Sorry, No Microbison This Time

So I had another dream last night. I told it to Thora this morning, so let’s see how many details I can remember now.

I was in a grocery store. I think there were some CAYA people there; I’m not sure. What I do remember for sure is that there was a room in the grocery store that was separate from the rest. Inside the room, it looked like a grocery store pharmacy, with little bottles, etc., on the shelves, but it was not actually a pharmacy; it was the Sacred Well section of the store. LOL. Iris and Rha were both working there. There was some CAYA-related task I volunteered for; I can’t remember what it was now (and I couldn’t remember when I told this dream to Thora this morning, either), but I know it was delivering something somewhere. I know this because somehow I now had a bike. I had to talk to Iris and Rha, because I needed to get lights for this bike, and a helmet. (You might not know that, in waking life, my actual bike was stolen a few weeks ago, with my bike lights and helmet, too.) The Sacred Well portion of the grocery store was about ready to close, but Iris and Rha were still willing to help people if they formed a line. So I got in line at the door to the room. I was third or fourth in line, but the people ahead of me would go up to the door, but they wouldn’t go in. So I kinda pushed my way past them and into the room, and was about to ask Iris and Rha about getting bike lights and helmet (I’m really not sure why the Sacred Well would have that stuff, but whatever), but somewhere right around there was when I woke up.

This one was certainly not as exciting as the last one, and I think I remember less detail than the microbison dream. Still, wearing this kyanite seems to have made some difference. I’m not remembering a dream every single night, and I’m not remembering dreams in full detail, but certainly quite a bit more than, say, a month ago.

I actually didn’t mention earlier; a couple weeks ago, I was briefly lucid in my dream. I frequently wake up in the early morning hours, and just lay there until I go back to sleep. That had happened to me this particular morning. I found myself laying awake, on my left side, as usual, but for some reason, I got the impulse to do my dream-check. (I pinch my nose, and try to breathe through it. If you are awake, you won’t be able to, because your nose is pinched closed. If you’re asleep, however, your dream body breathes along with your physical body, so you will be able to breathe through your pinched nose, assuming your physical body is, in fact, still breathing. Generally a safe assumption.) So I do my dream-check and discover that I am, in fact, dreaming. I’m dreaming of laying in bed awake in the early hours of the morning. So I very slowly and carefully roll over (I sometimes have a hard time moving when I’m lucid in a dream), holding my nose pinched closed the whole time so I can continue to prove to myself that this is, in fact, a dream, and I haven’t woken myself up. So I roll over, and Thora’s there in bed with me. She takes her shirt off, and there’s a red line painted across her chest above her boobs. From that line down, she’s painted white. Suddenly and instantly our positions in the bed are switched; she’s now on the east side of the bed and I’m on the west, whereas a moment ago, it was the other way around (which is how we usually sleep). But it didn’t feel like we instantly switched or anything; it was more like a continuity error from one shot to the next in a TV show or movie, you know, like when a glass is full in one shot, mostly empty in the next, half-full in the next, and full again in the final shot of the scene. When the scene was shot from one camera angle, I was on the east and she was on the west, but when it was re-shot from a different angle, she was on the east and I was on the west, and those two different takes got edited together in my dream. Anyway. From there, we ahem take care of some dream business, and as soon as business is taken care of, I find myself laying awake in bed, in the exact same position, on my left side. Yes, I dream-checked, and yes, I was actually awake that time. So – not lucid for long, and not very lucid, but still something.

Next time I’m lucid in a dream, I want to be prepared with an idea of what I should try to do, like go somewhere, create something, work a spell, do something I can’t do in waking life, like fly or something. I want to have a goal to accomplish in a lucid dream, rather than just wandering around trying to figure out what to do. I have had these goals in the past, but they’ve never worked out because I don’t remember them when I’m actually in the dream. But that will come with experience. In the meantime, I don’t currently have a goal for something to accomplish in a dream, and I want one. Any suggestions?

