear
there are no snakes in Ireland, well, first of all, there never were. They never did
have snakes. St. Patrick didn’t drive them out of Ireland. It never did have snakes.
But the snakes for many, particularly in Celtic realms, represent feminine energy,
the divine feminine. So the driving out of the snakes is not about driving out the
physical snake. It's perhaps about driving out the old religion and particularly the
power of women, driving out all the symbolism to those Celtic knots and Celtic
spirals, right? You see that in the form of a snake. For women of spirituality, and
women of healing in the Celtic way and I know many of them, the snake is
generally a very trusted, very respected ally. The snake lives close to the earth.
The snake can shed her skin and come back shining.

Brigid herself is called, if you go to Scotland, for some of us and some of the old
poems, she who comes out of the mound at Imbolc at early spring as a snake might
come out at the mound. So Brigid might be, amongst other things, a bit of a snake,
a bit of a serpent goddess. I was pleased by the visitation of the green-gold
serpent. For those of us who look at all the cross-cultural swathe of healing
traditions, we go to Asclepius perhaps, his divine family, we go to other places,
but this is Celtic stuff. The green-gold serpent was my third image. I hope as I
mentioned that to you, that perhaps it will play a positive role in your visioning
because we're going to learn in this course how to do imaginal healing. My
goodness, my goddess, don't we need it now? Don't we need scripts that work for
our imaginal healing for ourselves and others? All right, I'm going to give the
universal invocation of the gatekeeper to get us going. Just before I do that, I hope
I've got you excited and whipped up a bit.

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But I'd like you just perhaps for a moment to take it easy and follow the flow of
your breath. Just follow the flow of your breath. Just check whether anything is
holding you back from going deeper because we're going to go very deep. We're
starting with a very benign and hopefully very healing introduction as we go into
the realm of Brigid because she is one of the most generous, the endlessly giving,
the endlessly nourishing, mothering figure. So we start with her. But as we go
deeper into this course, we're going to go into some dark and freaky places. Life
has put us into some dark and freaky places. So just check yourself that you're
ready for the journey. If anything is holding you back, just see if you can gently
blow it out of you. Follow the flow of your breath. If anything is holding you back,
and stopping you from being absolutely present to what lies ahead, blow it out of
you. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Yes, you need help with things.
We all do. I think help is going to come through. Let's trust that together we will
find our way through. As you breathe in, breathe in a sense of expansion, of
possibility, of adventure. Yes, you're ready for the adventure. So here's the
universal blessing of the gatekeeper, that sacred power that opens and closes our
doors in life, for all of us.

As we embark on this journey into healing and transformation, this journey into
resurrection in our lives, this journey into the realm of the goddesses of life and
death and rebirth, this journey into the power of dreaming, may our doors and
gates and paths be open and our doors and gates and paths between the worlds,
and may the doors and gates and paths of any who wish to do us or those we love
any harm be closed. May it be so. All right, we're going to do two minutes of
drumming. Just two minutes of drumming. I'm going to ask Sherri to pull up the
image of Brigid, the statue of Brigid at her well, Brigid statues at her well in Kildare,
just so you have something going on on the screen other than me for two minutes
when we start the drumming. The initial drumming, if you're new to this, is simply
to invite a dream or image to come to you, something that you might want to
explore. We'll do a little bit of Dreamwork, a little bit of quick-footed Dreamwork.

For three people who are ready in a little while to call in and share, it will have to
be brief, and share a brief report of a dream or image or vision that is with you. It
could be something new that comes to you during the drumming. It could be a
dream from way back. It could be something from a journey or meditation. It could
be something that you experienced on the roads of ordinary life that is like a
dream, has symbolic meaning for you. We need to take dreams more literally and
the events of waking life more symbolically. Any of those things might do. You got
the idea? So two minutes of drumming. You're just going to get your body, your
gorgeous body in a comfortable relaxed position, yes. You're going to be ready to
find out what story wants to play with you, big or small, related or unrelated, to
the stated themes of this course. You might be surprised. Be ready to be surprised.
Got it?

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 All right, two minutes of drumming. At the end of it, I'm going to ask you to write
down a title for the dominant dream or image that is with you. The drumming
starts right now. [Drumming] Okay, let's come back from the short drumming.
Write something down. Write down, at the very least, a title, give a name to the
dominant image, memory, or dream that is with you. As soon as you're ready, you
might want to send in those titles or names. We'll get Sherri to read a selection.
We'll get a sense of the colors of our imaginations, what's going on with us in our
dream life, in our dreams of life. So when you have a title, you might just want to
send that in. We'll get Sherri to read a selection. I'd also like you to get ready, if
you feel called, to raise your hand, as Sherri explained, by one means or another,
and share a brief report with me. It'll have to be brief. We're going to try to
demonstrate a core technique of this approach, which we call the Lightning
Dreamwork, which is a way that we developed of being able to hear each other's
stories and offer some non-intrusive, non-authoritarian feedback and guide each
other towards appropriate action. We do a shortened version of it this time.
You're going to be given the homeplay assignment, if you haven't done it before,
of learning it in depth. By the way, we have many of our dream teachers, many of
our certified teachers of Active Dreaming in this class, so you have many mentors
and tutors available as we go along in addition to me. This is really an
extraordinary group. All right, Sherri, if we have some titles coming in, you might
read a few. We might also invite people to start raising their hands and come
through with reports.

