I’m an Irish musician, composer and author. My harp CD, Cumha and my book, A Shamanic Kundalini Awakening are mutually complimentary expressions of my spiritual path.
My last blog was about demons and I find this one is too. I really don’t want this to be a theme, but this is the time of the demons and we must face them. There is no doubt, that we are within the great spiritual battle and that it extends far beyond ordinary consensus reality. What follows is typical of what may occur to those of us, who also move within shamanic reality.
I find myself in a small town in the west of Ireland, where I used to live. It’s night and I walk across the road and sit on the window ledge of a shop front. In the street, some Indians are performing a puja. They are wearing traditional clothes and dancing. One of them, a young girl, collapses and has a violent seizure. The rest carry on dancing, some even fall on her. I say to the people near me, that the vaccine caused her seizure.
Suddenly a young boy appears behind me. Standing on the window ledge, he leans in over my shoulder and whispers in my ear,
I will never let them alter me, never let them change my intrinsic nature, my friend the Carpenter says this too.
Then, Bill Gates is there. I immediately get right in his face and say exactly what I think of him. That he is responsible for the girl having seizures and countless other deaths and injuries. I have a white pill in my hand. I hold it up and say
Why don’t you take MY pill, Bill, WHY WONT YOU TAKE MY PILL!
We engage in a violent struggle, as I try to make him take the pill but a car pulls up to rescue him. He says,
that guy is tough but he’s got some magic coming his way.
Immediately, my body is infused with spiritual energy. I’m rooted to the spot, I send energy at Gates, he sends it back, it’s an astral psychic battle. I’m shocked awake, kundalini is flowing all around me.
Falling back to sleep, I’m find I’m in a room with my wife. It’s small, with double doors. Through the window I see a lion coming straight towards us. There is no way to bolt or lock the doors. I scream to my wife for help but she can’t hear me. The lion reaches the doors, I can’t hold them, I can sense its power. The paws push through, I feel it’s great claws on my hands, I know I have no chance but then, once again, I wake up, the bed is drenched in sweat.
The Carpenter, made me think of Christ and this fabulous song by Judee Sill, Jesus was a Crossmaker.
In my dream/vision a few days ago, I went to a meeting. First, I was given a Shipibo cloth, then we sat down. A woman held my hand and asked me about my watch. I found I was wearing an expensive watch but it had no face, where there should have been hands and numbers to measure time, it was totally blank. A man then came over and pulled out an old fashioned pocket watch. This had a complete face on it and he began to wind it up.
Then, another man left the room and I followed him. It was dark but I could see him, he was summoning all the demons from Hell. He called each one by its individual name. Each time he said a name, a shadow being would appear then move off.
I retreated and found myself in a beautiful place, there was a stream and water trickling over rocks. As I stood by the stream, lotus flowers spontaneously burst forth and bloomed, in my cupped hands. I knew with all my heart, that this was the antithesis of summoning a demon.
I think there is a lot to digest here about the current spiritual battle in which we find ourselves.
This summer the bees came to us. A wild swarm settled in our chimney and then descended into the stove in our living room. The whole stove was buzzing and the house was full of the song of countless bees. Of course this did cause a bit of a dilemma, as we obviously didn’t want to harm them but the situation couldn’t remain as it was. A local bee keeper was summoned who shook his head and reassuringly told me, ‘this is NOT good’. He said the only thing to try was gently smoking them out, which meant we had to light a fire during that rarest of weather phenomena, an Irish heat wave! We’d kept bees before in France and I had an empty hive, which I’d taken out. I showed the beekeeper who once again shook his head and said, ‘there’s NO WAY they are just going to go in there!’ So that was that, nothing left to do but wait and see.
After several days of smoking, the situation had not improved, in fact if anything it was getting worse as hundreds of bees were coming out of the stove and dying in the house. I was very disturbed by this but in my dreams, I established a strong psychic connection with the bees.
