This piece has a lot going on. We have three realms interplaying with each other.
In the center we have a harem of does sleeping around a small spring. A massive buck watches over them as they dream.
Above them fawn spirits frolic through the trees.
Below them the Great Mother Deer browses on the lush foliage of the Otherworld.
The deer have gathered for a dream council, to call fawn spirits into their bodies, into this world. The fawn spirits are the fights of the Great Mother Deer, the White Deer of the Otherworld.
I am not so great a dreamer as to be able to enter the dreamworld of the deer, though I did receive some insight from the Great Mother Deer, because I felt that, to depict her, I needed to have not only an understanding of who she is, but also her permission.
In dreams, we dip our toes into the Otherworld, a place unconstrained by time and space. I’ve experienced this frequently enough to see it clearly. It often looks like a sort of precognition showing up in dreams, though it is usually only recognizable in hindsight. Sometimes I’ll have a dream that is obviously telling me of events to come, but that obviousness is only apparent after the fact. Sometimes I will only recognize a figure or event in my dreams years after the dream, and the recognition is sudden, like a veil has been lifted.
How could I not recognize that before? I will ask myself.
But that is the way with dreams. They truly are of the Otherworld, and to make the connections with this world, to weave the two together, is not only a process we can’t control, it seems to require the consent of the Mystery.
There are ways to prepare the threshold, however. Bringing a dream into this world, by writing it down, telling it, exploring it, and then visiting it from time to time keeps the threshold clean and open. But the realm of the Otherworld is beyond time and space, and messages come as they will, or not. But when they come, when dreams are clearly speaking to our lived experience, even if it is in riddle-speak, it feels activated, and feral.
The Otherworld is a place of meaning and numinosity, and I’ve come to believe it is also a realm of collective experience, past and future.
That is, at least, what the Great Mother Deer told me, in epiphanic fashion, when I asked her who she is.
This, then, is my big dream theory. That it is through dreaming that we evolve, both individually and collectively, both human and non-human. Because in dreaming we are able to access a realm beyond time and space, that, if we are lucky and the Mystery allows it, we can receive the insight and information we need.
I’m convinced that all the great leaps in human evolution came from the Otherworld, and were delivered by dreams. Whether remembered or not, veiled or unveiled like an epiphany, all the insight, inventions and information bubbles up from the Otherworld, into consciousness, into the waking world, into physical form. We can’t control it, but we can honor what comes by making it manifest in the world. And perhaps, like the deer in this pastel, we can gather together in dream councils for the good of our species, and for the good of the great living Earth.
This piece has a lot going on. We have three realms interplaying with each other.
In the center we have a harem of does sleeping around a small spring. A massive buck watches over them as they dream.
Above them fawn spirits frolic through the trees.
Below them the Great Mother Deer browses on the lush foliage of the Otherworld.
The deer have gathered for a dream council, to call fawn spirits into their bodies, into this world. The fawn spirits are the fights of the Great Mother Deer, the White Deer of the Otherworld.
I am not so great a dreamer as to be able to enter the dreamworld of the deer, though I did receive some insight from the Great Mother Deer, because I felt that, to depict her, I needed to have not only an understanding of who she is, but also her permission.
In dreams, we dip our toes into the Otherworld, a place unconstrained by time and space. I’ve experienced this frequently enough to see it clearly. It often looks like a sort of precognition showing up in dreams, though it is usually only recognizable in hindsight. Sometimes I’ll have a dream that is obviously telling me of events to come, but that obviousness is only apparent after the fact. Sometimes I will only recognize a figure or event in my dreams years after the dream, and the recognition is sudden, like a veil has been lifted.
How could I not recognize that before? I will ask myself.
But that is the way with dreams. They truly are of the Otherworld, and to make the connections with this world, to weave the two together, is not only a process we can’t control, it seems to require the consent of the Mystery.
There are ways to prepare the threshold, however. Bringing a dream into this world, by writing it down, telling it, exploring it, and then visiting it from time to time keeps the threshold clean and open. But the realm of the Otherworld is beyond time and space, and messages come as they will, or not. But when they come, when dreams are clearly speaking to our lived experience, even if it is in riddle-speak, it feels activated, and feral.
The Otherworld is a place of meaning and numinosity, and I’ve come to believe it is also a realm of collective experience, past and future.
That is, at least, what the Great Mother Deer told me, in epiphanic fashion, when I asked her who she is.
This, then, is my big dream theory. That it is through dreaming that we evolve, both individually and collectively, both human and non-human. Because in dreaming we are able to access a realm beyond time and space, that, if we are lucky and the Mystery allows it, we can receive the insight and information we need.
I’m convinced that all the great leaps in human evolution came from the Otherworld, and were delivered by dreams. Whether remembered or not, veiled or unveiled like an epiphany, all the insight, inventions and information bubbles up from the Otherworld, into consciousness, into the waking world, into physical form. We can’t control it, but we can honor what comes by making it manifest in the world. And perhaps, like the deer in this pastel, we can gather together in dream councils for the good of our species, and for the good of the great living Earth.