This most magical of dreams fittingly occurred, on June 21, 1994, the summer solstice, whilst the Moon transited both Sagittarius and my seventh house wherein resides my natal Moon.  Too, the dream occurred during the second or B cycle of dream-besotted sleep that day.

It was truly a potent dream and marked my connection to the very soul of the West Coast.  Too, it was about communing with the very soul of the proud First Nations civilisations which for millennia have thoroughly ensouled this truly magical place.  

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There were two large, Amerindian totemic masks which were each three storeys tall.  They were, however, paintings – oil on canvas.  There were seven different tones of maroon and red being used in the depictions.

All were very alive – vibrant colours, even from high up in the air.  On arriving into this most lucid flying dream, I hovered high up in the air above the site.  The light was at an indeterminate time of day.

It seemed high in the north of Canada such that there was briefly no sunlight, for about an hour, before the Sun would rise again.  It was not cold out.  As I flew, I looked from left to right whilst flying over an old growth of ancient majestic cedars.

I flew here as though I were an eagle, searching from left to right, probing the territory.  I was definitely in search of something of great importance.  In that sense, I was restless until being able to finally discover this elusive treasure.

Eventually, I happened on a large clearing in the middle of which were two large canvases.  Between the canvases the earth was plain; it was not covered in any grasses.

The canvases were some forty feet wide and a good fifty feet apart.  They depicted groupings of Amerindian persons engaged in a sacred ritual.

Whilst in flight, slowly looking on at this way below, I was told by my spirit guides that this was the story of the Esquimalt Amerindians.  With that, both canvases immediately came to life.

I was then hovering in the air but within the fabric of both merged canvases. They depicted the same experience which had been halved.

I suppose that the symbolism of this schism would be the result of the rape that these proud people would suffer at the hands of murderous Europe on the rampage.

With the animation of the canvases, there had been a strong breeze that caused them to come together.  Thus the experience was made no longer halved but whole.  This occurred in the midst of the clearing.

An older Amerindian man immediately caught my attention.  He was quite dark-skinned but it was hard to tell whether he was, in fact, male or female.

Long-haired, he had a strong, proud face with a prominent fierce-looking nose.  The kind of face, his was, that I have always found so drop-dead sexy.  It was a face that was not unlike proud Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull’s.

The ritual involved the same man being initiated in some way.  To the point of the connection being visceral, I really connected with this man.

I initially saw him from above, from the rear, but then I made it to the front of him where I got a good look at his face.  There were elders present who were more elevated than he was.

From my perspective, I had thought that he had been kneeling.  However, it turned out that they were on a raised platform.

I was now directly hovering overhead of the elders and I saw exactly what they were seeing, in his face, whilst he faced them.  There was no way to get around the fact that this man was in a trance.

This was a terribly intense experience.  Including the drummers who played the most hypnotic of rhythms, there were several others about.

A chorus of women sang, all of which was hypnotic, buoying up the initiate’s spirits whilst he was deep in trance.  The old noble being was questing.

*This dream was so intense that I chose not to go into work.  I simply did not want to be around bigoted jerks.

I took to meditating in the pyramid and really opening up to experiencing this place’s true culture and not the upstart, transplanted European culture.

That very day, I went off roaming, feeling the tug of spirit as inspired by that dream.  I would eventually meet Frederick Hinneault, a Cree Amerindian.

We met at the Club Vancouver bathhouse on West Pender Street.  The connection between us, intimately, was simply out-of-body.

Like the old Amerindian, Frederick Hinneault is a grass dancer.  Frederick Hinneault who was so potent and who would stop me cold in my tracks asking me,

“Are you aware that you use sex spiritually?  I don’t know if it’s something that you simply do without being aware of what you’re doing.  Or you were doing it deliberately because you were with me and you could sense that I would understand.

“But it’s very potent and real.  I will say that it was so surprising to get that experience.  It was quite real… you are a shaman.”

I was quite blown away by the compliment but it really was true too.  END.

There in the semicircle was a feather dancer, in full regalia, he was being initiated.  I was greatly moved by this experience.  The women’s singing was tantamount to the function of the griots, doing their thing, in West Africa.

This was a most potent and shamanic of dreams.  This was more than simply being great music, it was great spirituality; it was a great grounded connectedness both with spirit and with nature.

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Photo: Honouring Our Ancestors

Totem poles at Cathedral Grove, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

© 2008 Stan Bevan.

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