Arbutus

So yesterday we journeyed to find a tree.

I saw a little red sapling growing but I had no idea what it was.  Then a dog started howling and I howled with it and all my Wolves appeared and took me off to a tree.  I did not look up or see it's leaves.  It was growing in that very organic soil you get in coniferous woods and we wanted to dig and dig.  We also wanted to scratch at the tree.  It was red and it's bark was peely and there were patches that loked like we had scratched where the tree looked sort of stringy underneath.  The tree was not a straight tree and it bulged at the bottom so you could see where the roots were headed.

I asked for help and discovered red fungus used as warpaint and the the Dogwood which i more of a bush but then someone suggested the Arbutus and well, that is that...

This site has some lovely photos of the tree and this site has a traditional story about the tree.  This tree feeds hummingbirds and butterflies with it's flower, and birds and critters with it's berries.  It has deep roots which hold the soil and prevent erosion,  It is a tree that grows happily with others as long as it is not smothered and sometimes forms a very close relationship with other trees, it has even been known to act as a nursemaid to Douglas Fir trees.  The story makes it clear that it is a tree of abundance and generosity, a good tree.

Types of the Arbutus tree also grow elsewhere including Ireland and across Western Europe.  This is a traditional song from this site.

Our king, he has a daughter fair; Arbutus is her name
And he has gone a soldiering to the court of the king of Spain.

Where our harpers sang of her gentle grace, of her beauty and her face
And the Spanish king's declared his love, begged she might share his name

Our Irish king, he's hurried home with all speed he could command
And there he's told his daughter fair he's promised away her hand

Her lovely eyes were filled with tears and her cheeks were scarlet red
"Oh Father, dear, I can't marry him; I'd rather you see me dead."

"Oh but you shall do as I command, I swear it on my sword!
Go dress yourself in bright array; I'll hear not another word."

"But Father dear, I love a man, Will Winsboro is his name,
And I'd not leave my own true love for the hand of the king of Spain."

"But I swore you were a maiden fair, and my Chiefs did all agree!
I command you now, take off your gown that I may examine thee."

"Oh, Father dear, don't shame me so; I would rather you see me dead
Before I'd let your noble lords search for my maidenhead."

"Take off, take off your very brown gown and stand upon the stone,
For if you be a maiden or none, the truth it must be known."

So she's taken off her very brown gown, and she's let the gown fall free
But before its hem could touch the ground, she's turned into a tree

And her lover's turned to the gentle breeze; through her branches he does
     play
And she has shed her soft brown bark 'till this very day.

And while this Mediterranean species is not the one from my journey because it would not tolerate living in the wild in cold Northern places, there is a relationship here.  So I will continue to look at European lore too.  It seems that this tree is part of the symbol for Madrid and these arms also show a Bear eating the fruit.  Bears like to eat the fruit when it has fermented slightly so the bears become drunk from eating it.

In addition, Hieronymous Bosch's famous paininting the Garden of Earthly Delights is also known as the Painting of the Strawberry Tree.  This is curious to me as I have always been fascinated with this painting, ever since childhood.  My parents had a classical album with this painting on it's cover and I would sit and look at this painting for hours....  I never had the feeling of evilness or sin from the central painting and in reading about Hieronymous Bosch I found that there is a theory that this painting was produced for the leader of a group called the Adamites and that Bosch too was a member.  In reading this I felt like my head had been knocked sideways, dizzy and out of myself.  I wonder at the draw of this painting on me.

Back to the tree though, in some places the leaves are used as an astringent and internally as a urinary tract disinfectant.  Externally it is used as a bath soak for hemorrhoids, perineal tears and post partum bleeding.  I wonder if there is a healing there for me, with my endless bleeding...

The wood is used for inlay work because of it's prettiness but it's charcoal is the best for making gunpowder.  Apparently this tree saved humanity from the great flood.

Shark Relationships

So Shark is my totem for the Moon of Inter-relationships and I have been very remiss because we are now into the Moon of Surrender, so I should be writing about Horse.  But I didn't want to miss out Shark because Shark and I have issues....

I don't feel strongly connected to Shark an I don't think this Moon is fully functional at all.  Last year when I dreamt of my totem for this Moon I was hunting for Shark but did not actually find it.  My Years of Inter-relations have not been easy and bullying has been a feature.  But I can see parallels here to Shark - a few bad sharks and the rest get picked on...  They compete with man for fish and man tries to cull them hard.  Man likes to eat their fins and there is a huge market for them, no matter the age of the Shark.  I remember seeing a programme about the Oceans and in the Far East sharks are struggling, there was a n image of rows and rows of juvenile sharks laid on a beach with all their fins removed and the rest of the shark was just scrapped.

I wonder if my fortunes within inter-relationships are linked to those of the Shark...  Maybe Shark needs my help, just as much as I need it's...

I have watched a couple of programmes featuring Sharks this Moon.  The first was on swimming with the Great White and showed that they are intelligent and very hierarchical and that they understand we are not prey.  The second was on the changing behaviour of Black Tip Sharks off South Africa and how it also shows that they are hieararchical, highly intelligent and co-operative...  This seems to be a shock to science.

We have this image of Sharks as almost rabid creatures, lone, mad creatures attacking things not their food in a frenzy.  Not true.  Not at all.

I remember my first encounter with a Shark where I feel in love with them.  I went to see a high tech graphics simulator presentaiton nearly twenty years ago.  Every day tech is probably getting up to what I saw then.  They had programmed a Shark.  They had looked in detail at how Sharks move and watching this shark swim around this room made the sheer complicatedness of it's movement very clear.  It was beautiful.  They are amazing creatures...

And I find I  have run out of time because the drumming circle calls....  I shall have to come back to this tomorrow...

Lots going on, underneath the surface.  Although I am making progress, sometimes I feel a bit stuck right now.  I am not sure where my path is headed or what I can do to help things.  Somethings my teacher, Lisa, said, helped me understand that some of what I am feeling is universal right now, following the meteorite.  What is not universal though is my feeling of fear of the future or my feeling of being a bit stuck.

I think I need to go back to writing a journal, day to day.

I think, when the dreaming next gives me a gift, I need to grab it with both hands and not um and ah till the door closes again.

Since the shamanic weekend we attended three weeks ago, we have been trying to eat better.  Buying decent quality meat from a local award winning butcher.  Eating lots of veg.  Cooking from scratch.  I have been enjoying it but as always, when I start being good with food I notice that some foods do not really agree with me.  I have had to reduce my wheat intake considerably.

F has been monopolising the computers which was alright to begin with but over the course of a few weeks has become increasingly irritating.  He could not play the game he wished to play on his so he started using mine.  He moved his monitor over and his keyboard.  Moved a lot of the things on my desk off and his things on.  He started to live on my computer, taking up a lot of the available space in the room, in more ways than one.  He left the other computer keyboardless.  To add to this, while playing his game, he would often be chatting to friends.  The software for that is on the other computer, so he would be sat here using both computers and taking up all the space.

One day I came up to use the spare computer and he made me feel pretty uncomfortable.  There had to be much sortingout of keyboards before I could even begin.  It just generally felt like I could not be in here.  Today I got up before him and I am still here even though he is awake.  I know the second I leave the computer, he will be on it like a Hawk!  It is frustrating...  It has made it less natural to do my things online and I miss them.  No easy days of Ancestral research.  No blogging, for I find it hard to write a post when I am a bit cross!

I have created a new blog.  Mostly because I had to have a wordpress account in order to read some blogs I wanted to.  It felt wrong to create a blog and write nothing on it, so I have.  It feels like a different sort of space to here.  Here things have developed into a fairly concrete sort of a blog.  There is little whimsy and magic, for this is a place of thought and striving for understanding.

You can visit it at http://magpieblues.wordpress.com/

Moon Wind

Conversations with others have shown that my trip around the Wheel is a little unusual but the purpose of it is clear!  Normally people focus on their roles and the five totems that go with them.  this is the bulk of what we are and what we do.  Instead of looking at these I dived into a journey with the Moons which is lovely and bountiful and has been such a source of goodness for me.  It seems if our Moons are broken or unbalanced then so are our Roles / Winds and we have to go back to our Moons to fix things.  Moons are our ego, our inner child.

So I don't know my five main totems but I know most of my Moon totems which is an unusual way round to be!

I found my first eight Moon totems as we processed through each Moon.  This drew to a halt at the Blue Moon and we began again.  However, last year was the Moon of Breaking Masks for me and I found my totem for that Moon during that year and this year is my Moon of Reason and I have found my totem for this Moon too!  I have to wait a few Moons to reach the last two Moons, Humility and Metamorphosis.

