Circle of Ancestors

Dreams and Prophecy

"Your dreams are your doorways" - Auntie Poepoe, Hawaiian elder

The way I receive a lot of my information is through my dreams, or through feelings, and just a general "knowing", which the Celts referred to as the "Second Sight", where one can see into the future.  I might get general feelings and knowings at first, but when I start dreaming I get the clear picture, usually about something to come in the future. 

My dreams and knowings usually have to do with other people, their ancestral shadows, and what's potentially going to happen.  What gets tricky about having these dreams of "sight" and knowings about someone is that it intimately connects you to that person, and you might know more about them than they do about you.  Dreams are like stories, there's a right time and place to tell them, so one has to be patient.  It can be very frustrating.  The Celts  often refer to the Sight as a "Curse", because often you are seeing things that people don't want to "see".  I learned to use my art and poetry as a way to hold and work with what I was "seeing", and also for healing.  Here is some of my healing poetry I wrote from my dreams.

Shape Shifting

I learned the art of Shapeshifting:

I became a tree.  I dug my roots deep into the ground.  My trunk was solid, yet still flexible, and my branches and leaves would blow in the wind.  This way, I would not be “blown away” by the rage, hurt, and sadness that my friend was experiencing, but gently receive these winds, and help her to hold on.  I could offer a branch when I would see her start to fly away, leave her body, and gently bring her back down to earth.

I became a dolphin, and breathed the manna, the life-force, into my friend when she would get sick and could not breathe.  I told her I would have extra breath to share with her when she walked through her deep ancestral shadows. 

I became a bear, a nurturing yet fierce protector, and offered my bear cave to my friend to retreat to when she needed to rest and recharge her life-force.

I became an eagle for my friend to fly above the thick matrix of the earthly world, to “see” her story from another perspective.

I became the Fool, and helped my friend to laugh because laughter is good medicine for grief and rage.  I helped her to laugh at how ridiculous the human condition really is.

I became a coyote and became very crafty, sticking my leg out to trip my friend or push her off a cliff when she wasn’t paying attention, to help keep her awake and alive.

I became a salmon, to help my friend swim back upstream, and return to her homeland and her ancestors for healing.

-Teresa MacColl, 2005

   
becoming a woman warrior

a woman warrior
takes care of herself
rests
meditates
gets out of the way
removes herself from
the crowd and chaos
so that 
she can remember the story

 
a woman warrior
stands by her word
when she tells her friend
I am committed to
being here
showing up
walking through these hard times with you 
she honors her word 

a woman warrior
loves from afar
and she helps her friend
carry some of that load
that weighs her down
'cuz she's been down too
and now is free... to help 

a woman warrior
doesn't forget the story
her friend shared with her
and she keeps it safe
because the story is important 
not to 
forget 

a woman warrior
is honored 
by the wisdom gained
from sharing and receiving
her friends story
and is grateful
for this beautiful Giveaway
and 
she loves her friend 
very much

- Teresa MacColl, 2005

Dreaming With The Ancestors

Teer ne nog & Teer ne mo - "Land of the living, land of the afterlife, surround the tree of life whose roots and branches intertwine" - From the pre-Christian Ireland.

This is the Celtic Tree of life, which connected all the realms.  To the ancient Celts, the realms of the Otherworld were in full view all the time, which included the ancestors, the deities, and the sidhe or faeries.  In the Scottish Highlands, you find the “two sights”, which denotes the capacity to see both the normal waking world (ordinary reality) and the world of spirit and energy that is intertwined and connected to this one.  We find the two sights among certain individuals, who are the dream-seers and the vision-seers.

From my ancestral dream studies in the Indigenous Mind (IM) MLA program at Naropa University, I learned how to receive dream messages from Ancestors, Spirit and Guides, and how to understand them in the context of the waking world.  Much of the post-modern world does not have Elders or intact cultures to link the modern and disassociative way of studying our dreams, with the ancient integrated ways of our ancestors.  Indigenous elders guided students in the IM program beyond their individualistic sense of self to recover their indigenous wisdom traditions.  In the IM program, we are attempting to reclaim what our indigenous ancestors did, and that is to use our dreams as guides, and to connect with our ancestors.