I find I’m holding my shamanic drum, I hear singing and I play along. Then, looking deep into the drum I see images, first a star, then the bees, they are moving upward in a spiraling vortex. They remind me of molecules, of the breaking down of time and space in the merkaba. Then I begin to pray for the bees to leave the chimney, I receive visions of blazing fire and many ancient bee symbols.
In desperation and with all logical and practical solutions exhausted I decided spiritual methods were our only hope and to this end I resorted to the Irish Bee Charm. I placed my empty hive in a part of the garden behind the house in close proximity to the chimney where the bees had settled. I took my harp and sat by the hive, improvised some music and recited the charm.
Sith co nem. Nem co doman. Doman fo nam, nert hi cach, an forlann, lan do mil, mid co saith. Sam hi ngam.
Peace up to heaven. Heaven down to earth. Earth beneath heaven, strength in each, a cup very full, full of honey. Mead in abundance. Summer in winter.
(the charm can be heard on the CD, Cruit Go Nor, by Ann Heymann)
Not surprisingly, the bees did not all magically emerge from the chimney and enter the hive but they did leave soon after this. I felt a sadness and I was worried they had simply died but I felt I’d done all I could in the circumstances. Many months passed and the bees had faded from my thoughts until the day before we were due a visit from Hurricane Katrina. In preparation, I went around the garden putting away any objects that might fly around and cause damage in the coming high winds. I remembered the hive and decided it too should be packed away. Grabbing the top to lift it, I was simultaneously both shocked and filled with joy, to find myself surrounded by beautiful, wild, black native bees. So it seems, that the charm may have indeed worked after all and there is still magic in the old ways! We don’t take any honey from our precious bees, we just want them to thrive, their presence alone is enough for us.
Later, the bees gifted me a profound spiritual dream-vision.
I find myself in a garden next to a tree. My family, my pets, everyone I love is there. By the tree, a red flower and magic mushrooms are growing by a pool of deep water. From the garden I go into the kitchen of a house. The kitchen is full of bees. They are large, humming noisily, vibrantly active, it’s a very real, immersive experience. Standing, with an infinity of bees flying all around me, I notice one which is bigger than the rest. It’s blue, with raised white spots on its abdomen, like an amanita muscaria mushroom. I think the bees are trapped and go to open the door, to let them back out into the garden, but find that it’s already open.
I then understand that we are the bees and that the blue bee is Shiva, the ONE consciousness hidden in the many. The kitchen is where we are now, this reality, the garden is the spiritual reality from which we come. We enter here and forget where we come from, but the door is always open, the way back to the garden is always there, if we just remember.
I dreamed I was in the house where my kundalini awakened. The experience was totally lucid and I even asked myself within the dream, am I dreaming? A house usually represents various aspects of the dreamer and this house had been called Anma, which means soul in Occitan language. The walls inside this soul-house were painted white and a living room was being cleaned and prepared, this all felt right.
Then the phone rang, it was loud and insistent.
I always pay attention to a phone in a dream, it’s a vehicle of communication and I often receive information in this way. When I found the phone, it was under a sky-light, even that term feels significant. Through this, I could see it was night outside and against the blackness of space, two rows of UFOs flew by. They took the form of balls of white light, they were so beautiful and I awoke really joyful.
This is not the first time I’ve had visions of UFOs, they always leave me feeling excited and uplifted. I think, perhaps, they may represent our future ascended selves, in our bodies of light.
This is an extract from my book, A Shamanic Kundalini Awakening, exploring the ‘hidden’ kundalini symbolism encoded in the Brian Boru Harp, the national symbol of Ireland.