I find now that if I am dreaming anything related to any of the Moons, my totem for that Moon appears in the dream.  I like this, it works well for me.  It also leaves me a gap in my Dreaming intent to look at something else and to see what the dreams bring to me, hopefully my totems for the four Winds I am unsure of.  I need to dig at this.  Winds run from New Moon to New Moon and they do not run in sequence so I am unsure if I should work with the Wind of the Moon or the to lok at them in my own sequence. 

I do know that we are currently in the Peacekeeper which sits in my West and that I found a new totem this weekend, or rather, it found me.  I don't know that I want to talk about that here yet, I thnk I want to sit with it for a bit and brew it up, or should that be run?
 
I don't know why this is the place I set my intents but it is, so I guess I am looking to work out how to work with my Dreamer at looking at my roles.

The Potent Ant

So back to the Moon of Omnipotence, which starts today.  The reverse is Impotent and so often this Moon had been about Impotency for me, being out of control and swept along by events.  A time when my life flips over and becomes something else for a time.  This Moon though, I have choosen to stay on the rollercoaster, to see where it takes me.  I definately had a choice, to leave my job or to stay and here I am.  Waiting to see where else life takes me.

My totem for this Moon is however Ant and I know Ant has helped me before.  It helps me do little things to accomplish a big thing.  One more step up the mountain and then one more until I reach the top.  Ant has also bitten me a time or two (I went through a phase of accidentally sitting on Ant nests as a child) and every summer they try and invade my house at least once...

Ants are related to Wasps and Bees and like Wasps and Bees, they form colonies like Wasps and Bees as well.  These colonies vary considerably in size, from a few dozen predatory individuals living in a natural cavity to highly organised millions with a huge territory.  Virtually all colonies have a fertile female Queen and some fertile male drones but some have more than one Queen as well as sterile wingless female soldiers and workers.

Ants are everywhere except Antartica and a few islands.  In some places they form as much as 25% of the Biomass.  They have evolved along with their environments so that they have a huge variety of relationships within ecosystems.  Some mimic other species to act as a lure for prey or to scare predators away.  Some have a parasitic reltionship with their food...  In some relationships they benefit without harming the other beings in the relationship but in other relationships, both species benefit.

Their colonies are considered a super-organism because they are so organised and work so well together.  They tap resources, modify environments and defend themselves.  They solve problems.  They have been around since flowering plants evolved over 150 million years.

They vary in size from 0.75 to 52 milimetres.  The largest ever Ant found in a fossil was a queen 6 cm long with a wingspan of 15cm!  Most are red or black but a few in the tropics are green and some even have a metallic lustre.  They have an exoskeleton but they do not breath as gases are taken inthrough the exoskeleton.  Their circulatory system is not like ours either with a single tube, which is perforated, along the top of their bodies.  They have generally poor eyesight and some are even blind.  They are very good at detecting movement but se in low resolution. Their antennae are extremely good at detecting chemicals and vibrations and they communicate with each other through touching with their antennae.

They have six legs and only fertile males and Queens have wings but the Queens lose them after their nuptial flights.  Some species have changed their reproductive organs into stings but for most the fearsome part is their mandibles. 

Ants begin as eggs and if they are fertilized they become female and if not, male.  They hatch into larvae which remain pretty much stationary and have to be fed.  The workers feed the larvae but regurgitating liquid food but they may also receive pieces of solid food and in some species they will be transported to food sources.  In some species the amount of food supplied controls the caste the of the ant.  In others the role of the ant changes throughout their life, beginning with feedin larvae and the progressing to nest digging and finally to defence.

Winged Males leave the nest first on nuptial flights and look for a mating ground.  They secrete chemicals for the new Queen to follow.  Some species will have the Queen fertilized by one male but other by multiple males.  The Queen then finds a suitable nest site, breaks off her wings and begins to lay eggs.  The first born are small but do not pass through the larval stage so can begin to serve the colony immediately. 

A Queen can live for 30 years and some workers as long as 1 to 3 years but males only live for a few weeks.  In the tropics colonies are active all year round but in cooler regions they may have a period of inactivity with larvae in stasis or with no larvae present at all.

Ant communications are highly sophisticated and are largely based on the release of pheromones.  If an ant finds food, on it's way back to the nest it lays a scent trail which other ants find and reinforce.  When the food runs out they stop laying scent so that the trail fades.  If the path changes due to a blockage then they lay scent along the new path.  Some species use scent to distinguish groups on different tasks.  Some ants will release an alarm scent when crushed causing ants to aggresively swarm.  Some ants even use scent for propaganda, causing enemy ants to attack themselves.  They pass scents to each other to communicate and when a Queen stops producing a particular scent, workers begin to raise new queens.

They defend themselves by biting, stinging or spraying.  Some Ants have incredibly painful stings while others spray formic acid.  One species has an incredibly fast bite reflex, like a sprung trap.  Some ants use their bite reflexes to catapult intruders away while others will catapult themselves away from danger.  Some ants commit suicide when endangered in order to release chemicals to kill foes and save their colonies.  IN other colonies a small group leaves each nght to seal the colony from the outside.  Defence against disease is also important and some ants remove dead ants from the nest based on smell.  Physical threats such as flooding have a range of responses too, from drinking the water and excreting it outside the nest to anaerobic respiration in some mangrove species.

Ants learn and they teach.  An experienced Ant will lead an unexperienced ant to food in a process called tandem running and the leader will slow down for the other ant.  Some experiments show that where some individual workers are less successful in finding food, eventually they will take on different roles such as caring for larvae.

Ant nests vary hugely but not all ants make them.  Some are nomadic and make temporary nests with their own bodies by holding each other together.  Weaver ants use their larvae to make silk and tie leaves together.  Many ants will avoid a site with dead ants and some species will abandon a site as soon as disease becomes present.  Some Ants even cut and chew leaves to grow a fungus which is what they live on.  Some Ants even farm, feeding aphids and tapping them for honeydew before herding them to new food or caterpillars which are herded to food in the day and taken to the nest at night.

Ants are endlessly varied in their tactics for living but they have also uses for humans.  Some are used as stitches for wounds, biting across the wounds and then having their bodies sliced off.  Others secrete chemicals that are used as medicines.  Ants are used to harvest rooibos tea as the seeds are small and hard to harvest the ants gather them and then they are gathered from the ant nests.  We also eat many different types of ant eggs and also ants themselves in various parts of the world.  Of course they can be pests as well, we all know that....

I think Ant is an amazong totem to have for the Moon of Omnipotence.  As a superorganism they achieve incredible things by doing one small tiny task each, by cooperating.  They are patient, ordered, disciplined.  They work for the community and plan for it's future.  They are happy to see dreams grow slowly, as long as they are growing.  They are the diligent workers of life.  They sacrifice themselves knowing that in the end, they will get there.  They just get on with it, without emotion, they ride the wave of life.

They are also well placed to cope with adversity.  If a flood comes and washes them away they make a raft.  If they get hurt they call in reinforcements.  If their nest is flooded they suck out the water or carry on as normal using bubbles of air to survive.  They are flexible and they learn and they get there through dogged persistance.

I guess Ant came along to help me survive the wild rides of fate I seem to have during this Moon sometimes but it also adds to that diligent work ethic of mine.  I do a boring job for the team and I just get on with it, but I am part of the team, getting us all somewhere...

Value Added Family

So this Moon, the Moon of Prot4ection or Value has been a really interesting one.  There has been a very strong theme of Family, in all it's varieties as well as care.  There are a lot of stories from this moon, so many it is kind of hard to know where to begin.  Stories take up time though and have made it hard for me to blog because when I have had time I have felt pretty drained.

I went away with F for a week with my family and while there we managed to make a day to go over and see my Great Aunt and my Gran.  I asked them lots of family orientated questions which my Aunt enjoyed a lot and my Gran didn't.  But to fair my Gran doesn't really seem to enjoy anything, she isn't really connected, it feels like she is a difting little cloud waiting to die and to be young and beautiful again.

I spent a lot of time photographing old documents and photos too and this has been very rewarding.  It seems I come from a family of packrats on both sides.  There was a photo of a man we could not identify but from the age of the photo I knew it had to be a direct ancestor because people just didn't do many photos back then and they didn't get hundreds of copies either.  They were valuable things.  I had a moment of inspiration though (no idea where that came from, but I could hazard a guess!) and looked at my Great Great Grandfather's picture, which we have because he was a petty criminal and it is attached to his record.  (he stole bread and went absent without leave from the militia, amongst other less pleasant things).  The two men were definately not the same but the family resemblance was unmistakeable.  But there was little resemblance to my Grandfather, so I looked at my Grandfather's siblings and it is unmistakeable that they are all part of the family line.  I was pretty convinced I had found a picture of my Great Grandfather, the only one that seems to have survived amongst any of his descendants.