Sherri: I'm not sure I can read them as quickly as they're coming in. Shake Road, Brigid's
Rainbow Body Merging with a Rainbow Flame.

Robert: Wow. I love that.

Sherri: Serpent Energy Rising Upwards, Natural Stone Hearth, Meeting the Wave,
Listening to Nature Spirits and Understanding Their Messages, Create Your
Creations.

Robert: Yes, please.

Sherri: Roman Times are Over.

Robert: Maybe.

Sherri: Face in Profile in Helmet, White to Rainbow Snake Wrapping Around Brigid and
Her Energy.

Robert: Ah, here we go.

Sherri: King and Rose Old Island Cemetery.

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Robert: Right. Well, we could go on and on. I'd love people to go on and on, but we're not
going to read any more for now. Let me just say this takes us to the heart things
right now. I was looking at a competition from some school or school system in
Ireland, the children's drawings of Brigid. The best one, the one that won the
competition, showed Brigid in a rainbow garment that streams across the whole
of Earth. We had a rainbow Brigid that is beautiful. We had all that serpent energy
rising. By the way, what I've got on my hand dangling from my hand is a bracelet,
Sirona. Sirona is one of Brigid's Celtic sisters, a goddess in the territory of Treveri,
the Celtic people of southern Germany. A statue of Sirona dug up at Hochscheid,
in that part of the world, shows her with a snake wrapped around. It's wrapped
around her right arm rather like images of Hygeia, the consort of Asclepius. There's
a little snake on this Celtic charm. One of the things we're going to notice is that
the serpent might be absolutely central to healing in this as in other traditions.
Okay, we have some brave soul ready to share a story with me directly. I'll take
one.

Sherri: We do. We have many. Let's go to [Participant] Hi, [Participant].

Participant: Hello.

Robert: Hi, [Participant}. What have you got?

Participant: I have really bad news this morning. My uncle passed away with the coronavirus.

Robert: I'm so sorry.

Participant: Thank you. Unfortunately, we can't say goodbye to him or anything. I just went
today time of his death because I just want to make sure he’s ok, and he’s not lost.
I saw him looking at himself, and thinking, am I dead? He went outside in the hole.
I think he's gone. I could feel some presence. I couldn't see anything else.
Hopefully, I can explore later.

Robert: I'm so sorry, [Participant]. May his doors be open. There are transitional periods.
They vary with different individuals, different traditions. But I would expect that
part of him will be around this earth for a while. Part of him may quite frankly
want to visit the family members he was not able to see. You might find that you
have a visitation from him or that he turns up in your dreams, or you have the
possibility of finding him. I'm getting shivers now, [Participant] Maybe even now
through one of the journeys we will make in this class; you might find your way to
have some kind of contact with him or with a guide who can help him on his
journey. That is the other thing. I'm getting shivers of recognition that this work.
This approach is so important for all of us now who want loving contact with those
in our families.

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 In our circle of friends who are either entering the journey beyond this life or on
the edge. We need connection with each other. We need to be able to exchange
love. We need contact. I believe that you will find through dreaming, whether it's
dreaming in the journeys with the drumming or the other sounds in class or
dreaming at night or just being open in your gentle, open-hearted way to loving
contact, I think you'll find that you discover what you need to know. I think you'll
find that you and he are both guided and blessed at this stage of your own
journeys. That's what I wish for you both.

Participant: Thank you.

Robert: Thank you. That was very brave of [Participant] to speak like that. It immediately
takes us to the depth of the need for dreaming as we recognize it. Dreaming, as
we practice it in the fusion of shamanism and dreamwork that I call Active
Dreaming, it's all about soul. It's about remembering what the soul needs. It's
about finding ways to bring the soul to the right place. We could take a second
sharing if someone's ready, Sherri.

Sherri: Sure. Let's go to [Participant] next.

Participant: Hi, Robert. Thanks so much for taking me.

Robert: Thanks for calling. What have you got?

Participant: I have Red-Haired Lady Visits Old God Tree as the title. In my dream, the red-haired
woman is walking in a blue-hooded cape through a lush green landscape. She
comes upon an old growth tree. She stands in reverence before the tree with her
arms down and open, kneels before the tree, places her head to the earth in a
bowed position. Then she lies on her back beneath. She is looking up at the leaves
of the tree with a light shining through and sees a spider spinning her web. She's
watching the spider spin her web, and then we came back.

Robert: What a beautiful image. Was all of this playing out during the two minutes of
drumming?

Participant: Yes.

