Druidry - Assumption, Sonnet to Li Ban

Assumption Ceremony. An assumption ceremony in the tradition of the Green Mountain Druid School training is the culmination of three years of training and involves journeying to meet a God or Goddess from any pantheon who steps forward to be assumed. Preparation involves spending time in contemplation, ceremony and synchroncity with the deity who chooses the supplicant. To merge with and co-create ceremony with a deity is a daunting task requiring the ability to deeply commune with the magical realms in a safe way, with humility, curiosity and reverence. This work is a requirement of third year students, supported by the teachers, and is witnessed by first year students in an evening ceremony. 

Li Ban is a pre-christian Goddess of the Irish pantheon of gods and goddesses, originating in Northern Ireland. Li Ban translates to "Paragon" (or Beauty) of Women. She is triple goddess aspect, the maiden and a water oracle. Her tale speaks of a great loss, her guilt at having survived when others did not, her retreat to solitude, and her rebirth as a mermaid of the great Loch Neagh.

To speak too much of the ceremony would take the mystery from it, so instead of explaining what it was like, I share this poem I wrote to the Goddess, Li Ban, who chose me and this photo taken just prior to assumption.

Sonnet to Li Ban

Beneath the lake so wide and deep,

She bowed her head in shame and loss

A grieving heart sank into sleep

And fiery tresses turned to moss.

The curving sky the sun did yield

The silver moon grew full and soft

In the deep her fate felt sealed

Her cry to heaven flew aloft

To know forgiveness and release

From a burden carried not one’s own

Oh Ancient One, maiden of peace

With your grace may love atone. 

The girl burst forth from sorrowed cave,

By bright, iridescent tail and fin and wave.

Druidry - The Antlered One, Guardian of All Who Journey

The Antlered One, by Laura Smith-Riva

The Antlered One first came to me in the dreams. She is a wise woman, a protector of the pathways, a teacher and a healer. She is the mystic on the other side of my amazon/warrior. She is deeply mysterious and lives in the liminal spaces awaiting those who seek her on the path.

I have encountered her many times on my journey. She came after a dream where a young deer had its antlers brutally cut off by a man. In the dream she offered me the large antlers of an adult deer carved with magical and sacred symbols and images which she had discovered on her land. This moment represented for me the return of that which had been cut off. In so many ways, we cut off sacred and holy parts of ourselves in order to survive in a world filled with traumas and challenges, to fit in, to make do, to take care of others at the expense of ourselves. Our creative life withers and we become like the walking dead, moving through life on a stream of expectation, fear, numbness and unrequited desire all fueled by the many lies we come to believe about ourselves and the world around us. Many will never escape from this inertia, often disguised as a whirling dervish of doing.

Some, however, are called or thrown into the journey, the journey back to soulful life. The Antlered One is waiting. She is a profound archetype with a history dating back to ancient times, perhaps Paleolithic times.   In the Celtic pantheon she is known as Elen of the Trod and her roots trace to northern Wales and a time when humans were in relationship with reindeer there. Female reindeer have antlers as do the males. The Celtic god Cernunnos is the male counterpart.

As a Druid, she came to me in a vision. As part of the druidic training of the Green Mountain Durid Order, each grade participant is encourage to journey to and find the inner grove that will support their work. There are three grades: Bard, Ovate and Druid. They roughly correspond to these steps:

• Opening the Way - reigniting the magical child and rediscovering our creative, magical selves
• Hunting the Shadow - transforming old conditioning and habits, developing a practice of self-reflection and accountability
• Being of Service - manifesting one's calling, becoming a guardian of the earth and providing spiritual guidance in one's community

It is a path of spiritual discovery. There are many such paths. This path taps into my own Celtic indigenous ancestry and has offered me the opportunity to work with an animistic approach to spiritualism which allows for direct contact with spirit through the natural world. 

