Meditation

Dreaming the Dance, Pt1.

Dreams have always been important to Western
Europe's Aboriginal cultures. They believe that
all experience is of equal credibility, whether
from the mists of a dream or from the discipline of
a science laboratory, it all has to be perceived by
the human mind!

This is evident within the Celtic classic "The High
History of the Holy Grail", branch 1, titles 3 and 4;
where King Arthur's Squire, whilest sleeping at the
Court, dreamed that he had followed the King on
horseback. Deep within the forest he found a chapel and
within a dead Knight, surrounding him were 4 candles
upon wondrous candlesticks.

Intending to show a candlestick to King Arthur he
rode away with one hidden down his crotch. He was
challenged by a large black man with a knife who called
him "thief" and demanded that he return the candlestick.

When King Arthur heard the Squire screaming he came
to his bedside thinking it to be a dream. The Squire
produced the candlestick from his crotch and then
showed the wound where the man had stabbed him. After
confession the knife was withdrawn and the Squire died!

I've not met anyone who has had such a dream as this!
However dreams do have a significant effect on your life.

Given that we spend one third of our lives slipping
in and out of dreams, the ability to apply those
experiences to a useful purpose is a significant asset.
Lucid dreams are the most intense type of dream and it
is possible to achieve full consciousness within them.

I have used lucid dreaming to enrich my life for
nearly 30 years, indeed, several important parts of
"the Giant's Dance" series, published in Geomantica
magazine (www.geomantica.com) issues 14, 17, 20 and 22,
were researched using lucid dreams. All such research
was verified using academic resources before it was
used, however, before you can verify information you
have to know it exists!

I had known people who combined dreaming with
Gestalt therapy in the mid-sixties, although my own
introduction to dreaming was in 1975 with the book
"Creative Dreaming" by Patricia Garfield. I was soon
achieving erratic success with lucid dream induction
and within months had found the "Otherworld".

In 1991 I was using dreaming to research traditional
Celtic bronzesmithing techniques for a series of
sculptures when I received the "seed dream" on which
the "Giant's Dance" is based. I had the orrery working
by 1995 but I didn't understand why it worked.

Up until 95 the dreaming was confined to retrieving
visual images and assembling them in the waking state
like a jigsaw puzzle. The Celts used geometry for their
calculations not mathematics, everything is defined by
spatial relationships. The Giant's Dance functioned as
a slide rule!

To my knowledge the only precursor to the "Giants
Dance" is my earlier work "The Tarot of the Britons",
published in the April 97 edition of "Silver Cord", a
magazine focusing on "Spiritualism" in Australia. It
was presented as an "April Fool's Day" piece, it
caught all the skeptics!

I grew up with Spiritualism, my Great-grandmother
had helped Arthur Conan Doyle establish Spiritualism
in Australia. Spiritualists have the Spirits travel
from the "Otherworld" to visit them whereas Shamans
travel to the "Otherworld" to visit the Spirits.

As a Shaman I have two main methods of working,
dreams and meditation. The initial contacts and
visions are made in the dreamstate and are then
followed up by meditations.

Both meditation and dreaming are mutually
exclusive with respect to analytical thought. If,
while dreaming, you see something interesting and
you say "what's this", it's gone!

Attempt analytical thought during meditation and
it becomes fantasy, this severely restricts
meditation's value as a research tool. The transition
from meditation to fantasy is not obvious, if you are
capable of asking "what is my intent? to perceive or
to control" you are already in fantasy, abandon the
meditation!

Most of you will have had a dream of "all knowing",
where the meaning of life as well as the past and
future are all revealed to you in an all embracing
ecstasy. Unfortunately when you awoke it was "just a
dream".

That's the depth of perception (level of
consciousness) I aim for in meditation, that
"at-one-ness", I've found that if you go there with a
question you will return with an answer. It's an
automatic process involving no conscious input by the
meditater and thus no opportunity for analytical
thought.

Identify your starting point and your ultimate
goal, then go into meditation seeking the next step
along the way. If the meditation is successful that's
what you'll return with.

Analysing the answer with respect to the starting
point will reveal the process in action, this will be
a logical extension of previously identified
processes. Keep each step to your goal as short as
possible because if the process gets complicated it
will become unrecognisable.

It was during a particularly lucid dream that a figure
emerged from the mists and in conversation said "you
know, they predict Eclipses here using stones the same
way we do with Tarot Cards!"

Within a later dream "The mists cleared and I was
among the stones, my Guide laid out the Trumps cards
in a circle with the Kings in the Quarters. There was
a six pointed star within the circle which slowly
turned. As our minds touched I understood Eclipse
prediction by Tarot".

I awoke and reaching for my cards I laid them out
as per the dream. I understood nothing! It took 6
Years of dreaming and communicating with my Spirit
Guides to regain the understanding I had in that
dream.

But the point is that I wasn't working in the
dark with totally new concepts, when the answers
came I recognized them. That made all the difference!

I had to develop a meditation technique to identify
the mathematical concepts behind the orrery's dual
indications at the Equinoxes (see above). This was
obviously the key to identifying the error correction
techniques used by the Celts to synchronise solar and
lunar time. This knowledge was lost!

It took 3 years to arrive at an understanding of the
error correction process relevant to Eclipse prediction
by Tarot. That process is the key to the functioning of
the ancient Celtic calendar, a working example of which
has survived to the present day as the "Coligny Calendar".

I am pleased with the results of all those years of
research. I hope that this work stands as an example of
what can be achieved when one starts out with nothing
more than a dream!

Western Europe's "First Nations" folk have inherited
some cultural beliefs and practices that are their
exclusive intellectual property. This work is part of
that cultural tradition and is not "available for
appropriation" by other ethnic groups or any
organisation."

"Dreaming the Dance, pt1" is not public domain but
providing that no fee is charged it can be supplied
as resource material for any course of study for which
a fee is charged.

(c) Hawkins 2004.