Robert: Well, you might find you'll be able to go on with it. We're going to make three
journeys in this class. I've got to watch the time a bit. Any one of them might be a
portal to carry on with that beautiful vision. Certainly, you'll find trees available in
all three of the journeys. The oak tree, as you know, is a huge importance in this
tradition, the Celtic tradition. People say that the oak beyond other trees is Brigid's
tree. Well, it's the druids' tree, of course. Some people think the word druid is
derived from the oak. Strict etymologists aren't convinced about that, but we

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 10

 know that the oak has a huge importance as a portal and a source of strength in
the Celtic tradition. Being at the oak with such a wonderful personage is a very
promising beginning. If it's my experience, I want more and more and more. I
would be absolutely open. Maybe with the very next journey, which starts at a
well, the kind of healing waters that Brigid presided over, maybe you'll find your
oak tree there, maybe you'll find your red-haired woman in the blue hood there.
All I need to say to you is this is a splendid beginning. What a splendid invitation
to a further journey. Let's hope you can continue.

Participant: Thank you.

Robert: All right, great. By the way, a quick word about practice. One of the core practices
of the shamanic dreaming that I teach and operate by is we learn to take a
personal image, that's a very good example, and stay with it or go on with it, get
more of it. Use it as a doorway to a further experience. We might need to do this
with a night dream or the sleep dream for all sorts of reasons. We're scared of
something we run away. Well, that's no good. You run away from something in
your dreams they'll bite you in the rear end or somewhere else in waking life. No,
you need to go back. Face it on its own ground and deal with it. That will become
one of the themes of the classes that lie ahead. You might need to go back because
you met someone that you know, and you'd like to have a longer conversation,
maybe a departed loved one. That's going to become very, very important in these
times. It might be an image of another kind. It might be an image that came to you
with the short drumming, and you want more so you go on with it. We call this
dream reentry. It is learning learning, learning, that the most potent portals for a
shamanic journey come from your own imagination, your own direct experience.
You know, if it's come to you in a dream, for example, it's timely, it has a certain
objectivity. All right, because three is a Celtic number, let's see if we can take a
third brief sharing if someone's ready, Sherri.

Sherri: All right. Let's go to [Participant]. [Participant], your line is open.

Participant: Hi.

Robert: Hi, [Participant], What have you got?

Participant: I got chicken skin.

Robert: Okay.

Participant: Oh, my goodness. My dream connected to dreams that I've had, the first dream
that I had seven years ago when my husband passed away. In the dream, I've had
many, many times. It calls me out of an old oak tree. I’m living in this huge tree,
which I later through research discovered is the angel oak here in the United

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 11

 States. This dream calls me to come down out of the tree. So I've had that dream
for years. Then I had a dream just a couple months ago where I met this hooded
lady at Stonehenge. There was a huge beautiful fire. It was at night under a full
moon. She asked me to follow her. After that dream, I found your course and
realized that she was Brigid. She was asking me to follow her. So I had to take your
course. So now today, she told me those dreams are connected, that she called
me down out of the old oak, that she called me out of the old life to follow her.
Then just now, you say that the oak is her tree, which I didn't realize before. I'm
just, like I said, I'm just overwhelmed with emotion and chicken skin and reality
that she's calling me.

Robert: You're giving me chicken skin too, my dear. There is, in Celtic tradition, this thing
of singing the soul back down from a tree where it's perched. I think of a story
from Welsh tradition, the Welsh Gwydion, of a trickster sometimes. There's soul
that is up in a tree, and it's a soul that needs to get back on this earth and back in
the body because it's sort of gone away, and it's not doing well up there in the
trees. It needs to be back on this earth. So he sings. Here comes the power of the
Celtic eloquence, the bardic skill, the goodly speech. He sings for the soul to come
down from the tree. That's not your story, of course, but my mythic mind takes
me there. If it's my story, I'm thinking about that. Because the oak was my tree of
vision and still is, to some extent, my tree of vision beyond all others personally, I
think what it meant for me to dream with the oak and then to come down and
find my way of walking on this good earth. May you be blessed in that. Brigid is a
great patron. Let me say this as clearly as I can.

Brigid is a great patron for those of us who need to remember to put one foot in
front of the other on this good earth because her gifts are blessings most often
conveyed in homely, practical ways. She multiplies the food available. She creates
larger supplies of beer. She produces a lake of beer for God in the Christian telling.
Some of us like that idea. She allows the cows to give plenty of milk. She loves
butter and cheese. If you want to honor her, you put out some butter or cheese
with Brigid in mind, thinking back to the titles we shared earlier. She's also the
goddess of the half fire of the kitchen, of a central place in the family, of stability,
of love. All right, we can get a little too wordy. Even I can confess to getting a little
too wordy sometimes though we must have good words to go Celtic because
eloquence is the great Celtic gift.

We're going to do something, I hope before we're done to demonstrate more of

what I would call the Celtic blessing way, which you might want to make more of
your practice. I think we're ready to do a journey. We'll make it a five-minute
journey. We're going to go to a well. Let me just talk a little bit about what we're
doing. You might find yourself going to this well. Actually, it's not the world in
Kildare. It's another one. They're all good. There are many wells in Ireland. Brigid
is attributed some patronage over all the sacred wells. There are other names in

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 12

other places. Wells were places a pilgrimage for the Celts, places of pilgrimage and
healing. You might have seen, if you've been to one of these places, the clooties,
pieces of rag, hung in trees by the well. The old practice, I'm not sure how many
of the people who go there today understand it, the old practice was if you take a
piece of natural cloth and dip it in the waters of the sacred well, you then wrap it
around the part of your body for which you need healing. Maybe you need to rub
it over all of you, or maybe there's a specific area, a joint, the location of a certain
organ. You take that piece of cloth that has been dipped in the sacred water, and
you apply it to your body, and you hope that it is going to take from you the
symptom that you don't like, and then you attach it to the tree. The idea is that as
the cloth disintegrates over time, so will the ailment. I suspect that this is a sort
of, let's say, bowdlerized, made respectable version of the tradition of getting into
the well, into the pool body and all, and putting yourself deep.