CELTIC KUNDALINI ON THE MUSICAL TREE
‘He was a harp; all life that he had known and that was his consciousness was the strings; and the flood of music was a wind that poured against those strings and set them vibrating with memories and dreams. He did not merely feel. Sensation invested itself in form and colour and radiance, and what his imagination dared, it objectified in some sublimated and magic way. Past, present and future mingled; and he went on oscillating, across the broad, warm world…’ Jack London
The name for the true harp of Ireland is clairseach (Irish) or clarsach (Scottish). Unlike modern neo-Celtic harps whose strings are usually nylon, the clairseach has strings made of metal, usually brass but sometimes silver and even gold. This is the harp of legend, the instrument of the gods and heroes. Its music was given by the greatest of Irish Gods, the Dagda and through the three strains of music, Goltraighe, Sauntraighe and Geantrai, it had the power to make men laugh, cry and sleep. In the old poems and stories the harps often have special powers and personalities and are a bridge between this world and other realms, a bit like a shamanic drum in other cultures. The instrument also has a deep connection to nature and was sometimes referred to as the musical tree or Crann nan Tued, the Tree of Strings.
When I got my first clairseach, a very small simple instrument based on a carving from an Irish monastery I was simply blown away by the sound and was gripped with a fervour to learn that I hadn’t experienced since my teenage years. For most of my life I had been accustomed to being a musically advanced individual and enjoyed the various kudos that come with that but now I was a complete beginner again. What was in my head could not be translated to my fingers. I found myself with the ego of a great musician but with the fingers of a complete novice. This in fact was wonderful as it began to initiate the process of taking down my ego a peg or two. The approach of surrendering my musical identity to this new instrument coupled with meditative practice was very effective.
I was attracted to this harp because it spoke to something very ancient and deep within me. I felt there was a mystical music in my soul, which could not be expressed on the instruments I was playing. As I progressed I resolved to acquire a more serious instrument. There are a number of surviving harps but only three from the medieval period. Two of these are in Scotland and one in Ireland. The Irish one, known as the Trinity College Harp or the Brian Boru Harp is the oldest surviving instrument, c.14th century. It is the national emblem of Ireland and sits in a glass case in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin where the Book of Kells is also housed. This harp resonated strongly with me and after a long process of research, my harp maker and I were allowed to examine this priceless artefact and produce an almost exact copy. Looking at the harp with my new found shamanic eyes it became clear to me that there was something astonishing encoded within the structure and decoration of this particular harp.
It is my personal view that the clairseach was originally a shamanic/spiritual instrument. The clairseach consists of four pieces of wood. A soundbox carved out of a solid block of willow and closed with a backplate, a curved forepillar and a harmonic curve. The great harper and researcher Ann Heymann has discovered that certain gender characteristics correspond to the various parts, the soundbox being feminine, the forepillar masculine and the harmonic curve, hermaphrodite. The hollowed out soundbox can be seen as the womb. The soundboard is flat, but when tensioned by the strings, the wood bellies up as if pregnant with sound. The forepillar has a phallic quality and actually penetrates the soundbox via a mortise and tenon joint. The harmonic curve which links these two together is both penetrated by the forepillar and penetrates the soundbox, hence hermaphrodite. However, when I looked at the harp a much deeper interpretation was revealed to me, that the Trinity College Harp essentially represents the process of spiritual enlightenment in the human being. For me the key to this is the forepillar. Carved on the forepillar is an animal; it could be a snake or a salmon. From a kundalini perspective either one works. There are no snakes in Ireland but there is the Salmon of Knowledge. The salmon returns to the source and therefore works well as an Irish kundalini symbol. Furthermore there are two heads, one going up and the other going down depicting the ascent of kundalini and it’s return back down into the individual. The motive of the ascending and descending serpent can also be found at Monasterboice on the tenth century Cross of Muiredach. Here, carved in high relief we have a panel known as Dextra Dei, the Right Hand of God. The pre-eminent mythologist Joseph Campbell noted that,
‘… two interlacing serpents appear one heading downward the other upward, enframing three human heads in ascending series, with a human right hand above, reaching to the centre of a crowning halo-like ornamented disc. If this is not a specific reference to the top four states of an ascent of the sushumna, the sense of such an appearance on Christian monument commemorating the crucifixion remains to be explained.’
