Written by Ivo Dominguez Jr • Narration by James C. Welch
Chant: “Holy Earth Mother" from A Dream Whose Time Is Coming by Ivo. Performed by the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel.
Pathworking:
In The Belly Of The Dreaming
Close your eyes and move inwards. Take a deep breath and become aware of any distractions from the outside world— sounds, sensations, thoughts and feelings that came with you to this moment. Gather these distractions together ••••• and bid them depart until you return from this journey. •••••
Open your eyes briefly and then close them again holding within yourself the image of where you are in the here and now. See a sparkling mist rolling, slowly filling your vision. See it grow thicker, and thicker, and thicker until you are enveloped in swirls of pearly mist, rosy mist, that glistens with sparkling motes. ••••• Although you are still, you feel motion all around you. Although you are still, you feel the fog swirling all around you. You are drifting.
Have you drifted into the dreaming places between the worlds. Are you in Winter’s dream? • Yes • This is the dreaming. • It is dark, so dark that you can’t even see your hands when you hold them up. You tap around your foot and feel that you are on a hard smooth path. The air is cold and you starting walking to warm up and find your way out of the darkness. ••• It is not quite as dark now. You think you see a star peeking through dark clouds and perhaps the silhouette of hills against the sky in the distance. •• You can see that you are on a hardened dirt path. More stars can be seen now and the clouds are being backlit softly by a hidden moon. The noctilucent, night shining, clouds are a deep blue with purple shadows. With this bit of light you can catch glints off the frost that covers the landscape. • You hear what might be the wind or what might be a roar in the distance. • You continue walking. •
The clouds are pulsing with a red-orange light. The light is so bright that as each pulse fades it seems that total dark has returned as your night vision is overwhelmed. Blackness then red and orange. • Blackness and then red and yellow. • Blackness then red and orange. It is as if giant bellows were blowing on the coals and embers of night. •
You can see now that flashes of red, orange, and yellow light reflected in the clouds are coming from somewhere directly in front of you on the path. The fiery light is reflected on the path and races toward you like a blazing arrow. ••
You are engulfed in the light and a ripple runs through the world.•••
You see a forge blazing before you. You see an anvil as tall as you are. •• Working at the forge you see a Goddess. She works the fire, she draws the metal, and the hammer sings upon the anvil as her strong arm guides the power of shaping, of making. •• Sparks leap from her hair as it floats around her head like a nimbus. •• You watch in awe as she makes one thing after another with ease and grace. •• Sometimes it seems that she moves swiftly • and then so slowly that time seems as slow as the flow of honey. •• At times it seems she has more arms and hands, each creating. • Then all you see is one perfect moment of hammer, incandescent metal, and dark anvil. ••
She pauses in her work. She has sensed you. • She turns and transfixes you with her gaze. ••• She says,
“I have making many things tonight in the Dreaming World. • Of all the things, I think you need to see the nails I am making.” •• She holds out her hand with flattened palm, and displays nails of different sizes and shapes, many still glowing red from the forge. •• Not a single one of them is perfectly smooth or symmetrical. ••• With a crooked grin she says,
“They will do to build a house and hold together a home. They can all be different, unique, imperfect, and still do their part as best they can. • And so can you.” ••
She drops the nails in a trough filled with liquid. ••• She pulls a nail out of the trough. She reaches toward you to drop it in your hand. As it falls from her hand to yours it shrinks to fit in your hand. You feel the weight of the nail.
She says,
“Go now, look for yourself to see what comes next.”
She hits her hammer on the anvil and, • and, • and ••
You are standing in front of a rustic stone fireplace in a what seems to be a farm house. The soft light of dawn is coming in through multi paned windows. You wonder if you are dreaming or have woken somewhere else? You are no longer holding the nail in your hand. • The fire is beginning to dwindle down. You grab a poker and stir the fire. In doing so you find a nail in the ashes and coals and drag it out onto the hearth. You add a log to the fire and gaze into the flames. ••• The nail has cooled and you pick it up. It feels the same as the one given to you at the forge of the Goddess. •• You hear a quiet voice say, “You will always have what I gave you, one way or another.” •
You hear the sound of tapping on glass and see birds at the window by the door. They take flight and you walk to the door. You grab a blanket draped on a chair and wrap it around yourself. You open the door and stand with one foot inside and one foot outside. You stand in the border between. You look upon the dawning of the day between the chill of Winter and the warmth of Spring. •
The first light of dawn is dancing and casting tree shadows across a meadow. Pink and gold in the midst of grays and evergreen foliage. • Mists shaped like a procession of spirit animals is treading a path through near the edge of a forest. • Orbs of light blink and vanish like eyes opening and closing, drowsy but awakening. • You feel a vibration growing in the door frame. The ground seems to ripple. • You see the bright colors of snow crocus pushing up through the ground. •• The buds have not swollen on the trees, but you feel the spark of life stirring in the roots. • You feel the vibration in your core and feel the quickening, the enlivening, of Imbolc. • The time to awaken is coming.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Count to 24 (Holy Earth Mother Chant)
A fog swirls around you. All is a soft dove gray. • You feel the swirling and the turning all around you. ••
Little by little, the fog lifts and you flutter your eyes open and find yourself back in the here and now. Back in the place where we began. Back in the place you held in your memory so that you could return. •••
Take a deep breath. Move your toes and fingers. Be here and in the now. Be here and in the now. And you are here!