This is a painting of one of my dreams I had, which I used as part of my “dream data” to guide me to my ancestors.  The title of the dream is “Going on a Boating Trip to the Isle of Dracos with my friend Bear”.

At the time I had this dream, we were also researching the stars and constellations of our ancestors, and after this dream I became obsessed with the constellation Dracos.  Now Dracos the dragon winds its way around and between the two bears, the big and little dipper, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. The Celtic word Art means bear, and King Arthur derives his name from the word Art.  King Arthur is symbolically attributed in Druid ceremony and teaching to the Pole Star which is part of Ursa Minor, and Ursa Major is sometimes known as the Great Bear or Arthur’s Plow.  The dragon represented the goddess, the feminine, and the dreams, and this took me deeper into my connection with the dreams and the two sights of the Celts, and my own Sight.

Oran Mor - The Great Song

My name is Teresa Rae MacColl, and my Celtic ancestors are from the Highlands and Islands of Western Scotland, clan Cholla, the South-West of Ireland, clan Carthaigh, and from Britain, clan Carr.  The Celts of old believed that the world was upheld and sustained by a single all-embracing melody called Oran Mor, or the Great Song, and all creation was part of it.  The essence of the Oran Mor is that it is a story that cannot be written, told, or fully articulated by humans.  The Oran Mor is an ancient rhythm and melody that one hears in the wind, in the waterfall, and in Celtic music, song, chanting, and poetry.  The Oran Mor is still being sung today, but we live in an age that no longer hears it.

I wrote the following prayers/poems to honor the essence of the Oran Mor.  “Remembering the Song”, I wrote to express my grief and rage for the current worldwide ecological devastation, and also to express my hopes and dreams for the ancient ways of healing of our ancestors to return.  “Oran Mor (The Great Song)”, I wrote to express my gratitude to my Celtic ancestors and to give thanks to all the animals, plants, elements, faeries, sprites, Spirits, and deities, and as a prayer for the recovery of holistic, sustainable, indigenous ecological wisdom and knowledge.

Remembering the Song

Wildly you will, listen!!!  Remember.
The wind wails, listen!!!  Remember.
I have walked the land, seen the faces and places and I KNOW
what is to come!
You think you can stay in this place of lies and denials,
but the shadow WILL emerge,
and bite you!

My friend, she is a bird, and she sings the songs of love,
SHE remembers! 

Pain, pain, everywhere,
the land she cries, the waters fouled,
my fish with all their wisdom
cannot reach their destinations! 
What will we do? 
Will we sit on our couches
watching our TV’s
while our government spews its
egotistical crap
at us? 
I AM UPSET by the lack of concern by the
humans! 

I have some ideas,
some thoughts, some prayers,
some plans.
It starts with a song and a leap
and a clap,
and ends with a roar.
This may sound odd,
but I learned it from a crow
who lives in the woods, and he says

This is the way that it
was always done

- Teresa MacColl, 2004

Oran Mor (The Great Song)

I swim in the ocean with all of its features
I go out to the sea and greet all the sea creatures.
Come dolphin and whale and salmon and seal,
Come help us heal!

We swim round the world to each tribe country nation,
And sing Oran Mor the Celtic song of creation.

I climb onto land, and my bear friend does greet me,
And we start singing with owl, and oh we sing it so sweetly!
I say we have come to sing dance celebration
The song Oran Mor of my ancestors creation
The cow, the hound, the cat are all here,
And they start fiddlin’ and dancin’, it’s quite an affair!

I climb a great Oak and I whisper the song
And the Oak she just laughs and starts singing along!
She sings it so loud that the wind starts to blow,
Her leaves start a rustlin’ as she sways to and fro

Now the gods and the goddesses know what we’re up to
As the faeries leprechauns concoct a magical cup brew
My ancestors of Celt and their beautiful voices
Sing Oran Mor for us to make better choices

Brigid is here, Lugh, Cu Chulainn and Finn too,
Morrigan, Medb, de Dananns and Danu
They call to the Airts: North East South West Center,
And to the Elements: Earth Air Fire Water.
To the Sun and the Moon and the Stars and the Seasons
Please help all the humans so they’ll have better reasons
For caring and reverence, love and devotion,
Take care of your planet, stop all this commotion!

