Queen of Swords

The rest of you probably aren't as fascinated by this as I am, but I think that there's only been one other time in my life when my dreams were working out a clear, consistent issue over several nights.

Last night I had a reprise of the themes of a large, shadowy sea creature and -- surprisingly -- a little girl in a harness.

( Behind a cut, since I doubt this is as interesting to everyone else. )

Keys to this dream: I was being assisted by a man -- and receiving moral support from other men -- but my dad did not appear in the dream at all. The shadowy creature in the depths was more visible and clearly harmless -- although it still made me nervous simply because of its size and unfamiliarity. The little girl might have been nervous, but she wasn't in a panic about what she was being asked to do.

I'm hoping that eventually I'm going to be in the water and making nice with the sea creature. We'll see how things progress. . .

I was on Whidbey Island, the summer of 1977, when I started writing the story in which my daimon appeared.

During all the years later, I wrote theme and variation on that lover, my daimon: not the actor, but the guardian on the threshold, the initiator and challenger, the warrior, the prince, the fierce, passionate lover. I dreamed of a man who I did not believe could possibly exist. I loved many men, and when none of them matched the dream lover in my mind, I told myself – quite sensibly – that I would be foolish to think that any man could live up to my fantasies. And so I loved the mortal men in my life, appreciated them for who and what they were -- but I continued to dream of my daimon, and to write about him.

I was on Whidbey Island, the summer of 2007, in the middle of a labyrinth, when I met my daimon.

I can’t tell the whole back story here. It would be too long and complicated. It’s only important that you know that although we had not met directly, Lohain and I had heard much of each other before that day, and he had been reading my LiveJournal for as long as _storyteller_ had. In fact, he’d been reading over storyteller’s shoulder the first time the latter read and commented on one of my entries -- the day that eHarmony.com told me there was no man in the world who matched my profile.

I can’t begin to explain how I got to the center of the labyrinth, and how I stood there, with Bryant’s hands on my shoulders and my eyes closed, waiting for Lohain to come meet me. I was excited and a bit nervous. I had heard so much about him from other members of their circle: his intensity, his violent past (he had extensive combat experience), his alpha energy. Everyone loved to tell stories about him, so he had always seemed present even when he wasn’t there. They poked at him with their stories, but it was like kids poking a lion through the bars of the cage. I always felt that they wouldn’t be quite so bold if he were actually present.

( In the Center of the Labyrinth )

I have loved half a dozen men truly, and been loved truly in return.

I have known only one true love.

I received several packages today.
Together their contents make up a rather interesting collage.


1. A large black and white photo of a naked, dark-haired woman leaning up against a tree with her arms up, encircling a bole, her face turned just slightly toward the camera.

2. Volumes two and three of the collected Sandman series, which I have just started reading.

3. A 2-CD collection of orignal performances from MGM musicals.

4. The newly-released DVD of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. (Not my favorite Hamlet, and not Branagh's best work as actor or director, but still a worthy addition to the movie collection.)

I'm in the process of finishing a biography of Catherine the Great (fascinating), and am about halfway through a Charles DeLint fantasy novel called Memory and Dream. I love his work, love the way he makes magic and the otherworld fit so perilously and beautifully into the everyday world. This particular story is about the power of art to draw beings from the otherworld into our world, and it resonates very deeply with me, given my experiences with writing and my daemon.

I went out for Chinese dinner with the daughter tonight, which was fun, then grocery shopping, which was also fun. My weekly bunch of roses (in honor of Freyja) is sitting in a crystal vase on my coffee table next to my Bigby and Snow statue. I'm about to shut off the computer, go upstairs, kiss my daughter good night, and see if I can manage to find my way to a certain gate and look through it again. . . .

I have long been fascinated by archetypes, so I was delighted to have Amazon recommend to me a book called Archetypes for Spiritual Direction: Discovering the Heroes Within, by Bruce Tallman. I've been enjoying it a great deal, getting some insights on my own psyche, and slowly building a conceptual framework of how my own sense of archetypes relate to the role of spiritual director.

