Dreams and Symbols

The process of self-knowledge has numerous ways. Sometimes we want to tell our story, so sharing our wisdom. Sometimes the stories come to us as dreams, putting us in contact with other worlds. My  Grandmother Moon told me that the stories need to be told so that we can learn with them our own history. "That’s what stories do. They differ from advice by the fact that when you acknowledge them, they become a product of your own soul. That is why they heal you (Alice Walker). "

The story of this week I came across the song Blue Pail Fever of Woven Hand. Some verses of David E. Edwards highlighted form the lyrics as own will and joined to the Guy of Gisborne’s images, telling to me his unrealized love story with Marian.

When I finished the text, White Lady, a sadness came over me. "No, Guy, that’s not the story we want to tell." I saved the text to rewrite it later. So, as it was late at night, as Guy of Gisborne, I let myself fall adrift into sleep. And another story came to me.

We were myself and my niece Carol (Carol, I believe represents my  brave and adventurous maiden in this dream), traveling through a EUA, when we discovered that Richard Armitage was filming in the city where we would stop. We decided to go to him, trying to meet him. We are in a place full of hot springs and waterfalls and we are informed that after the shooting he will take our tour bus.

 

 

 

At right, Richard Armitage, Comic-on, 2012. Left, Pohutu Geyser, Rotorua, New Zealand, Photo Ana Cris).

 

There are numerous tourists and our bus  looks like a train station in Machu Picchu, no chairs, only backpacks and sleeping bags scattered on the floor, where also numerous young are agrouped. Carol and I are sitting there among our backpacks awaiting the arrival of Richard. He gets on the bus wearing a black shirt and dark jeans, like the one he wore at Comic-On. His beard is still there. He lies down on the floor of the bus and we’re sitting on a support slightly above him.

(Waiting for the Train of Death, Peru, Photo Ana Cris)

I watch him while he sleeps. My eyes roam his body. And I see that in his bare chest, numerous tattoos. Symbols I am unaware  and that differ from Lucas North’s tattos. It fascinates me and arouses my curiosity, because I did not expect him to be tattooed. Then I look at the top of his legs. And again encounter new symbols, tribal tattoo typical of indigenous ethnicity Karajás. And a voice echoes in my mind saying: Read the symbols, Ana.

Then I wake up, and for a moment, I regret that I cannot remember the symbols I saw on his chest.

I remember the text I wrote before bed and I read it. There are so many symbols in the history of Guy and Marian,  between verses of Hoven Hand. The bull, the White Lady, the sword. I remember my dream. Read the symbols, Ana I read them and they tell me a new story much older than Grandma told me.

To be continued

1. Note

South American Indian Tattoos

Body painting is symbolically important for many South American Indian group. The drawings have meaning (related to their cosmology) and its development follows a design itself, obeying  cultural and esthetic rules. In general one can define three orders or domains: nature, culture and the supernatural.

Some of the most common patterns are black stripes and  stripes on the arms and legs. The hands, feet and face are painted with a small number of representative patterns of nature, especially wildlife.

For the South American Indians, the tattoos can provide their users specific powers granted to the spirits that have been incorporated into them. For example, a frog placed on the shoulder or arm is related to a group of spiritual masters totem frogs that teach us to praise our tears to purify our soul.

The shaman Tuiarajup says "in my spiritual dreams, each spirit gives a symbol or a different glyph to the name   that becomes the tattoo that I will put on the body. Each symbol has a spirit attached to it, and sometimes the spirit name appears before me. You know, these spirits also have tattoos on their bodies, and even if you die and have not been tattooed, the spirit will give you all the tattoos you deserve, depending on how you lived your life ".

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