Suddenly all stops and the silence is deaf’ning
As we wait anticipate to see what is happ’ning.
The Druids and Bards, nature healers are here
To bless us one and all and get rid of our fears!
Thank you for coming and listening and praying
The magic and blessings are doing their healing
Thank you for coming and dancing and singing
The Song Oran Mor, which will help with our freeing

- Teresa MacColl, 2004

"See, we used to worship God as a mother" - Sinead O'Connor

Today is St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, and being a woman warrior Celt of Irish and Scottish ancestry, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the legend of St. Patrick slaying dragons and driving the snakes out of Ireland.  There never were any snakes in Ireland, so this story is a metaphor for the conversion of the pagan priests and Druids, and the death of the goddess, the feminine.  The Celts of Europe and Ireland used this serpent imagery and kundalini energy to empower the land and the people.  By cutting off the power of the Druids, of whom many were women, the active participation of women as priestesses was eliminated.

Early Ireland was a matrifocal society.  Women had power over their own bodies, over birthing, the skills of medicine and midwifery, smithing, dyeing, and weaving.  Life was centered around the mother or the mother's family.  The paternity of a child was often not known, nor did it matter, because every child belonged to his or her mother's family.  To the indigenous Celts, the divine feminine is a wisdom bestowing goddess.  The great Irish war hero Cuchulain learns both fighting techniques and the inner wisdom of a warrior-in-balance from Scathach, a goddess on the Isle of Skye.  A number of poet-seers in the Irish and Scottish traditions experienced and related to the goddess Brighid as the patron of poetry and fire.  She acted as a muse for those poets who endured sensory deprivation, often seeking their quickening verses alone in the darkness of caves.

In today's modern Western world, we still are not connected to the feminine as divine. This imbalance enables governments to turn a blind eye to the destruction of the planet. The same can be said regarding our bodies. The environmental crisis is not a crisis of the environment; it is a human self-esteem problem. If we don't truly value ourselves, our bodies, each other, all of life, we will continue to take our low self-esteem, our self-hate, and create discord in the very thing that sustains us. To truly remember the preciousness of life, the warrior (the masculine qualities within both men and women) must surrender to the Goddess (the feminine energies within men, women, and the land). 

The Salmon of Wisdom

In Irish myth nine hazel trees of wisdom surround the sacred well of knowledge. The nine hazel trees are of wisdom, inspiration, and poetry. The salmon living in the well would eat the hazel nuts and it would make them wise, and it was said that any person who ate the Salmon of Wisdom would know all the wisdom and poetry, and gain the gift of prophecy. They would be able to remember their future.

In the Irish tale of Fionn macCumhaill (Finn MacCool) a boy named Finn went to learn poetry from the bard Finneces (White Wisdom) who had been seeking the Salmon of Wisdom for seven years. Finneces caught the salmon and gave it to Finn to cook, telling him to not eat any of it. Finn accidently burned his thumb while cooking the salmon, and immediately sucked his thumb, thus he was the one to gain the wisdom of the salmon and gained the gift of prophecy. From that day on, anytime Finn sucked his thumb he could see the future.

By remembering the dreams and stories of our ancestors, we too, like Finn MacCool, can remember our ancestor’s future, and reclaim a more balanced, holistic, and ecologically sustainable world.

                                                                                                                      

Polish Ancestral Healing Project

In June of 2004, Maura  Singer and I (Atava) made a collective journey to Poland. As two women of Polish descent, one Jewish and the other raised Catholic, our journey centered on exploring our common Polish heritage and looking deeply at the shadow side of Polish history. We drew upon our indigenous Jewish and Slavic traditions to connect with the spirit of the Polish land, Matka Ziemia.  These ancestral traditions became the backbone for the earth-based rituals and ceremonies that supported us to face and heal our collective ancestral wounds.


In June of 2007, we premiered our film, Healing Mother Earth in Poland, as part of Circle of Ancestor's presentation series.  Our film documents our journey to Poland and the 4 aspects of ritual that  comprise our work:

•Cleansing (Mikveh)
•Healing (Doemem or Stones Ritual)
•Reactivation of Sacred Sites
•Dreamwork (accessing ancestral guidance)

As part of Circle of Ancestors, the Polish Ancestral Healing Project will facilitate workshops in Poland and in the US for people of Polish ancestry focused on ancestral healing.  We plan to begin the workshops in 2009.