Back to the Antlered One. She came during my Ovate training, appearing first during an inner journey and became part of my Ovate Grove as a supportive ancestral guide. In this inner sanctum, she stood at the gateway entering the grove and as a protector along the way forward in my work. She rubbed red ochre on my belly and breasts, she brushed my flesh with the soft needled branches of the Tamarack. She invited me to lie back in the roots of the great tree and covered me with the softest sheepskin. 

We all need succor on the journey. We all need support. We may find support in the world through family, friends, mentors or others, but the beauty of inner support is that it's always available to us. Building a relationship with this support is so important and must be done during those good times, when we are feeling good. It's like building a muscle. If we don't exercise it how can we expect it to be strong when we need it most?

The Antlered One is timeless and ageless. If you look for her, you may find her in dreams, visions and journeys. She may appear in the synchronicity of the deer on the field, in a shell on the beach or a flower in the wood. She is the keeper of the trod, the protectress of the magical pathways, the healer and the divine spirit of the land who knows the hidden trails and traverses of the true heart. She is the guardian of all who journey. May you receive her.

The Return, by Laura Smith-Riva

Blessed be.

Laura Smith-Riva is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner from the mysterious Green Mountains of Vermont. www.archetypaldreamworks.com.

Bringing the Unconscious Conscious

Detail from “Green Pot with Fish” by Laura Smith-Riva

Recently someone posited a question on a depth psychology Facebook page asking how does one let the unconscious become conscious. My immediate thought was Dreamwork. Dreams being a portal into the unconscious, our nightly reveries leak into our awareness the very images, gestures and feelings that support that process.

A preceding question might be, why would we want the unconscious to become conscious? One simple answer is because when we are conscious, we have more choices. When we are unconscious, we are driven by instinct, emotional reactions and habitual conditioning.

The practice of Natural Dreamwork is to let things happen in the psyche, to engage our imaginations, to revel in the feelings that arise from the dream moments and images even when those feelings may be deep grief, pain, or fear.

And yet every step of the way, we are dogged by the conscious mind that wants to evaluate, negate, judge, control, exhort, admonish, appeal, help, cajole, and otherwise persuade us away. Its objections are prolific, ever constellating and mutating into a more attractive (to the part of ourselves that believes its machinations) version of itself.

So to stay with a powerful image, gesture or feeling that has arisen from our dream practice would seem easy enough in the speaking of it, but like clearing the mind in meditation, it requires practice, patience, and compassion with oneself.

In my current dream, I am with a group of people. Folks are lined up along the bank of a lake. Everyone is learning to fish. My first thought is there are too many lines in the water…lines will get tangled. As I see one person bring up a fish, I think “Pumpkin Seed” (a bony fish, not edible). But then I see that it is a large fat fish, lots of meat. Someone else pulls in a fish and, again, I think Pumpkin Seed. But then I see that this fish is also a large fat white fleshed fish, delicious, lots of meat.

The dream offers me several things. One, the opportunity to see how my mind’s natural tendency is towards impoverishment, looking for the problems. Another opportunity is to feeling into the grief of how this has been true in my life, how this orientation has protected me in some way from disappointments and loss and how I can feel a certain control and sense of anticipation for “when bad things happen”. A wonderful skill for survival perhaps and yet it keeps me in feelings of impoverishment even when this isn’t true in my life today. The dream is provocative in its effort to show me this negative thinking and to offer the gift of the truth for me, which is about the awe and joy of abundance. The dream brings pain as gratitude for the gift of its teaching.

My work is to close my eyes and be with the students learning to fish, to feel the awe of the big fat abundant fish and to notice where in my life when I am living from the place of “Pumpkin Seed”. This is an example of how we can work with the dream to help to bring that which is unconscious, conscious. When I can notice the Pumpkin Seed narrative, I have more of a choice. Perhaps I can shift to be in the anticipation of abundance rather than impoverishment. I may not be able to break from Pumpkin Seed thinking all the time, but I can know and begin to trust more that abundance is possible.

Originally published on The Natural Dream.

Laura Smith-Riva is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner from the mysterious Green Mountains of Vermont. www.archetypaldreamworks.com.