Hummingbirds and Kabbalah

I managed to take some new photos of the local hummingbirds.  This requires arising at 5:30 (at least) in order to be in place when they appear for their morning fountain frolic.  

It's been rainy here for the last month, which means the morning (and evening) alignment of planets has not been visible.  I have found myself more attracted to staying in bed, even on those days when it has been relatively clear and the morning skies visible.   I may rouse myself for the impending conjunction of Mars and Jupiter—but it appears the conjunction coincides with the increased likelihood of overcast skies.

On the reading front, I've been reading a history of Kabbalah.  It's not so much about the mystical system as it is about the men (and it's been pretty much all men) and movements associated with it.  As near as I can gather, the typical repeating cycle of events over two millennia is something like,  "a scammer or scholar (we're not always sure which) with bi-polar disorder, mild schizophrenia, or migraine headaches has a mystical revelation while studying or expanding upon the teaching of Kabbalah, proclaims the advent of a new age or else proclaims themselves a new messiah, garners zealous admirers,  has a run-in with the religious or secular powers, and is jailed or exiled."  There's also a lot of book-banning and book-burning.  1666 was particularly MAGA-meets-Life-of-Brian.

On the dream front, I haven't been recalling my dreams so much; the bits that do come through feel like they're part of a gritty comic book or science-fiction series, like spy chases or ensemble fight scenes; or else they're unsubtly erotic.  

May 2022 Lunar Eclipse

Yesterday was an eclipse full moon.  The sky was partly cloudy, and there were some sprinkles, but it was clear enough that I set up the backyard circle for a solitary ritual (with patchouli incense!) and did a tarot card reading for myself.  This particular eclipse was supposed to be especially good for divination (and sex magic!).  

I laughed when the first card I pulled, representing my general state, was the Moon.  I grunted when the second card, representing obstacles, was The High Priestess reversed.   The following seven cards were mostly swords and pentacles, and I'm still trying to figure out what they mean as a whole -- but it's along the lines of challenge your unconscious assumptions to make sure they jive with reality and then actually do something.  I think--this reading was one of the more disjointed ones.  I probably should have done a Celtic Cross spread instead of the past-present-future spread that I used, or reframed my question as a yes-or-no question instead of a what-should-I question.

After the ritual, I grabbed my camera and went up the hill to see the eclipse.  There was a bank of clouds on the horizon, so the actual 8:29 moonrise was obscured.  The eclipse totality was to begin shortly.  

When I got to the reservoir, there were about a hundred people there.  I walked through crowds of milling people, cyclists, and shrieking children to the eastern end of the reservoir, to where folks with tripods, telescopes and cameras were.  I thought maybe I'd see some astronomy friends, J&C O, but they weren't there.  Neither was the moon.  

The sky was still light, and it seemed as if the eastern clouds and haze became more substantial.  After a while, folks perceived an orange glow in the grey overcast.   A hush fell on the crowd as people adjusted telescopes or peered through the vapors between trees.  Then someone started playing an electric guitar battle or something and the clouds thickened.  

Shortly after full totality, the clouds drew away from the moon enough to make it visible.  Everyone appreciated the orange color.  And then a limb of cloud would obscure the moon again.  Focusing the camera was difficult; the moon wouldn't be out long enough to confirm the focus, and between the clouds and dimness, the best strategy was to focus on a star (once it was dark enough for them to be visible) and then swing the camera back at the moon — assuming it was visible enough to find.  

I think I got about five passable photos of the moon out of about eighty.  

Unfun

Ugh.  I don't know if I ate something wrong, or if my stomach was upset, or if I doom-scrolled too much before going to sleep, or what, but I had the most unpleasant nightmare I've had in some time.  I've only read a synopsis of "The Squid Game," (thankfully) and this dream felt like that, with the added thrill of being called into some kind of final death-match even after I'd already been crushed to death by a falling object.  I suppose it was like being in a Hieronymus Bosch hell.

So I woke up around 4.  My usual response is to mentally cast a protective circle and invoke the four directions until I can drift back to sleep.  I keep hoping this will let me slide into lucid (or at least magical) dreaming; nothing so far, but it does have the benefit of keeping my mind from either focusing on what woke me up or doing the liminal-dark anxiety tizzy.

Circle of Ash

Dream fragment.