Here are the links to our film on youtube.  It's in three segments, so make sure you watch them all:

Healing Mother Earth in Poland, Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPvCvfzzO_c

Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heYXOln1jdo

Part 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJNBQGH9WU

Indigenous Science and Herbal Medicine

"Native science, often understood through the tree, is holistic.  Through spiritual processes, it synthesizes or gathers information from the mental, physical, social and cultural/historical realms." Dr. Apela Colorado(1)

For thousands of years, indigenous people have had a strong relationship to the natural world.  Indigenous people have their own way of coming to knowledge, their own science.   As Dr. Charles Finch says, "There are ways of knowing different from the scientific method that yield empirical information every bit as elaborate as that of science."(2) 
Physicist and author F. David Peat describes indigenous science this way: "It is a science of harmony and compassion, of dream and vision, of earth and cosmos, of hunting and growing, of technology and spirit, of song and dance, of color and number, of cycle and balance, of death and renewal." (3)

One of the key elements of indigenous science is relationship, relationship to what Native American people call "All My Relations".  As practitioner and teacher of European ancestral remembrance Kimmy Johnson writes:  "Indigenous science arises from close observation of the natural world and deep respect for all beings of the world."(4)

In Circle of Ancestors, we all have been trained as practitioners of indigenous science.  Before meeting Dr. Apela Colorado and becoming her student in Indigenous Mind, I was a student of herbal medicine.  Today, as a practitioner of indigenous science I am learning how to apply the tenets of indigenous science to my herbal practice. I am remembering the ways of my ancestors who lived in close relationship to their plant relatives.  As I deepen my relationship to the plants, each they teach me something new.  I am learning to sit quietly and listen to them; I give thanks for the dreams in which they appear. 

Right now I am working closely with a plant called Lemon Balm, or Melissa Officinalis. "Pay attention to what shows up,"  is something Dr. Colorado always said to us.  She was giving us directions on how to look at life through the lens of an indigenous scientist.  Lemon balm has been growing in the yards of all five houses I have lived in for the past 10 years.  I have also heard elders speak about that the medicine we need is often growing right outside our own homes.  In this way, nature is always supporting us to achieve balance.  So I have decided to pay attention to the Lemon Balm spirit that keeps appearing in my life.

Lemon balm is in the mint family who is know for her fresh lemony scent.   She grows like a weed here in the Bay Area.  She is traditionally used for stress, anxiety, depression, digestive upset, fevers, herpes cold sores & PMS.  As I sit with her in my garden and take her with me to bed at night, I'm hoping that she'll reveal to me more of her healing spirit.

Blessings,
Atava

www.ancestralapothecary.com

1 Pamela Colorado, "Native Science and Participatory Research," Paper presented at the Participatory Research Conference, (University of Calgary, February, 1989), 4.

2  Charels S. Finch III,"New Perspectives on Ancient African Science," Revision, A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation: Indigenous Science  (Washington D.C.: Heldref Publications, 1996).

3 F. David Peat, Lighting the Seventh Fire, The Spiritual Ways, Healing, and Science of the Native American (New York, NY: Birch Lane Press, 1994), 8.

4 Kimmy Karen Johnson, "On the Path of the Ancestors: Kinship with Place as a Path of Recovery," (Doctoral dissertation, The California Institute of Integral Studies, 2001) 31.

This Year and the Tiger

Any news about the state of tigers in the world is of interest to me, and the Tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo on Christmas day last year was very moving.  While meditating on the attack I knew that Tatiana was provoked.  She is a symbol of the feminine tiger spirit reawakening.  And, she is angry.  The anger has been flowing through me as well, and I pray that I channel it constructively and that I stay healthy while doing it. 

The White Tigress has been an important teacher to me for several years now.  I will be presenting at the International Association for the Study of Dreams this July on the pivotal dream I had in 2000 that continues to inform and guide my life.  The White Tigress is a representation of Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, who is the not-well-known primordial earth mother goddess of China.

Recently, Teresa sent me this very moving photo of a tiger in India.  That caption reads: A pregnant tigress was rescued by forest workers Sunday after being stoned by Indian villagers. Upon her release Tuesday, the tigress jumped into the Sundarikati River.

I will be posting more about the White Tigress, Xi Wang Mu, and my experiences with the feminine spirits of China throughout the year.