The Right Hand of God
I was sure that the forepillar represented the human spine. Just like on the Cross of Muiredach there are two serpent heads ascending and descending. On the cross the ascending head is going towards an ornamented disk symbolising enlightenment. On the harp the ascending head is moving towards a decorative mounting on the front of the harmonic curve. This contains mountings for two large crystal cabochons. The lower one is missing but the casing for it is eye shaped. The one above is a clear crystal. So here we have the kundalini serpent on the spine heading up to the third eye and union at the crown. The descending head representing the return of these united energies into the individual. It then made sense to me that the harmonic curve represented the unification of divine male and female energies. Contrary to mainstream European practice, the Gaelic harp was always played on the left shoulder with the feminine left hand playing the treble and the masculine right hand, the bass. This theme of male and female continues in the strings as the trebles were considered feminine and the bass masculine. This is further reinforced by the presence of two strings called na comhluighe. These are two strings tuned to the same pitch, symbolically dividing the scale. In Gaelic, comhluighe means, ‘lying together’. Divine male and female strings lying together; separate yet resonating the same frequency. The original harp was painted and traces still remain, the colours are red and blue. In Buryat shamanism the centre of consciousness of the human being is seen as a star of red light in the chest and the direct connection to the divine as a blue star at the crown of the head. In my own meditations these have been the two colours that have come the most and they are of a depth and quality beyond anything that can be experienced in ordinary reality.
The entire harp is intricately decorated with wood-burning and carving. Of particular interest are the roundels containing various animals including wolf-dogs and wild boar. There is also a lion fighting a dragon, a metaphor not dis-similar, to a jaguar fighting an anaconda(first two parts of Peruvian kundalini trinity). These may represent spirit or power animals. Hints of this and a shamanic state of consciousness can be found in the ancient tales.
‘While they were at Cruachan, Ailill asked Fraoch if the harpers would play after dinner. This was the condition of these harps. There were harp-bags (crotbuilcc) of the skins of otters about them, ornamented with coral, (Partaing) with an ornamentation of gold and of silver over that, lined inside with snow-white roebuck skins; and these again overlaid with black-gray strips of skin; and linen cloths, as white as the swan’s coat, wrapped around the strings. Harps (Crota) of gold, and silver, and Findruine, with figures of serpents, and birds, and greyhounds upon them. These figures were made of gold and of silver. Accordingly as the strings vibrated these figures ran around the men. They [the harpers] played for them then, until twelve men of Ailill’s and Medb’s household died of crying and emotion.’
The way these figures come ‘off’ the harps bears a striking similarity to what may happen in shamanic drumming in the Sami tradition.
‘One of the original and oldest names for the Sami shaman drum is govadas. It means an instrument that emanates images. The unique thing was thus the view that there were images coming out of them when they were used in the right way.’ The Shamanic Zone
The harp is also covered in many mysterious shapes and symbols including concentric circles like those found in sites like Newgrange. The patterns on the left side of the harmonic curve feel particularly archaic and have yet to be satisfactorily interpreted. I speculate that they may have been used for purposes of divination and I envision the shaman harper in a state of trance moving his tuning key over the symbols in the same way that a Sami noaide moved a pointer over the symbols on his drum.
Sami drum showing symbols and kundalini serpent ascending through the worlds on the spine.