To get you ready for what I'm going to ask you to do as you make a journey to the
well of healing and memory, that's what we'll call it, the well of healing and
memory, I want to read you what a true priestess of Brigid, a wonderful Irish
woman who has done programs with me in Ireland, said to me when I asked her
about her experience with the wells in relation to Brigid. Listen to this. I'm quoting
her. "Every time I drove through Kildare," this is from years and years ago, "my
interest was always pulled in a certain direction. One day I followed it and found
Brigid's well garden outside of Kildare town." Yes, I've been there too. We saw a
photo earlier on. Then she says, "When I touched the water in Brigid's well, my
hands buzzed, and I was guided to walk in the water and felt what I can only
describe as electricity passed through me. I was suddenly alive in a way I could not
yet describe." Doesn't that sound good? She also said, reflecting on it all, because
she calls herself a sommelier of wells, isn't that beautiful?

She goes from well to well. She gathers water. She sometimes mixes it in particular
proportions for particular people and purposes. She goes and drums at the wells
of Brigid around Ireland. We're going to use some water music this time, but she
does drumming. She also says, this priestess of Brigid, "To me, wells are feminine.
They've been a place of worship for thousands of years. Life force sprang from the
ground in the form of wells as the female life springs forth in partnership with the
male." A lot going on there. Are you willing to chance the outcome if you simply
make it your intention in a gentle journey with the sound of bubbling spring water,
if you make it your intention to go to a well, a pool, a bubbling spring, something
in that range, of watery experiences with the idea you do a couple of things? You'll
find healing for yourself and others at this place of sacred water. You might find
yourself at an ancient well with maybe stones laid by human hands or natural
stones, or at a healing pool or a hot spring. A thermal spring of the kind where
goddesses have been respected and healing has been sought. It doesn't have to
be in any particular landscape.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 13

We're honoring Brigid, but you're not confined to the image of one of her wells.
Your intention is to find your way. You might find yourself flying there,
instantaneously. You might find that it begins with maybe a gentle walk through
the woods. You might find that an animal or bird appears to guide you. You might
find that a tree is part of the way. You might find certainly that a certain tree or a
certain stand or array of trees are near the well, and that might be where you hang
something as your talisman or actually like those who put the clooties, the rags.
You might see yourself actually putting a cloth which was soaked in the water,
which you use to scrub yourself clean and which carries away from you any
symptoms or any infection that you need to go and giving it to the tree where it
will do no harm. If there is any energy there, it will do you no harm. It will be
neutral energy. Maybe you can then picture that cloth gently, gently, decaying,
disintegrating, and the symptom or ailment going with it, maybe very quickly. I
think I'm just going to leave it as open as that.

You're going to have the sounds of bubbling spring water. Your intention is to go
to a place of healing. It might be a place of memory in the sense that you might
feel drawn to look deep into the well or the sacred pool. You might be drawn to
immerse yourself in the well or the sacred pool. You might find that when you do
that, you are drawn into a place of the ancestors, a place of a deeper world, a
place of the lower world, not in a sinister aspect but in a benign aspect where
earth energies and earth healing and, maybe, the embrace of the Great Goddess
herself are waiting for you. Maybe you will find that the well, beyond anything I've
said, is the entry point, the doorway to Brigid herself as the mother of the land,
the nourisher, the nurturer. Maybe you'll find yourself journeying into her realm,
into her embrace. That will not be a bad thing, would it? At the end of the
drumming, you will rise from the water or rise beside the water shining bright. You
will connect, if you haven't already, with a tree near the well.

You'll see what you want to do with the tree or what the tree has for you. You'll
see other things. No doubt animals and birds will appear. They might be ones that
you already know. They might be new ones, they might be all the Celtic landscape,
but they might be from somewhere else because we're not confined in our
shamanic adventures to a particular geography, though I think it is very important
to connect with the specific spirits of a land that we envision. All right, you're
ready. Get your gorgeous body in a comfortable, relaxed position. You're going to
have five minutes of bubbling spring water. You're going to go to the well of
healing and memory. You're seeking healing for yourself and others. If any
gatekeeper appears, if anyone asks you in so many words or mind to mind, "What
are you doing?" you are to say, "I am here for healing for myself and others," or "I
ask for healing for myself and others." Just ask in that simple, respectful way. Let's
see what you get. Here we go. I'm going to stop talking, and the water sounds are
going to start right now. [Bubbling Spring Water]

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 14

All right let's come gently back from the well. Maybe you need to dry yourself off
for a moment. Maybe you need to think about what you're going to do with the
experience. Write down three things. Three is the Celtic number. Quick, three
things of any kind that occurred to you or that you felt or thought during the
experience. Then ask yourself, what more would you like to do with this? Would
you like to continue the journey in some way? That might be possible in this class.
It might be possible on your own time. Would you like to share with other people
and get some feedback? We're going to give the opportunity to do that in
breakout groups today. You'll find on what is going to be a very lively private
Facebook page. You'll also have opportunity to get feedback from many other
people. Remember, we have at least 30 dream teachers in this course ready and
available for each other and for you to offer feedback. We always want action. It's
part of this Active Dreaming thing that I teach and practice. We need to take action
with our visions and our dreams. We need to come down from the oak tree. Also,
remember how to rise within it.