Mark and I lived in a house near the top of the hill where my family lives.  I recall more about the location of the house than I do the actual house, which was a little south of the crest of the hill.  I was outside the front door, possibly in the front drive, and I might have been floating.  It was a sunny afternoon and the trees were green and leafy.

Mark came out of the house.  He had an 8.5 by 11 inch paper (or papers) that he'd set on fire, and as the paper burned, it turned to black, curled, ashen fragments.   The paper was white, and curled slightly at the top; I don't recall if anything was written on it, or if it was old mail, or a bill, or what.  The fire was along one edge of the paper, and blackened it.  The ashes flowed off of the smoldering page and formed a ring of black ashes floating around me at a little over an arm's distance.   The point-of-view changed to a slow orbit around me, just outside the floating clumps of ash.

In the dream I thought this was cool, and I wondered exactly I might use a circle of black ash in my next ritual.

And then the dream went on to other things beyond my recall.

Dreams: Animal Rituals

     I was at a party on a barge owned by Zack Pinsent and his boyfriend, Alex Zarlengo (I've never met either,--Pinsent is an Instagram influencer who tailors English Regency clothing; Zarlengo is a dancer/baker/fashion writer with a degree in neuroscience).  There were lots of people, dressed in costume (flappers, Regency, Ascott opening day, animal), pressed into narrow halls or congregated in the white and beige kitchen or a carpeted living room / lounge.   

In the lounge, where people were gathered into several knots of conversatin, a woman handed me a goblet of hot chocolate. The goblet continuously changed its form (although I wasn't exactly aware of this during the dream).  I sat on a low cushion or the floor and presently noticed a small dot of chocolate on the hem my white slacks (I was dressed all in white, in slacks, shirt, vest, and short coat).  When I examined the goblet, which had grown three crude, cylindrical mug handles, I discovered three pinprick holes in the goblet.  I tried to tilt it so the hot chocolate wouldn't spill, and discovered more holes.  I tried covering the holes with my fingertips, and ended up with chocolate on my hand and more chocolate on my hem.

I was relatively relaxed about this, and figured I would wash everything out.  I don't know what happened with the setting or the other people.  Water rose in the room.  I can't recall if I poured water onto my pants or if it simply rose from the floor.  The image is water rising over the stain, which diffused and lifted off of my pants.  The water became chocolaty.  More water rose and cleared -- I have an impression of my bare foot and white pant leg lightly billowing under crystalline clear water.   

Break in recall.

I was an otter or a mink or a weasel going through a series of tunnels.  I was following someone (?another animal?) through the tunnel, my sense is that it was a rescue / get to the princess operation (possibly meeting the woman who gave me the goblet earlier?).  The tunnels were dry and angular, made of concrete, as if they were steam tunnels (only not stifling) or set into the foundation of a building.  There were workers in the tunnel, working on wiring or steam lines.  The tunnels were dark.  At one point, I was hiding around corners, trying to stay out of sight of the workers as they did their ethernet line or optic fiber maintenance.   They weren't expecting me to be there, so as long as I stayed in the shadows and moved quickly, there was a good chance they would question whether or not I had really been there (in a "there's no way an animal could be down here, so it couldn't have been one" way).   I remember having to jump through a square opening about three feet off of the ground.   As I was scampering around, I found a worm, and pawed it with the intention of eating it.   During the course of the dream, I ended up a wolf. 

I had a strong feeling that I had done this before, or that this was a complete movie / story that I was viewing again.

As a wolf, I made it into a suite of rooms.  This was a movie set.  An actress--who may have been Nichole Kidman as Satine--was being filmed.  I bounded into her room, possibly a bedroom, (which wasn't the Elephant Room from Moulin Rouge!), which was a brightly lit and layered with cream and beige textured fabrics.  

It's possible there was a discussion here between the actress and the rest of the crew.

Somehow, we left together, and she drove us through (New York City?) streets in her convertible (possibly a Jaguar).  A very large, full moon rose in the cobalt dark sky and I raised my head and voice in a greeting howl.   The moon in the sky, the dark buildings towering on either side of the street, the wind in my ears and mane as we drove.  After the third howl, the actress glanced at me from behind the steering wheel -- I was sitting in the passenger's seat -- and said, "Wow, I guess you really are a wolf."  

 

Break in recall.