I speculated on the comhluighe and how perhaps they were used shamanically on the harp. Sound and rhythm are often used in shamanism to induce and maintain an altered state of consciousness. The most common instrument used for this is the drum. One hundred and eighty beats per minute will induce a theta brainwave state, conducive to entering a shamanic state of consciousness. It is not only the repetitive beat that contributes to this state but also the complex harmonics generated by the drum. Perhaps, the harp was played alongside a drum for this purpose. In Ireland there is a traditional frame-drum, the bodhrán. Today, it is used exclusively as a musical instrument with very complex playing techniques having evolved to provide rhythmic accompaniment to Irish traditional music. I sense strongly though, that it is a vestige of an Irish shamanic drum. The bodhrán has a round wooden frame, with an animal skin, usually goat, stretched over it, just like most shamanic drums. At the back, the wooden hoop is braced with two pieces of wood in a cross pattern. This is reminiscent not only of the ‘four directions’ but also of the interior of some Siberian sacred drums. In Siberia, the vertical part of this basic handle is sometimes developed into a spirit figure, and the horizontal part used to hang various magical objects. Furthermore, the earliest bodhráns were sometimes called tambourines as, just like Siberian drums, they had jingles attached to them, to create additional sounds. That the bodhrán may have a shamanic origin is also suggested by the fact that it was never much used in Irish traditional music until comparatively recently, it was really due to the work of the composer Sean O’Riada, in the 1950’s and 60’s, that it entered popular culture as a musical instrument. The original use of the bodhrán in fact was ritualistic with strong associations with the ritual of ‘Hunting the Wren’ on St Stephen’s Day. In Ireland, the tiny wren became the king of all birds after hitching a ride on the back of the eagle and from there flying higher even than the eagle itself.
Siberian drum handle
Irish drum handle
I discovered that by playing the comhluighe rapidly and alternately it was possible to replicate the effect of the drum and it’s harmonics. Whilst pondering further how an Irish shaman harper might have used the instrument I remembered that there is still one great shamanic tradition that still uses a harp as its main instrument and that is Bitwi. Bitwi is a shamanic religion, which centres around one of the most powerful entheogens in the world, iboga. During the ceremony the effects of the iboga are enhanced by rapid and repetitive rhythmic motifs played on the harp accompanied by percussion. I suggest that the clairseach and the bodhrán may have also been used together in this manner.
I was delighted to find that in Gabon the harp is imbued with a deep spiritual symbolism uncannily similar to what I was seeing in my harp. What I found in the anthropological literature was that,
‘the soundbox of the harp, covered with antelope skin is seen as symbolic of the stomach of the female principle…there are two basic colours red female and white male painted on either side of the soundbox representing sexual union…the support arm represents male potency and also the backbone..the conjunction of support arm and soundbox, backbone and stomach all express sexual union.’
Regarding the strings,
‘…the four chords of the highest pitch are feminine, the four lowest masculine…as the harp is played masculine and feminine tones intermingle in another expression of that union which is the source of all vitality.’
The video below shows harp in combination with percussion to aid the shamanic iboga journey.
This spiritual aspect of the harp expressed itself also in my dreams. A common theme was the harp as kundalini. Several times the serpent would slither off the forepillar of the harp, rear up and talk to me. On another occasion I saw an old man sitting by a fulacht fia, an ancient Irish cooking pit. The snake of the harp was on the ground slithering towards him. In one breathtakingly beautiful dream the harp revealed itself as a portal and connection to other worlds. In the dream I saw my mother. From her hands she spun a golden harp string. It extended out in front of her and passed through the frame of the harp. The harp frame was like a window and as my eyes followed the golden string through it I could see a beautiful landscape of rolling hills, trees and temples. Sitting just inside this other world was a statue, half woman, and half snake. She turned her face towards me.
Eventually, the third part of the Peruvian trinity came to me, I dreamed of a Condor. In the dream I saw a little girl, she transformed into a condor, flew right up to my face, spread her wings and froze like this in mid air. I woke with a start and knew immediately I had been gifted some music. I went to the harp and played straight away my first spirit song. It was fully formed, no compositional process, a gift. It was the first of several pieces of music given to me in altered states of consciousness to be expressed on the harp. I called it Irish Icaro.
A friend of mine Barbara Karlik, uses her clairseach to journey and in a vision, saw her clairseach within a tree. To me the harp as the Tree of Strings can be seen as a musical expression of the Tree of Life, an extension of the kundalini awakened spine, a conduit for higher consciousness vibrating out into the Sacred Illusion.