The next morning, F said to me, 'do you remember talking to me when I came to bed?' and he laughed.  I didn't remember a thing!  It seems I asked him who it was when he came to bed which surprised him and then I asked who it was who came to bed earlier which surprised him even more.  I then proceeded tot ell him it must have been the ghost that was in bed earlier and that that record was definately for my Great Grandfather!  I guess I had been dreaming and because it was so early in the night, not a single slither of memory of it remained.  I think my Great Grandfather wanted us all to know what he looks like....

I also found a letter from a bank saying that some one called SC had received some money when a joint account between her and another lady had been closed following the other ladies death.  This opened up a whole treasure trail.  My Great Great Great Grandfather RC had a sister called SC and she went into service.  She worked for a very fashionable family, a Magistrate and then at the next census I can not find her, maybe she was abroad but after that she is working for the lady she had the joint account with!  She was a Housekeeper for this Lady, first in Kensington and then at a Castle. On the first of these two censuses she had my Great Great Grandmother AC working with her.  Ac then got married and on the next census SC Junior is working with her.

SC received enough money to retire and live out her life in comfort.  She brought a house and SC Junior lived with her as a companion until SC's death.  SC Junior then went to live with her sister EC who was a spinster school teacher.  Sc Junior died sometime before EC and there is a letter from EC's death which shows that SC Junior left everything to EC for as long as EC lived but then it was all to be passed on to any remaining sisters.  Except that EC was the last of the sisters alive so the money passed to all the nieces but not a single nephew.

At that time women could not marry and be independent.  if they married, everything they had became their husbands.  Men were the ones with earning potential, not women so life was tough for them generally.  This story is all about women taking care of women.  One ancestor was rewarded for loyal service and friendship across the classes and then took care of several generations of women that came after.

While I was researching all this, the speakerson my computer went nuts.  Very much like they do when a text is coming through except that it went on longer and the sounds were more varied.  I have found a few odd things have happened when I have been researching particular ancestors!

So moving back into the present time...  A friend of ours has needed some care too.  At Christmas she was happily engaged and pregnant, living with her fiancee and all was rosie.  By new year she had discovered he had been cheating on her for a long time and the other woman was also pregnant.  He is now living with the other woman.  There is a lot more to this story however that I shall not share here and he has behaved very, very badly!  We have spent a certain amount of time with her but also being onlookers in a situation like this is emotional and hard.  She is a tough lady though and seems to be coming through so well.

Lastly work has been very tough.  They called my department and a couple of others up to announce redundancies.  My team is like family, a very good family I adore (except my Boss!) and I lost two of them.  Both went voluntarily and there was a part of me that was jealous they were getting to go.  As I thought about it though I realised I had to stay to the end which got me thinking about where that thought had come from and I realised that part of me knew that it was all going to come to an end.  And I am not the only one, the general thought seems to be that the place will close within two years tops.  But the Managers think we are all daft and we have to pretend we don't know and keep on with our jobs until they chose to spring it on us.

I don't know why I have to stay but I do.  In the past I have often left job situations that became in the slightest bit tricky and I have often wondered why I can not leave this one even though at times it has been the worst ever, but I have to stay...  I looked at some jobs and that night I had two dreams

There was five cows and they were pregnant and they represented parts of my life and they would each lie down when they were happy.  Two would not lie down and nothing I could do could make them.  Then one changed into a bull and it was dancing round and all the cows were dancing around and it was chaos, but beautiful...

There was an emaciated Kingfisher and a Heron was trying to eat it, I was desperately trying to stop the Heron but it got the Kingfisher, and then there was a big sleek Heron chick in it's place.  Heron is my totem for this Moon and is all about being aggressively self-deterministic.  Kingfisher is about contentment, happiness and abundance.  I interpreted this as meaning that leaving would feed my independence and self-determination but take away my true happiness, even if it is a bit on the thin side!  I don't need two Herons! Not at that cost...  But soon one of those cows will turn into a Bull and my life will whirl in beautiful chaotic dancing for a time....  And I can see that happening when the site closes....

So here I am, lessons on family from so many directions, about sticking it out, about caring, about loyalty and I know the path I am walking for the next little while and why.  But I also wonder, what story will my ancestors see for my life?  What will be the one small insignificant seeming detail that takes on a life of it's own?

Heron Stalks the Moon

So last year, I wasn't really focused when I went through the Moon of Protection.  F and I went away on our Honeymoon and because we were not living our normal life it was hard for me to pinpoint this Moon at all really.  Except that I really value quality time with F.  I love it when we can explore places together, delving into their history and science and scoiety.  I love just lounging around with him, talking and eating good food.

I would have struggled to identify any totem in the waking life but my totem for this Moon did visit me in a dream, somehow.  I remember waking in the night and thinking to myself, something along the lines of 'wow, that was easy, Heron must be my totem them for this Moon.'  and then falling back asleep.  All trace of the dream was gone by morning and only that thought remained.  Whatever happened in the dream must have been very clear for me to have been able to think that while so very close to being brain dead!

The RSPB puts Bitterns and Herons together and lists the UK as having five, Bittern, Cattle Egret, Great White Egret, Grey Heron and Little Egret.  But to me Heron conjures up the image of the Grey Heron and I imagine this would have been the bird that appeared to me in the dream for me to identify it so clearly.

Grey Herons are large birds, standing up to one metre tall and having a wingspan of up to two metres.  They have very long legs and necks and can stand with their heads down by their body by making their necks S shaped or with their necks straight.  They are wading birds, designed to be able to stand in shallow water and fish but they are not fussy eaters, small mammals, amphibians, small birds and eggs also go down...

For me the imagine of a Heron conjures up one stood in the water, completely still, watching what is going on below the surface and then suddenly in a flash of movement, their head shoots in to the water and comes back with some food which it gulps down.  I can also clearly picture them stalking elegantly, taking off ponderously and flying with those huge wings, neck bent up to the body.

They are opportunists and their behaviour reflects their environment.  In some countries they are migratory birds, but here they remain all year round.  In some places they feed or roost communally but I have only ever seen one feeding in a place.  They like trees to roost in, off the ground and they build messy nest platforms out of sticks.  If no trees or sticks are available they will nest on the ground, on cliffs, in bushes or in reed beds and their nests may be made of reeds or if nothing is available they will just be a scrape in the ground.  They will be found in any watery environment, lakes, rivers, garden ponds, canals, ditches, river deltas, mangroves (not that we have those in the UK) salt marshes, estuaries, mudflats and beaches.

If they roost communally then they will be anywhere from 2km to 38km from preferred feeding grounds.  I know Herons will visit different places and will fish out garden ponds and small lakes.  Many people put nets over garden ponds to protect them from Herons.  When it comes to feeding, Herons will move their head from side to side when they spot prey underwater as this helps them calculate distance.  They will walk very slowly and see what they can find or stir their feet or probe for things.  Grey Herons have been observed using bait to bring in prey such as bread or seeds.

Herons are monogamous and courting takes place on the nest.  The male arrives first and begins building before trying to attract a female.  Some females have been observed to attach themselves to impotent male Herons and then they seek sex elsewhere.  They lay 3 to 7 eggs.

Herons are calm birds which are always patient but focused and ready to take action.  They see clearly, past the reflections and disturbances and visual effects of water.  They literally walk in two worlds and are happiest on this divide - they don't swim.  They are birds of contemplation and grace but also highly practical and pragmatic, eating and using anything to get by.  They must stand with both feet firmly planted on the ground and they are aggressively self reliant.  They know how to take advantage of events others may not even notice.  They work with great precision and efficiency, conserving energy.

They are social but work alone.  They do not need a lot of people in their lives and are not afraid of standing out and being unique.  They see no need to keep up with the Joneses and they know what is best for them and follow their own path.  There is a certain showmanship and self-assurance and this flair for drama contrasting with the extreme quiet and patience can suggest an emotional dichotmoy, a tendency to go from one extreme to the other, drama and melodrama to oppression and repression. Learning to balance these two extremes is an important task but once done, they make good counsellors. Herons are shamanic guides by they are all about emotional stability and will not undermine this.

So how does this relate to this Moon?  This Moon is all about what we Value in the opposites of Protection and Imprisonment.  So often what I value is Love, that sort of Love that is so much a part of Marriage.  I value being in a good Partnership.  My second year of this Moon was the year I spent with my first love, literally.  It was a good year and he was a good man, but as I mved out of Value there was other things I needed to focus on and do and he could not walk that path with me.  I am lucky now that I have a man who can and does walk my path with me.  So much of what Heron is about, are things I value:  walking in both worlds, having two feet firmly on the ground, being emotionally stable, efficiency, taking advantage of opportunities, monogamous partnership.