We drove through New York City, until we came to an end of Manhatten Island.  In real life I think we'd be near Battery Park, because the Statue of Liberty was near, but we drove up a ramp and were on the high end of New York (where white, shining buildings arced upward to the sky and extended out into the calm blue ocean).  

Break in recall. 

I was myself.  I had been using a techno-bracelet and a laptop to work on a website.  Part of the website involved ordering portrait-orientation images of (mostly) people into rows of five (in waking life I'm reminded of a card game or a directory).   I was working with a group of people, and I think someone was making a movie / documentary.   We were working in a brightly lit series of rooms (like an office suite or a bunch of classrooms -- I recall a long hallway).  (I'm noticing the similarity between the barge and the actress's suite... And this was different, but might have been the actress's suite... It did have a slight high school/college hall feel it it).   I had set my equipment down somewhere, and lost track of it, but I could make it beep through the main computer I was working on.

I kept signalling my peripheral devices to try to find them, but this wasn't working.  

There was a producer / director there, and I asked him if anyone on his team had picked up my bracelet or laptop; my sense is that no one had.

Break in recall.

The City of Poseidon at the top of a dam (it's possible the far-end of Manhatten Island became the city Poseidon).  There was a less glamorous town at the base of the dam.  There may have been a wedding reception happening here.  ?Something about groomsmen and lava?  Or scrambling over the scree along the top of a water outlet?  

I was in a brightly lit room.  There may have been torchères or standing lamps and urns in the room.  One end of the room was open to a wide terras, and late afternoon sun streamed into the room.  A woman (the actress?) and a black cat (Cicero?) was photographing me as I vogued.   I think a divan or low couch was involved.  She would photograph me and then we'd review images.  My recall is not good; I might have been dressed in a flowing ?white? robe; I might have been dressed in loose casual clothes.  I might have had a turban or hat?  

The last session was me, barefoot, ritualistically walking on an orange or red and black pattered  Oriental rug -- it wasn't a tiger skin because it was too red, but I'm put into mind of one (I'm also put into mind of flame).    I might have had a talisman or lamp or censor in my hands, or I might have been holding my hands up in some sort of gesture of presentation.  

Septagram Revisited

The other day I revisited the interlaced septagram.  I wanted to make the areas between the rays more even, and I ended up doing a double-interlace.

This design suggests to me that it could work as a a meditation guide; I see several skewed perspectives in it, and the curves have a feel of water and bridges to them.  

Perhaps I'll stare at it before going to bed and see if any interesting dreams appear.

Low Key May Day

We had a very laid-back May Day Weekend.  Saturday was rainy and damp; Sunday was drier as the day progressed.  Venus and Jupiter had a conjunction Saturday, but the mornings have been overcast the last week, which has made any early astronomy difficult.  

Sunday, May First, while it was still damp, I visited the Raptor Center and managed to photograph Parker the American Kestrel.  A little later, Dmitri the Eurasian Eagle-Owl, while apparently grooming some astroturf in his aviary, made high-pitched, chicken-like sounds—I've heard him make deep throated hoots and impatient sounding squawks, but never goofy-sounding, clucking squeaks.   The residents in general seemed to be more animated and vocal than I've observed in some time; I don't know this was related to seasonal changes or not, egg laying and nest building seemed to be last month.

By the time I got back home, the sun was showing more often than not and the back yard began to warm up and dry out.  The closest thing I had to a May Pole Dance was looking at pictures of friend's Morris Dances and the official Todrick Hall video, "I Like Boys."  

Mark's not a religious participant of any flavor, and he's really not into Beltane, so there was no jumping over fires, nor Great Rites at Dawn, or anything remotely like a bacchanal.  Well... okay, in the afternoon I laid out blankets and pillows and a small portable table and—after settling Aiofe on her corner of the blankets—read the opening chapters from "Book The Second" of C.G. Jung's "The Red Book."  I was struck by some similarities between it and part's of Dion Forutne's "The Winged Bull," and how Jung's imagery is filled with binary opposites.  She's obviously read a lot of his work.

Mark did house maintenance and re-painted the back door to our garage.  

Possibly as a result of reading Jung, I did have a quick dream image of a woman in a fuchsia dress, who did a handstand and as a result, her red dress fell over her head and shoulders, and her white petticoats and white stockinged legs were like the stamens and white petals of a passionflower (cue Tchaikovsky Waltz of the Flowers music from Disney's Fantasia...).