Kundalini spiral from India
Double headed kundalini spiral from Ireland courtesy of Astrid Adler
Brulology*” is an anglicisation of the French term, brûlologie, or the specialty of burn care. The etymology of the French terms “brûlure” and “brûlologie” comes from the vulgar Latin “ustulare”, to burn (which led in current day Italian to “ustioni”, burns), in combination with the Old Frankish (West Germanic) root “brenn”, burn. Taken together, these became “brustulare”, then “brusler” in the Middle Ages (as in the 12th century Oxford Psalter). This later became “brûler”, where the “s” is replaced by the circumflex accent on the “u”, a common process with mediaeval words. The same root “brenn” in Old Norse (Nordic or Old North Germanic) gave rise to the English “burn”. Like many French and English words, burn and brulology thus share a common ancestry.
The Cathars are among the great burn victims of history.
On the 16th of March 1244, over two hundred Cathars, mostly perfected ones, were burnt at Montsegur in the south west of France. No stakes were needed, they went willingly into the flames.
This reminds me of ThíchQuảng Đức, the Buddhist monk, who immolated himself in 1963. He didn’t flinch or cry out as his body was burning. He had spent months in spiritual preparation for this event. The Cathar perfecti, besieged within the castle, knew full well that the flames awaited them and likewise spent their time praying and fasting in anticipation of what was to come.
Buddhist monks sometimes engage in a practice called Dark Retreat, where they meditate for up to six months, in a specially constructed room that is completely sealed from light. It is said that the Cathars engaged in similar practices and that to become a Perfect, they would enter deep into a cave system, not to emerge for one year.
Dark retreats are designed to instigate a series of very special visions known as empty forms. They are called this because although clearly observable as a phenomena they are empty of material particles. For the monk, this is the experience of directly seeing and cognising emptiness, a central tenant of Buddhism.
The principle empty forms are a watery mirage, smoke, sparks like fireflies and a flame, like a butter lamp or candle. This visions arise, when due to the power of either kundalini awakening or certain meditations, the energy winds that course through our bodies engaging the five senses, withdraw into the heart. When this happens, ordinary reality ceases to exist. In fact, this is what happens when we are dying. It’s quite possible that the Cathar perfecti might have used a similar technique, to withdraw the physical senses into themselves before immolation.
However, a recent dream experience gave me another perspective.
I found I was sitting in a chair, participating in a hypnotherapy demonstration. Wearing a simple woollen robe, I sensed the Middle Ages, I sensed Cathar… Suddenly, I was engulfed by flames but as they rose around me, a spiritual force manifested and I felt no fear. Cool and silvery, it counteracted the fire completely and I felt a holy presence.
Perhaps I was being shown what the Cathars knew. That Spirit would be with them as they walked into the flames, holding hands as they burned, chanting and singing their way to ascension.
Judee Sill, is a largely forgotten musical genius. After a somewhat difficult life, she died tragically young aged just thirty-five. Much of her work is imbued with spiritual overtones and her great song, the Kiss, is no exception. In fact, I see it as a beautiful kundalini metaphor and this is supported by her words when introducing the song – This song is about the union of opposites we all have, the Kiss is a symbol of that union.
One of the lines in particular really captures for me the subtle sweetness of ever present kundalini – holy breath, touching me like a wind song, sweet communion of a kiss.
I have to say I was never a David Bowie fan, much of his music simply didn’t resonate with me and yet only a few days after his death he came to me in a most intense dream. I found myself in the caves of Peche Merle, they are close to where I live and contain some of the most important and beautiful rock art in the world. There is undoubtedly a shamanic quality to both the place and the art.
Bowie appeared to me and said, I have made the album Merkaba for my friend the Flute Player, gesturing to a man standing next to him. Looking at the walls I could see paintings of animal skins with dot patterns on them. The Merkaba is the body of light that comes with kundalini awakening and activation of DNA.
On the floor, sitting on animal skins were children, they were learning how to manipulate the dots to create the Merkaba.
Then Bowie began to sing, the songs had a haunting mantra/chant type quality about them, just Bowie’s voice, accompanied by the most exquisite Indian flute playing. I think Bowie made this album for Krishna, the cosmic flute player.