You might think it is odd having efficiency there but it is important to me.  Ask F...  He is not efficient and sometimes when we need to get things done he frustrates the hell out of me!  And then I tell him he is not beig efficient and he laughs at me.  Wasp, my totem for the Moon of Welcome has this thread of efficency and knowing the right way to do things too.  I guess walking my path and F are the two things I value most and the two things I want to protect the most.

Be Merry

I am not sure how I feel about Christmas really.  I am not saying I have not enjoyed it but there is something in me that rebels against the imperative to do more, to buy more.  Maybe it is just plain laziness....

We had a lovely day.  On Christmas Eve we went to the cathedral for Midnight Mass.  Then we slept in.  We opened our presents to each other, well i say opened, they were not actually wrapped...  Then we had breakfast and watched some TV.  Then we cooked our roast and watched more TV....   And it was all lovely.

Today we see his family and exchange presents and in a few days, weeks time we see mine and exchange more presents.  No pressure....  I have avoided last minute shop buying on the whole and done most of it online...  The only shopping I did last minute was a last couple of food items.

Christmas cards and decorations were last minute though, and feeble.  A few cards passed to colleagues on Christmas Eve to avoid offence....  A couple of decorations in the window to make it look like we tried....  Who is it all for?  What is it all for?  A list of jobs done, because it is Christmas and thats what we do.

I liked our relaxed Christmas Day....  I also like family Christmases, like last year where we were able to escape to mine.  I think Christmas only really has meaning in the context of family.

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, celebrated in what ever way they wanted, with their loved ones...

2012

So, the world did not end, but then, nobody really expected it to, did they?  I hoped for a change though....  I guess though, looking back is the only way to judge true change and when big changes are afoot, it is often hard to judge the pivotal moment.  I wanted to feel the Dreamworlds come closer to our reality.  There is still plenty of time for things to happen, there is plenty happening.  So many bad things that to a stable, happy civilization looking back on our history of right now would be amazed.

This has been a tough week for me.  I have been pretty ill, probably with food poisoning which has left me with an oversensitive stomach.  What was hardest though was it threw me sideways, literally.  I had vertigo to begin with and then just poor balance.  Even now a week later my balance does not feel quite right.  The world feels a little wrong.  And part of me wonders if that connects somehow to the changing of the ages...

Then work announced redundancies.  Yes my job is in danger, but even sadder is the fact that my little work family will be broken up.  Things will not be easy for however stays either.  Part of me considers what I would do if I was let go and I am not sure it would be such a bad thing....  I like the idea of having a couple of different part time jobs and doing different things.

I guess it doesn't matter if the world has changed or not, I have and F has too.  And we are going to keep on changing, walking forward on this path.

Web of Life

Another big thing for me recently has been some breakthroughs in tracing my family tree...

My maternal Grandfathers side of the family as always been intriguing.  There is mystery there for sure.  My Grandfather was a music critic, but a well loved one.  He was close to making a breakthrough and writing for one of the national newspapers but he died of Hodgkins leaving a fiance, an ex-wife and two children.

He fought in the Second World War in India and he rode a horse and may possibly have been a PoW.  His family was very poor, his Dad dead and he often found himself in a Childrens Home with his brother.  There are hints of abuse while in care.  There are hints of lots of things to be honest but precious few facts.  What is clear though is how respected and loved he was.  Years and years later my uncle visited a pub in the town my Grandfather had worked in, and was recognised as a son of my grandfathers...

So it is unclear, the story of my Great Grandfather Owen Edgar, because most of it is just too recent.  He was a Furnishing Assistant and fought in the First World War and may have died of TB but I have no idea when...  He first appears on a census in 1901 at the age of 8 living with his father William Owen and Annie.  When I was able to find his 1911 census record though, things changed.  The 1911 census lists the length of the marriage and the number of children born to the woman and how many are still alive and dead.  Annie never had any children and had not been married to William Owen long enough to be Owen Edgar's Mother.  A pencil written note on the census record confirmed that this was correct and Annie was not Owen Edgar's Mother.

Now this branch of the family has a common surname and lived in London.  Finding them was impossible because I had no way to separate them from others.  I decided to order Owen Edgar's birth certificate and this gave me an address for them in 1893 and his Mother's maiden name, she was called Kate.

My next step was to find their wedding details and this again was very, very hard.  in 1893, they lived within the bounds of Greater London but in 1892, they were based only a few streets away, but it counted as Middlesex.  It took me hours of searching to find them, but I did and I finally ordered the wedding certificate and received it last weekend.

I already knew that William Owen was a Draper but I discovered his father was called John and worked as a Millwright and that Kate's father was called Edmond L something and was a Schoolmaster.  And I still could not find any of them.

The wedding certificate gave an address for William Owen in 1892, so I decided to hunt through the censuses for that address and see if William or any relative has been living there only a year before.  This took some time as the district had nearly 100 sub-sections and I had to wade through, accompanied by a map of London, to find the right area.  When I did there was no sign of William Owen or Kate, but there was a Walter Thomas.  This was really important, because he appears as a witness on the wedding certificate!

At another dead end, I decided to start a family tree for Walter Thomas and see if it connected at all to either of them.  Walter had several brothers but I paid more attention to his sister Caroline because girls change their names.  Caroline married an Edward Argent and this was really important because William Owen's second wife, Annie, was an Argent too.

On looking at the census's it becomes clear that Caroline was Edward's third wife and that he had had three children with his first wife.  The 1881 census shows the family which includes a daughter Ann and a niece, Kate Davis.  So William Owen married Kate, using one of Kate's Uncle's address, Walter Thomas.  Kate had been brought up by her Aunt Caroline in the house of her cousin by marriage, Ann.  When Kate died, William Owen was married again, but this time to Kate's cousin Ann(ie).  This makes sense...  Annie would have been the perfect person to keep house and care for Owen Edgar.

So Kate was probably an orphan.  I eventually found her both on the 1891 census and the 1871 census, both listing her as being born in Kent, obviously whoever answered the 1881 census in her adopted family was a little fuzzy on exactly where she had been born.

Kate's parents were Edmond Louis and Eliza.  Eliza shared the same surname as Walter Thomas and Caroline (before she was maried) and is obviously the family connection but I have been unable to prove the connection.  Children appear on one census, disappear off the next one and reappear again.  This is a family that was fairly fluid in it's child care because the Father appears to have been bringing them up alone.  I have yet to find any trace of Eliza before her marriage.

Edmond Louis is also an interesting enigma.  He was in his 40s when he had Kate and appears to have led a very full life but discrepancies make it hard to say that I am dealing with one person who did all these things.  Before his marriage he certainly moved around and appears as a visitor and as a lodger on different censuses.  Most censuses list him as English but one suggests he may have been born in Ireland.  It may have been necessary for him to disguise this within the circles he moved in to.

He began as a General Legal Clerk but then became a Photographist working for Nicholas Henneman.  Nicholas Henneman taught Rejlander the photographic process and Rejlander went on to become very important in this field.  At Henneman and Co, Edmund sent out photographic supplies to Fox Talbot, another pioneering Photographer, and the letters accompanying these have surivived and are part of the Fox Talbot online archive.  In the archive he is listed as President of the London Horticultural Society which later became the Royal Horticultural Society.  On the final census before his death, he is listed as a Professor of English and Drawing, which fits with Schoolmaster and also shows a considerable development from Legal Clerk.  If all this is true, then he was quite a man, with wide ranging interests and a great deal of success.  He may not have been the brightest star, with his own wikipedia entry, but he was very likely their contemporary...

Except he died and left a very young Kate who had no access in all likelihood to his social circles following his death.  Living with her much poorer maternal family from such a young age, what friends and connections she would have had, if her father had lived, were considerably reduced, however, she did have a career herself.  I found her in 1891 working at Whiteley's, the worlds first department store.  The staff lived in and worked 17 hour days, six days a week and a huge number of rules they had to live by.  She is listed as a Draper Assistant.

So Kate was a Drapers Assistant in a department store with no fixed address as soon as she married and William Owen was a Draper who required the address of Kate's family in order to get married, before settling in London.  Chances are, they met via Whiteleys.  William Owen either worked there too or he visited the store in a professional capacity.

What I find really interesting about this family is this cycle of self made intellectual men, parents who do not survive to look after their children, children in the care of others.  There is a real link to the creative, to the arts too but they were not the stars, they were the clerks and critics and teachers.  Kate, Owen Edgar and my Grandfather all lost a parent or two in childhood and of these, only Owen Edgar did not fall into care, probably because of Annie Argent.