P.S. I thought this was set for me to moderate comments by default, but I guess that’s not quite accurate. I only moderate a comment the first time a certain person comments. So anyone who has commented on this blog before can comment and it will show up immediately. If you have not commented before, I need to approve it before it posts. So if you have experienced a delay from when you left your comment to when it shows up, that’s why.

P.P.S. Greywolf, yes, absolutely, we should market magical microbison cookies!

Pantheacon Part 3 – Sunday

I’ve spent all afternoon doing work that I won’t have time to do during the week. Kind of a lame way to spend a Sunday afternoon, eh? Anyway, I’m done with all that now, and it seemed a fine time to continue talking about Pantheacon. I’m still processing the whole weekend in my head, and if I’m going to post blogs about the first two days, it only seems fair to finish it up.

I think Sunday was the longest day at Con. This is not at all a bad thing; in fact, it’s quite a good thing. I remember on Sunday evening, I would think abou tthings that I thought happened “yesterday”, only to realize that no, they had actually happened that morning. It just seemed like so much had happened since then, that it had to be a different day. Saturday was somewhat like this too, but not nearly as much as Sunday.

CAYA did their third-annual Wake Up To Spirit ritual Sunday morning at 9:00. The Candy ritual and Yoga for Everybody were both also going on at the same time. I thought about going to all of them and was having a hard time deciding which one I’d go to. (Yes, I did, at least briefly, consider the Candy ritual to some extent of seriousness. I’m a kid at heart.) Of course, I was also considering the possibility of not going to anything at 9:00, and in the end, that one won out. We set the alarm for 8:00, and when it went off, we decided to re-set it for 8:30. Who needs a shower or breakfast, anyway? Then, at 8:30, we decided that really, maybe we should just keep on sleeping. So we missed it all. I heard the CAYA thing was good, though.

Anyway, so Thora and I get out of bed, get ready for the day, and head downstairs to try to get a muffin or croissant or something from the coffee stand before going to an 11:00 presentation. I had made some coffee in the room, luckily. After standing in line for about 10 or 15 minutes without actually moving up in line at all, we figured we’d better just head off to the presentations, so we split. I went to Drew Ward’s Psychic Techniques workshop, which was pretty interesting. I’ve always wanted to be psychic, and I probably am a little bit, but not as much as I’d like. We talked about several different exercises and techniques that you can work on developing. The first was grounding, which I’m going to skip over here. Next was seeing, a visual technique. This called for audience participation. We were instructed to pair up with someone we didn’t know well, so I turned to the guy next to me. The instructor timed us for three minutes as we gazed into each other’s third eye to see what we could see. The idea is that you might see people’s aura, or their face might change, you might see a color, etc. Then, with experience, you begin to analyze what you see, based on first impressions. I sort of saw the guy’s face change somewhat, maybe to what he looked like when he was younger. I remember his eyes kind of going black, but being sparkly somehow. I have no idea what any of this meant. It was a bit hard, because I was wearing my contacts, and I’m used to wearing my glasses, and I was blinking a lot because my contacts were irritating me, when the instructor had specifically mentioned to try to avoid blinking. Not so much so your eyes get dried out or whatever, but blink infrequently. So it was hard for me to concentrate. Anyway, the guy told me that he saw wrinkles appear on my forehead, then they looked kind of like curtains, and I was peering out from behind them. He asked if I was shy, and I said, yeah, kinda. So that was interesting.