I am now most assuredly a Bowie fan, am I the only one to have heard his latest and undoudtedly finest work? I think not, because I know I’m not the only one to be visited by David Bowie in my dreams, as the Starman sings his way through the cosmos in his shining Body of Light.
It’s night-time. I’m standing in the bedroom of a medieval house. I hear a hissing noise, it gets louder and louder, I realise it’s the sound of baby barn owls, they hiss like snakes.
I open the window, outside I can hear the banshee-like cries of adult barn owls.
I see something peaking in from the top of the window, then the owl comes in. It’s right up against me, its wings fluttering all over my face. It settles in the room and I go to sleep, leaving the window open, for this spirit owl to fly away.
I’ve encountered many owls, both in ordinary and non ordinary realities. Mike Clelland has written a fascinating book (in which I feature), with a unique take on the connection between owls and UFO experiences. It’s called, The Messengers – Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee. It is interesting to me, that this dream-vision occurred, just a few days after I dreamed of UFOs.
On the morning of the first of November, as Halloween merged into All Souls Day, our house burned down. I awoke to hear a strange sound, it wasn’t loud, it was actually quite subtle. I thought perhaps it was my dog, or one of the cats messing around. I started to drift back into a delicious sleep but then the noise repeated twice more and each time it was identical. I opened the bedroom door, which led directly into the kitchen and found the room was full of smoke. Then I looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling at least a metre across and through that, I could see a raging inferno. It was as if Hell had manifested in our attic! The noise I’d heard, was actually the stone slates, sliding off the roof. We all got out (humans and animals), just in time, before the roof came down. We left so fast, my wife had only one shoe on and a coat, under which she was naked. I was barefoot in pjyamas. We stood in the breaking dawn and watched. The stone slates flew off the roof like missiles. Gas bottles exploded. It was spectacular. Twenty-five minutes later, everything was gone. Thirty-five minutes later the fire brigade arrived. Three days later and despite the constant rain, the remains of the house were still smouldering.
Our daughter was away staying with a friend when the fire happened. We were desperately trying to contact her but she had no mobile phone reception. Blissfully unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, she was enjoying the morning, amusing herself with Tarot cards. She decided to draw a card for the day and what did she pull? The Tower! A few minutes later, she got the news. Our little in-joke now, is that when we get some new Tarot packs, we are taking the Tower out! Really though, the Tower can convey an amazingly positive message, it represents an act of divine loving intervention, shocking change, liberation and freedom. It is also associated with the element of fire.
It is often said that those on the spiritual path must lose everything, either voluntarily or involuntarily. All I know is, that we have literally NOTHING material left, everything on that level has been obliterated. The Tibetans say that a house fire like this represents the burning away of all karma. There is really no separation between the inner world and the outer, the spirit world and the material and the fire of Kundalini is not just an internal purification.
All my spiritual diaries are now lost but by chance, I posted this dream/vision on the 3rd of September, on my Facebook page. The symbolism is interesting considering what was to come!
In meditation I see a column of fire blaze up at the level of my heart. Then I dream I’m in the sitting room of my childhood home with my dad. I see that hot coals have spilled on the floor. Little fires are springing up everywhere. I panic and do my best to put them out but the carpet is badly burned. Then I find I’m in the garden and a phoenix is there, it’s feathers are a gorgeous soft pink. Then I see small fires springing up all over the phoenix, I want to help it but it rises up in flames and flies over the garden fence. This seems to trigger some kind of cosmic reaction as hundreds of birds and giant salamanders come back the other way, flying over my head. Then I find myself barefoot, I’m standing in the middle of a river, I begin to walk…
At the end of the day we are grateful, it could have been so much worse, we all escaped unscathed and our dog and three cats made it too, losing any of them would have been too much.
The love and support we have received from friends, community and complete strangers has been phenomenal, I’ve learnt more since the fire than in my entire life before.
I know this was a divine fire, a gift and this is the point I’m stepping forward from now, into a new life, trying to be a Phoenix.