Brigid is a goddess of water. She's a goddess of fire. We're going to do the fire bit
in a moment. But certainly, rituals with water, personal rituals with water, as
simple as how you approach taking a bath, or taking a shower, or washing your
hands, which we're all doing so much, or drinking water. Any act with water done
with respect and reverence connects you with Brigid. Yes, it's lovely if you have
access to the water from her wells. Maybe that's not possible, and probably it
doesn't travel very well outside Ireland, even within our island, mobility might be
difficult. But I would say to you that anything you do with respect becomes a ritual,
anything involving water. Sweet water, fresh water connects you with the
province of Brigid. I want to ask Sherri to put my drawing of Maire, as I call her,
back on the screen for a moment because I want to talk about the clues or keys
she gave me in that vision of last week, which I've turned into part of this class.

There is Maire again if you look at the right of my picture, there is a thorn. She
gave me three words: thorn, apple, wick. Well, we all know about apples. Wick, I
assume, was candlewick because we associate Brigid with a candle. If you want to
talk to Brigid, you light a candle, Brigid's eternal flame. Thorn, I thought about this.
What is this about? Is it about change, and the need to get through something
uncomfortable? My strongest association with the thorn was with the hedge of
protection. There are thorn trees that make a formidable barrier, formidable
protection. They were used to fence off property when the enclosures came,
which is not a very happy historical story. But in our lives, in our psychic lives, in
terms of our need to protect ourselves, boost our immune system, raise our
resistance to things we don't want invading our space: space of our bodies, space
of our lives. The idea of raising a hedge of thorn is not a bad one. My friend Kate
in Ireland pointed out the gorse is gloriously in bloom right now, but it has wicked
thorns. She thought about gorse as a hedge. Well, that's pretty.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 15

My mind goes to two really serious thorn trees in the rose family, the black thorn
and the white thorn, also known as the hawthorn. I used to walk for many years
with a black thorn stick from Ireland walking my dogs before I needed a cane a
little more seriously. I loved walking with that stick, a bit like a shillelagh, a bit like
something you could use for defense if necessary. I want you to entertain this idea
for a moment. You maybe want to raise barriers of protection to keep out the
intended intruders or invaders, whether infections or the wrong kind of psychic
energies around you. You could psychically, through your intention, through your
imagination, picture yourself as surrounded and protected by a hedge, a hedge of
thorns. The thorns are the black thorn. These are wickedly long and sharp. If
you've ever had an encounter with a black thorn shrub tree, they're officially
designated, not a nice thing to walk into, not an easy thing to get through, in fact,
virtually impossible. If you wanted to visualize a hedge of protection to keep out
of your space the things that don't belong there, that's something you could
consider.

Okay, let's take the fearsome black thorn away for a moment. Maybe that's a bit
too scary, but though my mind does go to a Celtic story about some people who
are fleeing from giants, and one of them thought to throw a twig or a sprig, just a
tiny bit of black thorn on the ground behind them, and suddenly an impenetrable
barrier of black thorn rose, and the giants could not get through it. So there's
mythic authority for thinking that black thorn makes a good magical line of
protection, but maybe you would like something gentler. The theme of thorn
coming from Maire did get me thinking about our need for psychic protection,
stronger psychic boundaries, imaginal, magical boundaries in our times to shut out
infection, to shut out intrusive energies. My mind went to the simplest thing I
know which, is simply to picture yourself carrying a sword of light or something
like a lantern or something like a candle, a beeswax candle in your mind, walking
a circle around the space that you want to defend.

Imagining that the light surrounds you and those you wish to protect in all
directions and grows until it is a sphere of light, protecting and surrounding you
and those who love in all directions. That sphere of light becomes a consuming
fire to those who come upon you without good intentions. It mirrors back any evil
intention. It shields you and protects you. So creating a shield of light like that is a
gentler reflection on the possible meaning of thorn. It's not a thorny reflection.
Maybe it's one you want to think about. Apple, well, the apple is the passport to
the other world in so many Celtic stories. My favorite story about apples in Celtic
tradition, and there are so many, is of Merlin. Remember Merlin there are many
Merlins. There's a Merlin who has a magic apple orchard that goes with him
everywhere. If you're lucky enough to be invited in and you bite into one of the
apples, you get a story. The story streams through you, and it turns up your body,
and it gives you energy and joy and juice. It's the story that you need right now.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 16