Next, we also talked about radar, which is sensing your surroundings, people, etc., by projecting energy out from the palm of your hand, and shileding, which is protecting yourself and surroundings from negative energy, as well as rendering yourself invisible to enemies or onlookers. He had a couple interesting stories about that, involving people not seeing or not recognizing someone they should have seen or recognized, due to the person’s shielding intention, etc. He also showed a very interesting picture. He had gone to Tilden Park late in the evening one time several years ago, and set his camera up on a tripod, and set the auto timer. Then he walked out into the camera’s field of view and did some shileding exercises. The end result is a picture of this meadow. There is essentially a dark shadow on the picture where his legs would have been, but you could still see the grass behind. The shadow lightened and lost form somewhat as you looked higher up his body. I couldn’t make out arms at all. Basically, above the legs, there was a larger, lighter shadow for his torso, and a smaller, maybe slightly darker shadow for his head. Very interesting. Anyway, continuing, we learned about whta he simply called energy work, which is passing your hands down and up someone’s body (not actualy touching them, just reading their energy), to see what you can feel. Useful for finding physical ailments, reading emotional states, etc.

And finally, we learned about reading energy from objects. Several people in the audience put objects into the bag, including myself. Then people would draw a random object out of the bag, feel the energy for a little bit, and announce what they read. I drew a small pendant out of the bag and felt it’s energy for a few moments. I’m pretty good at feeling something’s energy, but not so good at reading the energy and knowing what it means. So I just said what I could be sure of, which was that it had a lot of energy in it. The owner claimed it and said that yes, it had been charged at his Initiation. Time got short, so the instructor read the last few objects himself. He drew one out, felt its energy, and said it felt of unsureness, lack of clarity, something. I don’t remember his exact words, but that was the general idea. I identified the object as my wedding band, to much laughter. Heh. I said we got married young, and at the time didn’t have much idea what we were going to do with our lives, so maybe that’s what he was feeling. Now that I’ve thought about it more, though, I wonder if he wasn’t reading the present more than the past – we are currently pretty unsure of what we will be doing in the relatively near future, although things might be becoming more clear now than they were a few weeks ago at Con. We’ll see. But that’s beside the point.

Went back up to the CAYA room after that for some general hanging out, and more importantly at that particular time, some excellent food. There were a few things I was considering going to at 1:30. There were a number of things that seemed like they might be cool, but nothing that really caught my eye or drew my attention. In the end, I went to the Faerie Fotos/Fae Transformation workshop with Thora, Pixie, and Rebecca. It was interesting. There were a lot of people packed into a single hotel room. One wall of the room had a cloth draped in front of it and a projector pointed at it that displayed various images of nature, celtic knots, all sorts of interesting and cool stuff. People used the woman’s supplies including clothing, wings, makeup, etc., to transform themselves into faeries, then they posed in front of the picture being projected onto the cloth, and also onto them, and the woman took pictures. We are supposed to get copies of our photos, but we haven’t yet. I kinda hung around for a while trying to figure out what to do, and sort of waiting until the crowd had died down a bit, the first rush of people had finished, etc. In the end, I decided that I didn’t have to do too much to become a faerie. I was wearing my more “hip” pants, and my horns, so I just decided to take my shirt off, get some decent wings, and get Pixie to sparkle me up. I ended up snagging a decent pair of red and black wings, and Pixie, as always, did a fine job with the sparkling. I got my photo taken with Thora after something interesting happened to her, and then got a couple taken of just me. It’ll be fun to see them when they come. And Pixie and Rebecca, I expect to see your photos, too.

I think we went to the vending room that afternoon. I’m looking over the schedule here, and there was nothing I went to at 3:30. Sorry, it was long enough ago that all the vending room trips have sort of blended together, so I can’t tell you any specifics. Suffice it to say that throughout the weekend, I got lots of cool stuff, including horns (both for wearing and for drinking from), stones, a kyanite bracelet, and a Celtic jacket-thingy. I also placed an order for leather arm cuffs, but she didn’t have the style/color I wanted in the size I need, so she’s going to make them and mail them to me. I should have them … probably within the next couple of weeks, actually! Rock! Anyway, check it out. This is already a pretty long blog post, and I haven’t even gotten to the evening yet. See what I mean about how long Sunday was?

