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Archive for Myth

When I teach of group of people how to work with their dreams, I ask each of them to remember a recent sleep dream to practice the process on.

Charon the Ferryman

“What if I don’t remember my dreams?” is a question that always comes up.  Every time.

“Think of a recent waking dream you may have had,” is my response.

What is a waking dream?  Well, a waking dream is something that happens to you in waking reality (i.e. when you are not asleep, meditating, doing trance work) that has the slightly surreal feeling of a sleep dream.

A waking dream is that experience of thinking of someone you haven’t seen or talked to in years and then running into them on the street.  Or being alerted by your dog to the blue heron standing in the small stream next to your driveway and then watching him walk out of the stream to your driveway to stand at the edge of the road, look both ways and then cross before taking flight (really happened).  Some experience out of the ordinary that Read More→

Categories Creativity, Dreams, Myth, Writing
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You know the story of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, who is kidnapped by Hades, god of the Underworld. Mad with grief, Demeter, goddess of harvest and crops, causes a famine until her daughter is returned to her. However, since Persephone has eaten a pomegranate seed while in the Underworld she must return each year to spend a third of the year with Hades.

That’s the common version of the myth. I prefer an earlier version. Seeing the confused spirits of the dead haunting the world of the living, Persephone, feeling great compassion, chooses to enter the Underworld and become its Queen. She helps the spirits adjust and offers them pomegranate seeds, the food of the Underworld. Demeter doesn’t want her to go, but Persephone knows her calling.

Persephone’s quandary is one that creatives, especially women, deal with daily. The quandary of Read More→

Categories Creativity, Myth, Seasons
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I begin to sing about Pallas Athena, renowned goddess, with bright eyes, quick mind, and inflexible heart, chaste and mighty virgin…” Homeric Hymn

In a coaching session with a client this past week, and then in an email dialogue with a writer, Athena came up as an active image or metaphor. Like most people, these two women knew Athena only in her more popular Greco-Roman aspects,

The Owl is Athena's bird representing her wisdom.

that is, as the Goddess of War and Wisdom, as the Goddess that was born, full grown and fully armored, from the head of Zeus, her father. Zeus swallowed her mother, Metis (whose name means wisdom) before she could give birth in order to avoid the fulfillment of a prophecy.

As this goddes, Athena is a role model and powerful icon for claiming power in a man’s world, ideal for many contemporary women, especially business women. But, in entering into the male bastions, women often feel the need to assume the behaviors and attitudes of men, donning armor of business suits and briefcases. In the process, constantly pushed to prove themselves and to stay one step ahead, Athena women can suffer from Read More→

Categories Creativity, Myth
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