I don't see this cycle in my branch of the family but I do see it in my Uncle's.  he too is a brilliant intellectual but not a shining star.  He is successful but you are unlikely to hear of him but you would admire his work...  He is a Photographer and a Scientist.  And his wife died leaving my cousins as children.  It seems to me that there is a tangled web of life lessons and karma being unpicked.

I still have a lot of work to do and connections to make, but I think I have the bones of the story.

Breakthrough

So the lovely Suzi recently said in an email that she felt like I would have 'a massive breakthrough at some point' and it occurred to me I have...  In fact there has been a couple...  but sometimes the hard thing is working out what they mean and how to bring those words into the waking world and what sense they make here, if that is clear to anyone!

A while back I started suffering from nightmares.  I found this scary because I have never had dreams that dealt with fears where I have been very scared before, not even as a child.  My sister would drift through my room to my parents bedroom, pale as a ghost.  i used to be quite envious of the excuse to go sleep with Mum and Dad, and so, sometimes when I was awake in the night and wanted to sleep with them, I would imagine bad things to summon up a few tears...

So suddenly to find myself dreaming nasty things was a challenge.  I began to wonder and worry about what these dreams were saying about the state of my mental health!  A girl who bumped into an old college friend and accepted the offer of dinner to catch up only to discover he had always been fixated on her and had become a serial killer, killing girls like her...  The little boy kidnapped...  The teenage girl left alone in an airport, with no ticket but after security....  The couple killed in their home....  There was no actual bad endins though, because I was able to twist the story away from the truly awful and help the main characters escape.

Then one night I dreamt I was in my bedroom lying on my bed but it was a glorious day and the room was flooded with sunlight.  I turned to look at the person next to me and it turned out to be my spirit guide.  He told me not to worry, that I was dreaming the fears of my ancestors.  And after that, I stopped worrying that this was my unhealthy mind and accepted that these were not my fears, not my scenarios.

For a couple of weeks my dreams were filled with fearful scenarios but as I stopped blocking them and worrying about them, this was no longer a problem.  Some of the dreams could even be pinpointed to whereabouts they would have come from.  In one dream, a lady was driving a delivery van but it carried important cargo.  She was stopped by a police officer who turned out to be with the enemy but she was able to defend herself and get the cargo away.  In the Second World War, my Grandfather was a driver.  I imagine he transported all sorts of things around and i can also imagine my Gran thinking up all sorts of scenarios....

I recently started reading Robert Moss's The Dreamers Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying and the Other Side.  One thing he says is that sometimes we need to use our imaginations for the dead.  I think this is what I have been doing.  I think some of my Ancestors have been trapped in a recurring nightmare that goes round and round and they just don't know how to escape.  I think I have been dreaming them ways out.

The best example I have of this was the falling dream.  In this dream, not surprisingly, I was falling with another person.  We would fall towards the ground and then, just before we hit we would pass through a gate and fall all over again.  I tried all sorts of possible ways of getting us out of there....  I remember one of them was a helicopter free falling by us and trying to pull us in but the danger of the propellers and matching speeds made it impossible.   In the end, a couple of men with parachutes jumped out and fell with us  and caught us to them and strapped us to them and brought us safely down.

Can you imagine falling, over and over, unable to think of a way out?

I think dreaming fears is linked to my having passed the Spider Gate.  I wonder how passing other gates would affect my dreaming?

The other breakthrough involved a dream where I was eating in a mediterranean restaurant.  I was talking to the waiter and I told him I didn't know what I was.  He was surprised and disappeared into the back and came back with his Grandmother.  She placed her finger on my third eye and shut her eyes.  When she was done, she opened them and told me I was a Walker, A Weaver and a Shifter.

I have only the vaguest idea of what these things mean really and I have even less idea about what benefits they can have in the physical world.  They seem to me, to be very much talents of the inbetween, of the Dreamer.  That too makes sense too, because the wind at the heart of my circle is the Dreamer and my totem for this is the Crow.

A Dreamwalker is one who can walk into the dreams of others.  I know I do this.  I walk through their dreams, their stories and I wear their bodies and think their thoughts.  But I don't understand the subtleties of this and you can be sure there are some.  I feel quite strongly that these are well defined talents with hidden depths whose paths we have lost somewhat or are only remembered by a few.  I also find it easy to navigate the dream world on journeys.  Once I have been somewhere I can get to and from that place very easily on future occasions.  I just open a door and step through.  There are hints that many Native American Indians just vanished when White Men came, that they stepped through the veil, opened a door and went elsewhere.

A Shifter, obviously shifts shape and again this is something I do.  I often wear feathers to travel in journeys and I have twice danced the elements at the Equinox in the shape of a Dragon.  Many books talk of how Native American Indians used to be able to shift shape with ease, in this reality. 

A Weaver is the less obvious I think but before the dream I had a journey at Samhain.  We were to connect with an ancient Ancestor, back in the dawns of time, we were to make our way to an ancestral cave.  I did this and got a little more than I bargained for.  I met with an adept in a dark hole in the back of a cave.  He was quite a character and told me off if I started to drift or lose focus.  He told me how Spider Woman wove the worlds into being.  He showed me her web, how everything is made from the same huge giant web, twisted and curved and prodded and pulled into all the shapes of everything we are, connected.  He showed me how to unpick as well as how to breath spirits through the web into a shape. 

My suspicion that this must be what a Weaver is was confirmed by Robert Moss's book, he talks of how in many of the lands of the dead, the matter is formed using imagination from an underlying grey material which is plastic in form.  His description of the material was familiar although different - it is so hard to describe impossible things!  He called the people who make things over in this realm of Memorydream, Weavers.

So I have been gifted with three talents and they all relate directly to the dreaming.  I have a vague idea of what they are, but no idea of the deeper meanings.  I have no idea whether or not I can affect anything in the waking world in the slightest.  Of course, if we lived in the dreaming then things would be very different indeed.  I know I can help myself with these gifts, that they make journeying and dreaming easier for me and that I learn a lot from both, but I have no idea how I can help others in reality and I have a lack of active control although I think the Dreamer in me knows exactly what it is doing and does it, when the conscious me does not get in the way!

I think spider links into my life now in several ways.  I think Crow is beautiful and I know that Dreaming is the best gift of all.

Music for the Moons

So I have so much to post about!  I am going to start with music because I have not posted my songs for the last three Moons and I want too....  The songs that jump out at me always seem to touch me at a deeper level when I actually read the lyrics, it isn't just the sound.



For the Moon of Welcome we had Faster by Within Temptation.  This just jumped off the radio at me....  We listen to Planet Rock a lot.  And I love the words too.  It is a song about the joy of living!  Which is great for Welcome!  Running towards life...  Not hiding, not accepting lies, not living with fear, accepting your feelings....



The delights of flicking through music TV channels brought me Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans and I fell in love with it instantly.  I don't remember having heard it before.  The song is all about a relationship that goes south when he tries to give her more by growing his career and she loses him to it.  Except that it is clear from the song that he will always be the only man for her and in the video you see them both sinking beneath the water together, and there is a light shining up at them.  Everything about this song makes me think of true love and past lives, that strongest of emotions that can and does survive death.  I feel like this.  I think F and I have been here together many times and this is what I guess I affirmed this last time throught his moon....



Finally for the Moon of Drama we have Tom Petty's Learning to Fly.  I heard this on Planet Rock again and loved it but wasn't sure if it was truly my song for the month and forgot about it until a dream this week brought it back and I woke with it in my head...  It has been there ever since!  The more I look at it and think about it and watch the video. the more inspired by it I am.  He is a very clever song writer for sure.  To me, this song is all about Drama and dealing with it, learning to live with things after they have happened, the good and the bad without letting them get you down.  Be those dramas atomic weapons testing, drugs, love or the death of JFK, we can't stay in that moment and we have to learn how to keep our equilibrium or regain it quickly, so we can keep on flying....

Life Balance

So F got home just as I was finishing my last post and I told him I was going to drum for a bit.  My drum is amazing...  It may not have the loudest 'sound' in the audible sense.  In a group, it definately does not shout the loudest.  But those lower sounds the ones you hear as much as you feel, there it really, really packs a punch.  And she sang last night.

Ok so I find it hard right now to maintain the drumming but I am sure I will get better and my journey last night din' require me to be that deep or focused.  There was no words I might miss if I wavered a little.

From my tree all this black stuff flowed from me and it turned into a river and carried me away and then into an ocean or lake, covering the land as far as I could see.  It was sticky and thick as tar and I was held fast.  Crows came and landed on me and pecked at me, particularly my umbilical cord.