So how would you like to go with me to a very special apple orchard within Brigid's
domain, but also perhaps within Merlin's because Merlin is a Celtic shaman, let's
not forget? How about we go on a trip to an apple orchard where you are going
to be invited to choose an apple and bite down and receive the juice and joy and
the story that it has for you. How would that be? We're again going to be very
quick. We're going to be very simple. We've got the apple orchard up already.
Sherri is so swift. Thank you, Sherri. There's an apple orchard. What would it take
you to imagine that you're entering a place like that? Not much, I would hope. I'm
thinking of apple orchards I know, one in particular. I could put myself there in a
moment. You might find that this time there's a clear gatekeeper function. In other
words, it might be that someone rises up. Maybe someone rises from the tree.
Maybe the tree itself takes on somewhat human features and speaks to you. That
would be interesting, wouldn't it? Maybe the apple tree itself will speak, or maybe
there's a guardian tree, or maybe there's a guardian figure, maybe someone you
don't notice for a moment. He or she seems so close to the trees and the land and
says, "What are you doing here?"

If that happens, you say, remember, "I'm here for the story I need right now. I'm
here for the story I need right now. I'm here for the story I need right now." The
Celtic bards understand, the awenyddian, inspired ones, understand if you have
the right story, it can save you. It can get you through, and through you, it can help
other people. So let's make a journey to the magic apple orchard. We're going for
a story, not just a story that we hear in some on again, off again way while looking
at the text or the iPad or something, no. A story you're going to bite into, that is
going to stream through you and move in your vitals, move in your bloodstream,
and give you some power and energy for healing and for going forward in life right
now. Are you ready? Get your body in a comfortable, relaxed position. You're
going to the apple orchard. You're going to find a story you need right now. Let's
go. [Drumming] Okay, let's come back from that short journey. Write down a title
for the story. You don't think you've got a story, write down a phrase anyway,
something that comes to you. You probably do have a story. You might have many.

You went there to eat the apple of story, to jump into the apple story, find the
juice of story. Where's the juice? Where's the juice? Give a name to the story that
might have that power of juicing your life and might, as you learn more about
becoming a word doctor, which is a very Celtic thing, carrying the power of the
story to someone who needs one. It might be something for others. We are in a
time when we need better stories. We need to grow better stories. We need
imaginal healing, which is applying the power of imagination, which our body
believes. Our body believes the imagination to cope with all the things that weigh
upon us physically, medically, socially, economically. We need to use our
imagination, grow our imagination, in concert with higher powers, with greater
powers.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 17

When the daily trivial mind, as Yeats called it, we need to go beyond the daily
trivial mind, draw upon the power of greater mind, greater powers, the wisdom
of Earth herself. That's what will bring us through. So what story are you carrying?
Do this. Get an apple. Maybe you've got an apple already in your house. Bite into
the apple physically. Enjoy the juice of the apple going down your throat. Tell
yourself, as you do that, I am now embodying the power of a story that will help
me and perhaps help others to get through. Let's move on quickly. Wick, that was
the third word that Maire gave me in that visitation. I was thinking, why not
candle? Why not fire? Why wick? Well, maybe because if you were to visualize
yourself traveling to the place of the sacred fire of the goddess Brigid, traveling to
her fire temple. Let's put up the graphic of Brigid's fire temple, shall we, Sherri,
the simple graphic of a fire temple. There's something in the way it might have
looked in the old days, the fire temple graphic, it's coming up, I think.

So suppose you're making your way as a pilgrim, hoping for a direct encounter
with the Great Goddess, hoping for the fire of vision and inspiration, hoping for
healing, hoping for transformation, hoping that you too can rise in consciousness
like a candle flame. Suppose you are traveling to this place, and you are carrying a
candle, not yet lit, an unlit candle, preferably beeswax because Brigid also has an
association with the bees. You want these to produce. You want more honey you
ask Brigid. You do. So she's also, in some respects, a bee goddess. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
By the way, someone told me, it's a very wise priestess of the old ways told me
that "Robert, don't you realize, the buzz or the humming of the bees is a voice. It's
a voice of the Great Goddess. This is one of the ways that she speaks." I'm a slow
learner. I guess I didn't quite understand that till she said it to me. Certainly,
there's something going on with that buzz, with that humming. Some of us hear
something like that as we shift consciousness into what can be called a shamanic
state of consciousness, or a state of conscious dreaming.

Anyway, back to the meditation. You're carrying a candle, and you are going to
light your candle at the eternal flame. But you're not going to do that until the end
of the experience we're about to have, because you're going on a journey for a
vision and then you'll picture yourself coming back to your ordinary situation,
carrying the flame, carrying the fire. So you're not going to rush in there and light
your candle right away. You're going to have your candle ready to light at the end
of the journey meditation. I'm calling it a journey meditation because it's very,
very gentle, really, although it involves fine. It doesn't have lots of complicated
instructions. I want you to do this. I want you to picture yourself right now picking
up a candle, unlit, holding it in your hand. Make it your intention right now to go
to the fire temple of Brigid. You might find it where its ruins can still be visited in
Kildare, just outside the church, just outside of stone church. You might find
yourself going to that ancient fire pit as I have done, pouring rain when I was there.
You might picture yourself there at that fire pit, and it's all alive. You folded time,
and it's all the way it used to be.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 18

