This year the Horus-Maat Lodge's New Moon/11 Star Working ritual is the Rite of Children. Details of the rite can be found here: http://horusmaat.com/elevenstarworking.html One of the things I am interested in doing this year, is to track my "inner children" via dreams, and more fully integrate them into my adult self. Having performed the rite twice, once on the December New Moon, and again around the solstice live on Silver Star Radio episode 3, this powerfully transformative magick seems to have already begun its alchemy.
While I did not perform the ROC proper on the New Moon, I did engage in some soul recovery work, regaining portions of myself that had been traumatised as a teen with the aid of shamanic drumming and dream re-entry. This Work begin on January third with this dream:
On Leaving My Tent At the Creek
I am at my Dad's house and my Mom is there. I am getting ready to go on a solo camping trip in the wooded valley's across the street from our house. My Mom tells me a number of things, but I forget what it is she said. I go into the valley, and into the creek. It is raining heavily. I decide to jump in the creek and swim. Only there are a lot of obstructions as I go upstream, fallen branches and piles of brush that cross the stream. I climb over some. But then I decide to go back home leaving my tent on a pile of branches that are bridging the stream. When I do my Mom is upset that I left the tent out in the woods.
Feelings on waking: Happy to see Mom.
Reality check: Mom is on the Other Side now. There are valleys, creeks, and woods in between the streets in the neighborhood I grew up in. I played in them from the time I was 8 until adulthood basically. I dream of these landscapes often which to me represent the magic of childhood.
Motto: Go back, get the tent, and continue the journey.
Action plan: re-enter this dream to continue conversation with Mom and get my tent.
On the New Moon of January 4th in Lugh of the Rite of Children, I utilized the Dream Reentry technique learned from the teachings of Robert Moss.
Reclaiming My Tent from Where I left Off
I re-entered this dream with the aid of a monotonous shamanic drumming track. At first, after starting the drumming track, I attempted to reestablish contact with my Mom, but there wasn't much traction there. And I hadn't gotten thoroughly entrained by the drumming yet. When that happens I usually feel a spinning sensation. When I started to feel it, I changed tactics, heading towards the creek in the valley I used to play in as a kid. I took the tent back from where I had left it in the previous dream. I realized I had further to go, and hiked up on a nearby ridge. The tent was pitched and I had a fire. But the creek was still calling me. I went back to it and I saw its trails as if I was viewing them again as a child. Then I remembered one of the last times I visited the creek. I was sixteen and with my friend Paul. It was the day I placed my daughter for adoption. I had just gotten home with my parents who had taken me to the agency to sign the adoption papers. When I got back I went with Paul to the creek and we smoked a joint there. I saw him and I sitting on a log across the creek clearly. I sent healing energy back to myself at this time, and I suddnely realized how much stuck energy of my own I left on that log crossing creek that day. Part of me had still been "camped out" there from the tremendous loss I went through that day. But I am happy that I have my tent now and am able to move on. That seems to be what my Mom was directing me to go get. I also thought of the book "The Neverending Story" while in the re-entry, of the stories I wrote and those I wanted to write back then when I was sixteen.
Feelings: while the drumming was on, and when I finally realized what my Mom had directed me to, I felt wave after wave of energy going through me, chills, etc. Healing tears while still in the re-entry. But also strength that I gave back to myself from me to the past, while still taking the past with me now. I don't need to leave myself stuck on that log anymore.
Reality Check: The events of the day were traumatic and I immediately sought escape via marijuanna. The Neverending Story is one of my favorite books and was also the favorite of my daughters Mom. I just gave my daughter a copy of it for this Christmas just past. I inscribed in it how meaningful the book remains to me, and how it was one of the things her Mom and I bonded over when we first met. To me now, it means my own story must continue, I have more stories to write. Part of my agreement with my sixteen year old self is to write the stories he will enjoy.
Action plan: Write the stories my sixteen year old self will enjoy.
Then on the morning of January sixth I had the following spontaneous dream which seems to be a continuation of the work.
Poetry Is Given Back to Me / Tent Camping at Lughnassadh
I am at my parents house on the front porch, and then in the living room. A bunch of my teenage friends are with me, including Paul. I feel like a teenager. Another teen/young man joins the rest of us. He reminds me of another guy named Justin, but then he changes to someone else. He has a sheaf of papers for me, all written in black ink. He gives them to me and I realize they are my poems. He then hands me a stack of CDs. I realize these are homemade recordings of my friends and I playing music. I tell him about the CDs, "Thanks for giving these back to me. These aren't available anywhere else!".Then I start talking to him more. He tells me "I walked all the way here from Northern Kentucky". He flashes briefly and looks like a slightly rugged but still beautiful blonde girl, before changing back. I ask him what he does. He seems to work/live in Daniel Boone National Forest in KY. Soon we are all on a camping trip together with family on my Moms side. It's a family reunion. While we all are camped close together I have my own tent. The guy tells me something about this camp out being a Lughnassadh gathering, and that it has to do with the worship of Lugh. Some information about Lugh comes to me, but it is around this time I start waking up. The information was all very intangible.
Feelings: Elated
Reality Check: I know nother person named Justin. I think the other Justin in this dream was quite obviously myself. It feels like a continuation of the soul recovery work I did on the fourth reported in "Reclaiming my tent, moving on from where I left off" which was itself a reentry from the dream fragment "On Leaving the Tent at the Creek". The work seems to have been completed in this dream with the regifting of poems and music that "someone else" who was a lost part of me still had. This felt like a reintegration. Paul was my friend who I smoked the joint at the creek with in the previous dream. We used to have a maternal family reunion camping trip every summer (possibly around Lughnassadh, which is also close to my bday) in a park in KY that was part of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Lugh is a Celtic God.
Action plan: Study more about Lugh, and use him as one of the "Children" in subsequent Rites. Look at some of my poetry from when I was a teen. Lughnassadh might be a time marker for an actual camping trip in Kentucky, which is where my Moms family is from.
Image of Lugh by Taryn Shrigley.
these are very useful, thanks for the updates.
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