It was a journey where I needed to figure out what to do.  First I tried diving down in to the tar which failed.  Then I called on the tiny dragon who lives inside me to burn it away.  I ended up back on top and it was all burning and drying out but not diminishing.  So I called on the rain to put the fire out and the tar rehydrated too.  I knew I could not fly away for the tar held me tight and would have made my wings horrid.

I was stuck, so I thought about what I was, what gifts I have in the dreaming and I remembered weaving.  So I took a ball of black that was my angst at my colleague and blew a bird spirit into it and it flew away.  I did this for my feelings towards my Boss and any other pieces of negativity I could think of.

When I was done the black was gone and I could see land around me, bare and naked.  So I breathed some of the good things about me and my life through and made plants.  Some fo them were little trees straight away and the birds came back to live there.

I guess what I worked through was that you can change how your emotions look and feel but unless you transform what they are actually made of into something else, then you are still stuck.  I tried thinking my way through, avoidance, anger and cleansing in effect.  You can also see it as calling on the four elements...  but only the fifth could help.  I feel much better today and I felt much better straight away.

I think these techniques are incredibly powerful, dreaming, journeying, visualization, anything that takes you to where ever it is we go, where ever you think that might be.

Work

Well I can't say too much really but things at work have gotten tricky and annoying.  We have a variety of people who can not currently fill their normal roles within the team.  We also have a variety of people who do not wish to pull their weight.  The two may or may not coincide but the combined situations are putting a lot more pressure on those in the team who do work hard, all day, every day.

When you are behind and busting a gut to catch up and there is someone else who is supposed to also be doing that job who is working at less than a fifth the speed you are it is kind of frustrating.  They avoid our core task as much as possible, doing anything they can to escape it and when they do do it, they surf the net, chat, text as much as they can.  The worst thing is my Boss is sat right there!

This moon is all about what to keep in and what to keep out - Drama with it's flip side of repression, or to me, getting it out, versus keeping it in.  Now, in chatting with my Boss about the situations in the team I have mentioned my partner in crime's attitude but my Boss does not want to see it and certainly does not want to deal with it.  How far do you have to go?  Do I need to pull with the work log and shove it in my Bosses face?  Do I need to suggest that I might feel inclined to take it to my Boss's Boss if my Boss fails to do anything?

The problem is my Boss is half the problem - there is a lack of direction for most of the team at times, a trusting that we know what to do and will do it, so weaker, less motivated members of the team tend to drift.  My Boss also often sits and surfs the net, spends large amounts of time on personal calls, takes long lunches, disappears who knows where for long periods of time.

I am furstrated that is for sure, but I also don't wish to watch potential overtime pilling up for Christmas.

So the question here is balance.  How much should I keep in and how much should I let out?

Rabbit

We have now passed into the Moon of Drama and my totem for this Moon is the Rabbit.  I was a bit disappointed with Rabbit when I first got it.  My Medicine Cards book describes Rabbit as being all about Fear and that is not neccessarily easy to see as a positive thing!  Rabbit has many aspects though and this is the aspect focused on for the cards in order to lend a balance to the deck as a whole.  Mind you, Fear is not the problem to me that it once was either.

Rabbit is the Fear Caller, because Rabbit fears everything and what it fears it calls to it.  Birds of prey, disease, snakes, traps, foxes, everything eats and kills Rabbit.  Whenever you see a Rabbit chances are it is terrified, if it isn't, it is only ever one breath away from terror.  Having passed the Spider Gate earlier this year, I think my views on Fear have changed.  But there is a power here too - Rabbit sustains everything else and it's fear helps keep it safe.  Despite all the difficulties they face, Rabbits thrive....

The European Rabbit is native to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeiria where it is the staple food of the Iberian Lynx and Spanish Imperial Eagle.  Unfortunately it is in decline there due to introduced diseases, habitat loss and hunting.  This is having a huge impact on it's predators.

Rabbits however are doing very well everywhere else. They have been introduced everywhere except Antartica and sub-Saharan Africa.  They were first introduced to Britain by the Romans as a source of food and it is hard to imagine this country without them.  I imagine that Hares were much more common before Rabbits were introduced.  Their introduction displaces native Rabbits and Hares and in Australia, the Bilby.  In Australia they have caused huge issues because they have no predator there.

This situation has resulted in the use of biological control to try and prevent their increase.  Firstly Myxomatosis and then rabbit haemorhagic disease.  Populations are partially resistant to Myxomatosis now and although there are frequent times when the viruses are present, they do not kill every rabbit now.  However at work, if ever we see a rabbit with these diseases, we will try and kill it.  The suffering they cause is immense.

Rabbits live in warrens with a group of between 2 and 10 rabbits.  Rabbits are agressive and territorial towards each other and this helps to ensure their survival.  Females are more territorial but do not defend their territory, instead they leave dung piles and the potency of these pellets shows their dominance.  Females will move into neighbouring territories when they mature but male rabbits will move further and have to fight for females.

High status rabbits are polygamus with one male having more than one female but lower status rabbits, both males and females are monogamous.  Male status is defined by quite a few factors, how many females visit his territory, how far he travels each day, how much time he spends resting with females and how many warrens he visits.  Females will indicate they are fertile by chinning objects in their territory, covering them with scent from glands in their chin.

Maleswill fight and often injure each other and sometimes even kill.  They kick with their strong hind legs, bite and scratch.  They also squirt urine which enrages their opponent.

So much for the imge of cute, peaceable rabbits!

OK, so they do eat grass...  They are most active at dawn and dusk but are out and about during the day and at night.  They browse and graze and eat a wide range of vegetation along with their grass.  They like mixed habitats best as these give them some cover as well as grazing.

They are incredibly fertile and gestation is only 31 days with them becoming fertile again straight away.  They also ovulate when they have sex so there is no time they are not fertile.  A female can be pregnant constantly for 8 months and produce 30 - 40 offspring a year.  The female is the only one that feeds them, returning once a day for four weeks.  They are born blind and furless.  The female marks the nesting burrow to deter others from going in.  Male rabbits do have some sort of hierarchical investment in their young though.

Rabbits have been kept for food, killed as pests and kept as pets.  There are a huge number of breeds.  Some are used for their fur and the Angora is unusual in that it's fur is used for yarn and they naturally moult.  I have never been convinced that they make interesting pets but a friend had a house rabbit once and the stories he tells suggest that rabbit brought up right and trained can be very different.

I like to think of this moon as being all about getting it out and keeping it in, emotionally and finding the balance between the two.  Rabbits definately are good at getting it out - their aggression and fear are plain for everyone to see and everyone can tell they are amorous *laugh*.  They emotions make them resilient and tough as well as making them a source of creativity for nature as a whole.  Endlessly fertile, but potentially highly destructive in their fertility!....

Rabbits are warriors.  They deal with their fear and survive.  They fight when they need to.

Sleeping Dogs

So I have been getting a bit of bad back recently and not sleeping so well.  It has come on slow, but got bad enough recently for me to stop and think about why.  The answer was Little Dog.  She has been sleeping on our bed now for three and a half years, pretty much ever since Big Dog died.

She is part Collie has had their brains and the nerviness that a lot of Collies have.  Losing her mate was tough.  She would come up on the bed for morning cuddles but some mornings we were not awake at the right time (who likes a lie in at the weekend?) so she started getting up while we were asleep.  It slowly got earlier and earlier until very soon she was spending the entire night up.  Eventually we stopped pretending and she started the night up there too.

The problem is, she spreads out and Fand I end up with just enough room on the edges of the bed.  I think part of this is a desire to snuggle up and keep warm but it made it very hard to move in the night.  Moving would require waking up and shifting her.  I don't begrudge her though, I think she really did need the comfort.

F and I talked a couple of nights back and agreed it was time to kick her off.  So I went out and brought the bestest dog bed I could.  A huge sheepskin lined thing with sides.  I also brought a single duvet to go inside.  we had it downstairs in the evening and it was obviously a success.  Then at bedtime it went upstairs, on the floor right next to me.

When F came to bed later, we started the process and I expected a night of kicking her off the bed.  I don't know how many times we did kick her off the bed.  One time she was very persistant, she whined a bit and stood at the end of the bed with her head resting on it, looking at us.  She wandered the house.  She stood there so long I fell back asleep.  Eventually she was persuaded to go back to her deluxe new bed, and stayed there the rest of the night.

I didn't sleep so well - part missing her, part watching for her creeping up.  And then, the second I came awake, the briefest of seconds in which, left alone, I would have been back asleep again, she was awake, stood up with her front feet on our pallet bed platform, tail wagging and overjoyed to see me and esperate for a cuddle...  I couldn't say no.  Yesterday she needed a bit of reassurance to begin with.  I think she needed to know that she was not being sent to a different bed because we were cross...