We're talking about now, and we're talking about time outside time. We're talking
about a time when there was no time, as Irish storytellers sometimes begin their
yarns in a time when there was no time, in a time where there is no time. You're
going to the fire temple of the Great Goddess. You are perhaps going to be invited
to step into the flame. You're certainly going to be invited to open your heart and
let your heart fire, your heart light shine out. You're going to see yourself perhaps
rising like a candle flame from the heart. You might see the candle flame rising
from the heart to your head, rising from the crown of you, rising towards the
highest and meeting in a sacred and radiant and blazing encounter, meeting the
form of the greater self, the form of a goddess herself, perhaps the form of Brigid
herself that is ready to receive you right now according to your courage and
imagination. Could you do that? Would you be willing to do that?

Go to the sacred fire temple. Carry your candle. Put it down, humbly. You're
showing you're ready to serve. You're showing you're ready to act. Your act of
homage will be to light the candle at the end of the journey and return to the place
where you live with your candle. Let's make it five minutes instead of 12. That will
give us a little time to talk about the takeaways, how we apply all of this in life,
how we tend Brigid's flame on a daily basis, and to do a little bit of our Celtic
blessing way. So your body, I hope, is in a relaxed, comfortable position. You're
going to the sacred fire temple. If anyone asks you what you're doing here, you're
going to say something like, "I come with humility and respect to honor the
goddess of fire and light my candle of vision." All right, here we go with five
minutes of drumming. [Drumming] Okay, let's come back. Picture yourself as you
come back holding a lighted candle. If you have a candle in your house and you
want to go further with these reflections and meditations, use the candle. I'm
sitting with a candle. I lit it when we started. I talked to Brigid, and I want a candle
burning because that's part of her way.

So doing a little candle magic and picturing not only the physical candle flame but
that flame going up to the highest might be part of your meditation, part of your
connection with Brigid. So think about that. Write a few things down. Three things
would be good. What are three things you experienced? Or maybe still hope for
from that journey. Because of time constraints, we're just doing five-minute
journey sessions. We'll try to do longer in some of the coming classes. But you can
carry on. You can carry on in that state of horizontal meditation between sleep
and awake, which I recommend. That's where a lot of the good stuff happens for
me, spontaneous or intended. That's where I go on with some of my own visions.
That's where I go back into dreams. That is where missionaries, I'll say it,
missionaries. I don’t mean Christian missionaries, emissaries, ambassadors like
Maire, the thorn and the apple and the wick. That's where they appear to me, and
that's where they're likely to appear to you.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 19

So part of honoring Brigid, who is, remember, a deity of the threshold, a deity of
liminal spaces, a great power to invoke and evoke in times of transition, like the
immense time of transition and transformation that we are in right now. You
know, liminal space, liminal space, liminal space. Spend time in that liminal space,
that threshold space between sleep and awake. That is another way of honoring
Brigid. Coming up with better words, coming up with goodly speech, as the Scots
Gaelic has translated in some of the spells in the Carmina Gadelica. That's part of
the practice too. I'm going to ask Sherri to put up one more graphic. It is the cover
of a modern edition of the Carmina Gadelica, which means the blessings or the
spells or the charms of the Gaels, the charms of the Gael, of the Celts. This is the
modern edition. The original edition is three hefty volumes. Some of that is
missing from this rather handsome modern day edition. These are charms and
spells and blessings gathered by an interesting character called Alexander
Carmichael from the old ones in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland around
1900.

Well, there was no real boundary between this part of Scotland and Ireland back
then. As you probably know, people and ideas and gods and spirits went back and
forth all the time. Although these are from Scotland, Scotland is also Brigid's
domain. I want to quote a little bit from a famous invocation in the Carmina
Gadelica called the Invocation of the Graces. Brigid only features in it as one of a
number of names of the Divine Feminine that is in the first book of the Carmina
Gadelica. But in Volume 3 of the original edition, Brigid is named as the creator of
this whole blessing, the grace placed by Brigid, maiden of graces, in the daughter
of the king. So Brigid seems to be the author, the attributed author of these soul
words; these are word souls. They're soul words. I mean by that, they're words of
power in the sense that each word, each phrase in itself conveys a power. Do you
get it? Each of these words, each of these phrases, when spoken right, with feeling
and intent and the right lilt perhaps, conveys a power, conveys a gift of healing, of
protection, of blessing, each line.