After conversation and dinner in the CAYA room (both of which were excellent, I’m sure), it was time to do the evening stuff. I had a few decisions to make. At 7, I was deciding between the Druid ritual with Danse Macabre or the Ekklesia Antinoou Lupercalia ritual, and at 9, I was deciding between the Erisian High Mass and Yes They Are!. I was a bit disappointed, honestly, by the Discordian.com ritual the day before, so I kind of wanted to go to a good Discordian ritual, but I was also hesitant that it wouldn’t be so good either, and I didn’t want to have two less-than-stellar Discordian experiences at Con. Besides, I knew Yes They Are! was going to be good. So in the end, I went the Ekklesia Antinoou Lupercalia ritual with a cohort of CAYAns, and then on to Yes They Are!.

Ekklesia Antinoou is a “varied and highly syncretistic” group, dedicated to Antinous, a Roman man who was later deified. It was a very interesing ritual. Lots of really cool Latin chants and tunes. (I studied some Latin in college, so it was fun to see it actually being used. ) Anyway, we got blessed upon entering the room, then there were a few short prayers, then a processional of the image of Antinous around the ritual space. Offerings were then made to him. Then we invoked the four side of the Obelisk of Antinous, by chanting the vowels A, I, O, E, and U (the five vowels of Antinous’s name (yes, he has five, because of noun declensions)) as the priest read invocations. I’ve always liked toning in groups, and chanting a single vowel is basically toning, so that part was really cool. Then there was essentially a “prayers of the people” section, and they moved into the Lupercalia business. This part was pretty interesting. Three young people, who were all naked or nearly so, but all had on some sort of “animal” covering, whether it was fur-legs, a wolf’s-head hat, tail, etc., all went up to the front where they were anointed with “hound’s blood” (pomegranate juice) and milk, and “flogged” on the hands by what looked like a wolf’s tail or something. Then we all participated in ritual laughter. This was followed by a footrace between two of the young people, which was won by the guy wearing shoes, rather than the naked and barefoot girl. It was a shame, because the winner took a victory lap around the room “flogging” the hands of everyone, and I was looking forward to getting flogged by her; she was pretty cute. Even if the flogging itself throughout the ritual was completely lackluster. Following that was an honoring of ancestors, which included anyone who wanted going up and saying a prayer or whatever to the Antinous statue for their ancestors. I have to say my Amazonian sisters put on a good show when they all went up at once and got down on the ground to honor their ancestors in true CAYA fashion. After that, they did a thing I thought was really cool called Communalia, where they formally made and recognized alliances with representatives of other Pagan groups, including CAYA. Anyway, time was running short, so it pretty much got wrapped up and devoked after that.

And then, it was on to Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods. And I have to say, this was quite an experience. Several people aspected various deities and told their stories, talked about their sexuality, or taught the audience some lesson. I can’t even begin to describe it. Some highlights (they were all good, but these are some I remember still after a few weeks ) were Hapi, Loki, Aphrodite, Dionysus, and Pan. I’m not going to go into details here, because this post is already getting long and I still have a bit more to talk about, besides there are details elsewhere on the internet. Suffice it to say, it was a very powerful and charged show.

So, did I mention Pan? He was aspected by our friend Marcus, and I must say, Marcus did a fantastic job of it. That whole night, including the show itself and back in the CAYA room that evening, I don’t think I saw Marcus at all; it was all Pan. However, Marcus, I think, had good control over himself and Pan, and I did observe a few moments that I’m pretty sure were Pan acting on Marcus’s impulses or desires. But wow. He really brought the energy with him all night, and you knew it when he entered the room. Someone said later that it was only due to Marcus’s self-restraint that an orgy didn’t break out that night, because really, Pan could have had whoever he wanted in that room.

Anyway, long post, and I’m running out of steam here at the end, and the quality of my narrative, as it were, has certainly dropped since the beginning of this post, as has my level of detail provided, so I might as well just wrap it up now and sign off. Monday coming later.