As we went to tbed last night we were not sure what would happen.  She began the evening snuggled up with us on the sofa before migrating to the armchair for a good sleep.  Unusually, about quarter of an hour before bed she came over for another cuddle.  And then it was time and she went straight to her new bed and stayed there without any fuss until F woke this morning.  Then she finished the morning with me on the bed.

I can't believe how easy and successful it has all been!  My back is already feeling better and I slept so well last night.  The only downside is I don't remember any of my dreams.  Little Dog is happy too and obviously warm enough by herself...  She has her house coat on at night as well as a fleece lined bed with duvet.

There is more to all this though, signs of a deeper healing I have been dreaming.  A part of me, dormant, dead, slowly coming back to life.

Jack Crow

Apparently the name Jackdaw comes from Jack meaning Small and Daw meaning Bird.  The Jackdaws formed early as a species, becoming distinct from other Crows.  Some even argue they should be in their own family, Coloeus, but to me it fels like they are still part of the clan.  When I see my Magpies, Crows and Jacdaws feeding together, with the very occasional Rook, they are definately the younger, junior cousin, but they are still part of the clan.  Seven of them come to feed.

There are four subspecies of Western Jackdaws with varying territories, Monedula live in Eastern Europe but sometimes winter in England and Spermologus live in England but winter in the Canary Island and Corsica.  Spermologus do not have a white border to their grey nape and are darker in colour, so I would say that my Jackdaws are Spermologus.

Spermologus have a purple sheen to the crown, forehead and secondary feathers and a blue green on the throat primaries and tail feathers.  I think I need to spend more time looking at the Jackdaws next Summer because I have never noticed this.  The sheen is more pronounced just after moulting which occurs between June and September.  The Jackdaw is mostly slate grey with lighter grey on the cheeks, neck and nape and the legs and bill are black.

The most striking thing about Jackdaws is their eyes.  Those of the adults appear white and their stare can be un-nerving. Young Jackdaws have bright blue irises but these fade to silvery white or light grey.  But to me, against the black and grey they lok white.

Jackdaws are excellent fliers, as they are highly manoeuverable and they can glide and tumble.  They glide at about 6 - 11 metres per second, decreasing their wingspan to fly quicker.  They have jerky wing beats and look similar to Choughs and Pigeons when in flight.  Their wingbeats are deeper and faster than other Corvids and they fly in tighter flocks.  On the ground they strut, upright.

Jackdaws communicate a lot.  They make greeting noises as they fly which are described as a metallic tchaayk but I don't think that is quite right.  I can't describe their call  either though! They also have a call to summon their young or mates to food.  Females will beg for food from males and their call when doing so is similar but more drawn out.  They will cahtter together as they roost and a large flock will make a cackling sound.  When they are a week old they make a soft cheep which becomes louder until at day 18 it becomes a penetrating screech.  At Day 25 they become silent if they hear unfamiliar noises.

They like mixed habitats with a mix of large trees, buildings and open ground.  They leave wooded areas to the Jay and completely open areas to the Rook.  They have a central roost and the flock returns their each night.  Their numbers allow them to defend their nests from other corvids, who would steal eggs, but they often congregate with Hooded Crows and Rooks. 

Within the flock males and females pair-bond for life and remain together within their flock.  There is a strict hierachy within the flock.  Males establish their status before they bond and then the famles shares the same status.  Un-mated females have the lowest status.  Higher status birds will peck lower status birds and have first access to food and shelter.

They decide their status by fighting, threat displays and supplanting where one bird is displaced from a perch site.  Several threat positions have been described, bill up, bill down, defensive threat position and forward threat position.  When they fight they they launch themselves at each other and wrestle with their feet entwinned pecking at each other, other Jackdaws will gather and watch.  Another behaviour occurs within pairs where they ruffle their feathers and show their napes to encourage their mate to preen them.

Bill up - bill and head upwards with plumage sleeked.  This is used when entering a feeding flock to show assertiveness and appeasement.
Bill down - with the bill down the bird raises it's neck feathers and may slightly raise it's wings.  This is used in a stand off with another bird until one backs down or they fight.
Forward threat- pushes head forward to the bird makes a horizontal position and they may ruffle their feathers and raise wings and tail too.  Used when competing for females or nests.
Defensive threat - lowers head and neck, spreading tail and raising feathers.

Pairs are entirely faithful  and if the relationship lasts more than six months it will likely be life long.  They stay together even if they can not successfully breed.  Widowed and separated birds often fare badly as they are pushed out of thenests and territories, having to rear young alone.

Nest sites within a colony are occupied for most of the year and are made my heaping sticks into a platofrm which may become very large.  The nest is lined with hair wool and dried grass.  They will defend it from predators and other pairs.  A wide variety of places are used, trees, cliffs, aandoned buildings, chimneys, church towers, even old woodpecker nests and rabbit burrows.  The common feature is that the choosen site is sheltered.

Between 2 and 9 eggs will be laid and take 17 - 18 days to hatch as a naked chick.  They then take about a month to fledge, or grow feathers and then they are fed for a further four weeks.  The last chick to hatch will often die and if food suplies are low then the parents will not invest much time in feeding their young.  Cuckoos will lay their own eggs in Jackdaws nests and Crows, Tawny Owls and Weasels will steal eggs.

Jackdaws forage on open ground, eating small insects, snails, spiders, ocasional rodents, carrion, eggs, chiks, seeds (cultivated seeds, weed seeds, acorns...) and fruit (elderberries, cultivated fruits....).  Their diet consists of 84% vegetable matter, unless they are breeding, when they rely on insects.  They will turn over clods, peck, jump, dig, scatter and probe the soil to find food.  They spend more time exploring and turning over with their bill than other Corvids.  They also ride on other animals, pecking off ticks.

Unusually, Jackdaws share food.  This is initiated by the donor, sharing more of preferred food than less preferred food.  This is not solely about courtship or as parents and there is much higher amount of food sharing than in other species that do this.  It maybe that there are benefits to the flock as a whole for co-operating, it may allow the avoidance of harassment or that the favour is returned.  There may also be a status element.

In the UK, Jackdaws have in the past been heavily persecuted, for their perceived role as vermin of grain crops and fruit, as well as for nesting in belfries.  They can still be trapped in the UK, along with other species of Corvid, because of the belief that they raid the nests of other birds.  They can also be used as a decoy bird to lure other birds.  Personally I belief if people are really upset about the death of other birds, then maybe there should be a reduction in the number of domesticated cats.  I do not see why Corvids should be persecuted.  In this day and age there is more than enough roadkill....

Perhaps because of this persecution, Jackdaws are wary of people, often feeding where people will be in the early morning or evening.  Jackdaws raised by humans are tame however.  Of all the birds who come and feed on my bird seed, jackdaws are the most nervous and it took the longest for them to settle in my presence.  Even so, I often see them there at other times of the day, rooting out the seed that got missed.  I see them all over the place and I know of one local roost.  It seems to me they often call greetings as they fly overhead...

The Jackdaw to me seems to be most comfortable with it's own kind and has a rich social life, with deep connections to loved ones.  The are caring co-operative birds but at the same time they are nervous and more than a little quarrelsome with each other.  But they live within the rules of their society and they know where they are at and who they are.  They are clever and vocal with an understated beauty.  There is something about their eyes and their stare... but they also have good binocular vision for foraging and searching things out, which they love to do.  And they love shiny things and will even share them too

The reverse of affirmation is submissiveness and these birds represent both sides of this moon to me.  They know when to be submissive and when to affirm themselves and maybe that is what they are all about for this Moon, knowing how to balance both sides and maybe that is the best way to be, and being happy with your position.  But their intelligence and searching ways, and their vision and penetrating gaze are gifts too as is their generosity and caring.  They very quickly learn when to sing their hearts out and when to keep quiet.  They are not the biggest baddest beast on the block but they are one that gets by, by depending on their clan and co-operation is key.  I don't think being the lowest ranked member of a clan that likes to share would be so very bad....

Waspish

So since writing more about Wasps, they have not left me.

I saw quite a few on warmer days in October, but now they are either dead or hibernating.  One of my colleagues was out in the warehouse, tidying up and moving pallets to spring clean.  He was very surprised at how many Wasps they found and he assumed they were dead.  I wondered if they were hibernating there, thinking they were safe and if now they hibernate in landfill, buried until Spring comes....

I wondered if any had found my outhouse and hide safely there.  They will not be disturbed and they could get in, under the the edges of the wavy plastic roofing...  I like to think of a few out there, safeky dreaming the Winter away and then come Spring they can go and build nice nests on th ebanks of the railway track where they would also remain undistubed.