So it's called the Invocation of the Graces. It's number three in the arrangement
of the Carmina Gadelica if you want to go looking for the complete text. I'm going
to give you a composite version. I fooled around with Alexander Carmichael's
translation a bit. It's still heavily reliant on him, but I've changed a few things. I've
changed some really inexplicable phrases. I put it in slightly more colloquial
speech. I will read just two sections. The first section is really the preparation to
receive the blessing. Let me slow down. Before you receive this blessing in this
blessing way, this is a Celtic blessing way, before you're ready to receive it, you go
through ritual purification by fire and water, and you make offerings. All of this is
conjured up in these first lines. Listen to this. Imagine that Brigid is leaning over
you in her milk of kindness. Golden is honey. Generous is that great cow whose
gifts are unending, mothering, radiant.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 20

Imagine she stands over you, and she says this: "I bathe your palms in showers of
wine, in fire of water, in the seven elements, in berry juice, in the milk of honey."
So there are things going on with ritual cleansing involving milk, and wine, and fire
of water. What is that? Is it a need? The seven elements, the connection with
natural things. Berry juice, oh, if you want to eat and offer to Brigid, she loves
raspberries and blackberries. Be that noted. The bear loves them too. So you can
feed both Brigid and the bear at the same time. How about that? All right, let me
give you part of the blessing without further commentary for a while. Are you
ready to receive? This is a symbol of Brigid. It's a famous symbol. It's a symbol of
Brigid, as characteristic of Brigid as that equal-armed cross. All right, are you
ready? You're about to be offered nine blessings, nine empowerments. They're
called in this version pure graces. Are you ready?

I placed the nine pure graces in your beloved face: the grace of form, the grace of
voice, the grace of fortune, the grace of goodness, grace of wisdom, the grace of
charity, the grace of beauty, the grace of whole-souled loveliness, the grace of
goodly speech. You are shade in the heat. You are shelter in the cold. You are sight
to the blind, a staff to the pilgrim, an island at sea, a fortress on land, a well in the
desert. There's even more. I was considering stopping there, but I don't want to.
Let's give you a bit more. Are you ready? You're already a fortress on land. We
need some of that in our current conditions, don't we? Here's a little more. Ready?
You are the joy of all joyous things. You are the light of the sun. You are the guiding
star. You are the speed of the deer on the hills. You are the grace of the swimming
swan. The best hour of the day be yours. The best day of the week be yours. The
best week of the year be yours. The best of all years be yours. How's that? Receive
it if you like. Go find it.

I guess we could post my version of this. We'll send it out and send it out, maybe
with our homeplay assignments, our deepening practice. We're approaching that
time when we have to tie the knot, close the bag, as the Mohawk Indians say,
approaching time to tie up the bag. What do you do with this? Well, we're going
to develop your own blessing way. Think of things that you have experienced,
remembered, seen, things that have touched you in this one class, power of water,
power of fire, the juice of the apple of story, the sacred tree, the blessing of Brigid
herself. Write your own little blessing statement, and imagine that you could
supply it to someone else and certainly to yourself. I give you the juice of the apple
of story. I bathe you in the healing waters. I light the candle of vision, or may the
little candle of vision in you be lit. You see what I'm saying? I'm not going to write
it for you. I'm suggesting that in this one class, which has taken us deep and wide,
hasn't it, and we felt the blessing of Brigid herself. I believe, it's come with chicken
skin, it's come with goosebumps. There's a science in shivers, and we feel it at
work here, yes? I feel it. I trust you do too. Write your own blessing or your own
statement about transfiguration. I am the fire. I am the water. I am the juice of the
apple of story. I am the stone. I am the goddess. You could do it that way.

Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 21

 Shapeshifting poetry is very much a Celtic medium. I'm thinking about the first line
of its metamorphoses not only says something like, gods help you to describe how
humans change into many other things, strange and new how humans change,
how humans metamorphose, how humans shapeshift into many other things. In
Celtic tradition, humans are quite likely to become swans, mentioned in that
particular verse. I suspect that if Brigid has a special connection amongst the
feather tribes, amongst the bird powers, the swan is probably high among them.
She must have a connection with the raven because her dark sisters like the
Morrigan have a connection with the raven, and the raven is an impeccable ally in
dark places. We're going to need the raven's power of vision to get through what
faces us right now.

All right, I'm going to send you some suggestions for deepening practice. I'm going
to send you some texts. Think about the threshold every time you go through a
doorway between the inner and the outer. Think of Brigid, who is a goddess of the
threshold. Whenever you receive nourishment or food, particularly butter or
cheese, think of Brigid. These are in her gift, so is wine, so is beer, so is meat. She's
not opposed to these things. The Celts understand that spirits come in at least two
forms. Remember that this Great Goddess appreciates the simple pleasures of the
fire and the hearth and the kitchen, homely things. She heals and blesses through
practical things. If you're staying on for the breakout groups, perhaps you still need
to learn how those operate, you have many experts, veteran dreamers amongst
you who can guide you in learning our four-step Lightning Dreamwork process.

We weren't able to demonstrate that this time. It would be enough if you're

sharing a story for your friend to ask you, how do you feel about it? And maybe
ask, do you recognize anything from this and the rest of your life? And give you
some feedback from their point of view. Above all, say to you, how are you going
to honor this? How are you going to carry this flame? What are you going to do
about this going forward? All right, we need to close now. So I'm going to close
with the universal invocation of the gatekeeper with which I begin and end every
gathering. As we go forward on the roads of soul, on the roads of healing, on the
roads of transformation and initiation under the aegis of the Great Goddess, may
our doors and gates and paths be open, and may the doors and gates and paths
of any who wish to do us or those we love any harm be closed. May it be so.

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Shamanic Dreaming | Module One | p. 22