I’ve been working on getting back into the habit of journaling more often. That good old ADF Druid staple: Journaling All The Time.
In doing so I was digging up old journals and came across the first thing I ever wrote regarding any spiritual practice. It’s something I hadn’t quite forgotten about but I lost track of how many years it had been! I wrote it ten years ago! Considering where my path has taken me so many years later, and considering that ten is a popular milestone for retrospective work, I thought it would be potentially interesting/enlightening/embarrassing to share it here.
For a little context: At this point in my life I was not a member of ADF. I didn’t even know what ADF was let alone understand that modern Druidry was a thing. The only thing I had to go on was some internet stuff and a couple books on shamanic practice, which was the thing I felt was a current avenue to pursue.
As a result I did something that I now acknowledge to be incredibly foolish: I went on a trance journey alone and untrained. What transpired was intense, frightening, unforgettable, and formative.
1/19/08
I completed my first vision journey tonight. Assuming the posture of the spirit who led me here, the elder bear, I began to slip into the vision. I entered the dream through a pool of water, finding myself underwater amongst coral and colorful seaweed with no other life. I was in seek of an answer to whom my spirit animal truly was. Was it the elder bear who follows me or a spirit yet to come?
The waters bearing nothing I climbed up the beach, emerging cold and wet. The nearest life appeared to be her, the elder brown bear. She built a fire for us in the night. I warmed and dried me. Then she told me to turn around. She pointed and I obeyed. I was faced with a buck with great, spiraling(?) horns. It’s face was alight like an aurora and it’s stare was blinding. My eyes opened in the physical world, I could feel myself “awake” but my eyes still burned from the light. I could see pulsing lines, like colorful magnetic waves. Shortly after my body returned fully.
The deer startled me greatly. It appeared so terrifyingly close and with such bright eyes. The answer did not come clear… But the simplest answer seems to be that I am allied with both the familiar grandmother bear and this new, strange entity.
I still, now, feel her within me but the buck’s frightening gaze is still burned into my mind.
Tonight, when Grandmother Bear and I come together for sleep, I will whisper these concerns to her and perhaps she will grant me answers.
Thus far, however, she has spoken not a word to me.
-Little Bear, Elder Son
It’s interesting to look back on this, especially transcribing it. Bear has obviously been a constant companion and Damh has followed me quite a bit in my Druid journey, though I’ve been hesitant to pursue him in return. The mental image of that kaleidoscopic stag has remained with me all these years later.
Bear Branches 