The other night, Wasp flew into my dreams again.  They were sleeping soundly amongst the bird seed I was keeping in an old bird house for my feathered friends and my activities drew them from sleep so that they buzzed around.  Then for some reason there was some sleeping in the purple crocs I wear round the house.

Maybe some small Waspish ideas of mine are happily taking flight from their long hiberntation in the before, when they were not Queens and Mistresses of their own fates.  Maybe it is their time, now to go into the world of Welcome and become.

That morning I looked at my emails and discovered one from Suzi entitled Wasps.... It contained a link to the most amazing post, full of close up pictures of Wasps and a defunct Wasp nest.  Cabinet of Curiousities is a Blog I shall be exlporing much further....  Itself links to this article which describes, poetically how Wasps lost the War this Summer.

...  Which they did.  I didn't see very many at all and this article sadly describes how the nest had many cells that had never had a larvae in them and sad pictures of larvae that had died or never managed to complete their change to Wasp.  The cold wet Summer really did not suit them and I hope that even so, there are plently of ladies in waiting to become Queens, dreaming in safe places.

Heartbeat

It all began with a dream, very early this year, maybe even the end of last year.  I was in a valley and there was drumming and I could feel the drums all through my body.  Florence and the machines Drumming Song was running around my head too and it was all very loud and very beautiful and very much about the drums.

This was significant because I had just started drumming and I very much wanted a drum of my own but Lisa had written on her blog that in order to own a drum, you should have a drum dream first.  I wasn't sure this counted so I waited and then I had a second dream.

'I had another dream there was a dead reindeer, a young one I think as it was small with no horns. I was told in the dream that I was allowed to have it's skin to make my drum.' Was what I wrote about it...  The animal was lying down and there was a man kneeling at it's head and although it was dead it was peaceful and everything was fine.  The man who spoke to me is my Ancestral Guide, but I had not really met him at this point.  The only other thing I remember was that there was white, it may have been snow, but I assumed it was a whitish cloured Reindeer.

At this point I spoke to Lisa about a drum and very quickly we hit a stumbling block - no reindeer hides.  Now I really strongly felt that the animal I had seen in the dream was to be the animal that my drum would be made from.  So nothing happened, not for a long time (and I am really surprised at how patient I was!)

In August, for the Blue Moon, there was a huge gathering in Canada, which I could not go to.  I was very disappointed because the Blue Moon is an important time for us, a time when gates open and passed through, if you pass the tests.  I didn't expect to pass any gates, I wasn't sure how, by myself, so I left it to the Dreaming.

The week before I dreamt that I was back at my old school and I was in one of the classrooms sitting an exam.  Nothing was said about passing or failing, I guess it was more about showing up, or I passed and did not know it.  Afterwards a man came into the room and gave me a hide for my drum.

The night of the Blue Moon, F and I were meeting with members of our Cornish Drumming Community, to walk fire.  This was an amazing day, beginning with a season sound and chants and ending with the Firewalk.  Before the walk we had a session about how to do it and confronting fear.  It was a very powerful day and I knew I was where I was supposed to be, even if I had wanted to be elsewhere...

The week following the Blue Moon I had two further dreams.  Firstly I had a dream which made it very clear that I had passed the Spider Gate, which deals very much with Fear.  I think it likely that this was my exam.  The thing about fear, is you can't beat it, you just have to show up and do what you wish to do, despite there being fear there.  I did it.  I walked the fire several times, and believe me, the second time was the hardest.

The second dream was very long and detailed but the final section of the dream focused on my drum.  An Elder came and started stretching the skin for my drum over a frame, but the frame was from an even older drum that needed mending.  It had seemed important, even while I was dreaming the dream that I tell Lisa, so I did so.  It turned out that at the Blue Moon gathering she had been given a Caribou drum and she would sell it to me!  I was so excited!

Lisa decided to make me a drum stick so I had to wait some more.  Only while I was waiting, it turned out that the drum was not Caribou but Moose!  I was in no doubt, I had been waiting for this drum and Lisa would not have mistaken it for Caribou if I was not supposed to have had it, it was meant to be, and maybe all the mistakes were so I would not get the wrong drum....

I was curious though and went online to look at Moose and discovered that I didn't really know much about them and that I certainly could have mistaken a dead Moose lying on the ground for a Reindeer.  No one ever told me it was a Reindeer and Reindeer was never mentioned within the dream, that was all me....

So eventually the Drum left Canada!  After nearly a year since it all began it was finally on it's way.  I knew not to expect it too quickly but two and a half weeks away there was a drumming circle and somehow I always knew it would arrive for that.  Thursday I received the Customs letter and I sorted it out straight away and delivery was to be Monday, unless I paid a little more for Saturday delivery...

Of course I did and it arrived at 11.00 and we left for Drumming at 12.00.

And it is beautiful!

It is a good size but so very light.  I will find it much easier to hold than many of the borrowed drums I have used.  I don't know what wood it is, but it is a lovely light colour as well as being very light and strong.  The frame is made from 12 sections, each of which curves gently.  The hide is also very light and with it being natural there is a variation of colour and texture with a darker line to one side.  Most of the 'imperfections' are on the reverse though, but something incredible happens when you hold it up to the light, you can see them through.  They are darker lines, in one half of the skin and to me they form shapes....  a person, I think a woman, dancing, and the front half of a deer type animal, walking onto the drum.

I had thought of painting my drum but having seen it, I don't think I ever could, those shadow shapes speak so much of the soul of the drum and my connection to it.

And of course it sounds amazing...  It has that lovely rumble you feel all through your body...

And then there is the drum stick.  Lisa took a birch stick and covered the upper handle and made the head from lovely soft leather with some beaded fringes at the end.  The neck of the stick is covered with wolf fur and then it is beaded up to the leather in white, blues, and pink.  It is very feminine and beautiful and must have taken some time to make...  The wolf fur came from a Grey Wolf who was injured in a Road Traffic Accident and taken to a vet on the res where it later died.

There are so many reasons for me to love my drum and my stick...  They are beautiful.  They were made for me and meant for me.  They sound amazing.  They feel like old friends....  I am very lucky and I look forward to working with my drum and learning more.

This is an end and a beginning, I have a long way to go....

Testing Times

Well I didn't get another increase in medication, which I was a bit upset about.  I have been all over the place with my other hormones too but I am finally off the medication to reset those and really hope they will settle down now.  But I still feel tired.

This weekend I still had to nap.

I know I have got to get on and try to sort out other aspects of my health and see if it is easier to do so now, see if I can change things.  Because things need to change.

I am definately not feeling chatty and by the time I get in of an evening I don't want to do much and weekends I spend recovering.  So there is a list of things I want to write about but I just don't seem to get here to do it.  Things are still happening, I am still thinking and progressing, just by the time I get anywhere near a pc to write, I am beyond it.

I need to look at Jackdaw for this Moon of Affirmation.  I also believe Sparrow is my totem for the Moon of Reason, my current year.  Then I had some dreams this last week, of course I am always having dreams....  Except this afternoon when I asked for a healing dream, and I know I dreamt but not a trace remained when I woke...

Anyway, both these dreams were set at my old family home and Grandma Crow was in charge giving me tests.  The first night she was asking me questions and I had to say which plant symbolically fit.  I know I got the first two questions and I don't remember them.  The third she just said the name of the town where the college was that I studied my a-levels - and where I met my first love.  I was by the french wondows which have honeysuckle growing up one side and winter jasmine on the other.  I was trying to think of the latin name for honeysuckle.  I was unsure of the answer and guessed Honeysuckle.  I was wrong, but also the Winter Jasmine had been replaced by a huge white rose bush.

Now this got me thinking about the nature of my first love because honeysuckle is all about love neverending, entwinned together, well established.  White Rose is all about innocent, new, fresh love.  I started to worry about what that meant for that old love, and got thinking about past lives etc.  To be honest I got bogged down in the question and stopped thinking about the questioning.

So the second night I was back and there were more tests.  A whole load of people in mascot costumes dressed up as different birds.  I became a bit less worried about any messages about past relationships.  Tjose tests were definately not passed!  But I have much learning to do....

What has been obvious since the second dream is suddeny people are making it clear to me what some of their bird totems might me...

A bird flew into the warehouse and the only person to see it or hear it said it was a Robin but that they thought it was no longer there because they had been whistling with it and it was no longer answering.  It made me think about the Robin being this persons totem and it gave me an insight or too both ways, about the person and about the totem.

Then I had my had my hair done - blue black with green and blue bits, like a Magpie, because I like Magpies....  Except other people saw other birds in it and that told me things about them too....  So I guess this is a teaching thing, looking at symbolism and relationships between things....