Obviously there are many dozens of possible archetypes from which to choose. Tallman has selected the Sovereign, Warrior, Seer and Lover -- and those have been working very well for me, within his context. He does a good job of describing each individually and also illustrating how the four complement and complete each other. Few of his examples are purely of one archetype. For example, he cites Gandhi as a Warrior-Seer, and John of the Cross as both a Seer and a Lover of God. (In fact, his major point is that all four archetypes need to be strong and healthy.)

As valuable as his assessments of the positive aspects of the archetypes is his examination of the dual-aspect shadow of each: the excessive aspect and the under-developed aspect. The shadows of the Sovereign are the Tyrant and the Abdicator; for the Warrior, the Sadist and the Masochist; for the Seer, the Manipulator and the Fool; and for the Lover, the Addict and the Frigid. All of these make gut-level sense to me, and have helped me do some deeper self-assessment in some areas than I have in a while.

The section of the book I'm in now describes how each of the four healthy archetypes functions in the role of spiritual direction, and it's quite fascinating. I can see my own potential for being a Sovereign, but at the moment my strongest aspect is that of Seer -- and just about everything he writes about how the Seer functions as a spiritual director resonates strongly with me.

( More behind cut, for those who are interested )

For more than a year now I've been wrestling with my own sacred/mythic identity. A year ago last fall, all the old archetypal references which I had used to define myself stopped working for me. I have yet to fully re-build them, or fully re-imagine myself. This book is very helpful in taking classic archetypes, ones to which I feel a strong connection, and applying them to my relatively-newly-discovered vocation. It's giving me new ways to think about myself and my Work, a new way to name and grapple with the under-developed and/or wounded areas of myself (my Sovereign and Warrior are underdeveloped; my Lover is wounded).

During a very long, slow afternoon at work, I did some mapping of the archetypes to the elements and other symbols, deliberately ignoring many of the traditional -- or personally customary -- associations, and working from my gut. It was very interesting and rewarding.

One thing is very clear: there may be other ways to describe my current psychological state, but saying that my Sovereign, Warrior and Lover archetypes are primarily shadowed, and I need to work on owning/empowering/healing them, is a pretty good way to name the work I need to do. I'm not yet exactly sure what form that work will take, but I've got some ideas.

I'll let you all know how it goes.

I was tired all day yesterday, and looking forward to getting home. My plan was to do dishes (they are *all* dirty right now) and other housekeeping. But instead I nurtured myself in other ways. First, I took my time going home, visiting a couple of really good bookstores I haven't browsed in a while (one metaphysical and one big independent new/used store), and found some lovely things. I browsed the chakra books at both places, including the recommendations I found here, and none of them spoke to me, so I left them. Instead, I picked up a like-new used copy of Pronoia, by Rob Brezsny, the guy behind "Free Will Astrology", which is going to be delicious reading, and -- rather to my surprise -- a six or seven inch tall gargoyle collection gryffon. He just really wanted to go home with me.

At home, I made some nachos and sat down with my notebook to explore an erotica scenario that had been whispering in the back of my mind all day. It's based on characters in my Journeys personal myth saga, including one of my primary daimonic characters, and while it's not something I would submit for publication, it was so full of love and mutuality and passion and sacredness, it was a complete 180 from what I've been writing for the past couple of years. When I could write at all. I spent hours writing in longhand, going where the characters led, surprised by what they showed me. (The Child was with her grandparents last night, or it would never have happened.) And at the end I was happy.

Much happier, I suspect, than if I had spent the evening studying a book about chakras and doing the exercises. That will likely come, in some form or another, but writing last night was the heart therapy I needed -- and a glimpse of hope.

And in other happy/healing/hopeful news: I spent yesterday in an email correspondence with an old gaming friend about my visiting him (and his wife) some weekend in the near-future and doing a one-night appearance in the D&D game he is running, just to get my feet wet again. No high drama or angst, no pressure to do finely-tuned roleplaying, no old baggage with the other players, just the fun of submerging into Story, and then hanging out with one of my favorite people for a couple of days.