The Goddess Dream

Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses - JW Waterhouse

For...  [the poet] there is no other woman but Cerridwen and he desires one thing above all else in the world: her love... Other women, other goddesses, are kinder-seeming. They sell their love at a reasonable rate—sometimes…for the asking. But not Cerridwen: for with her love goes wisdom.~ Robert Graves, The White Goddess

I have been think about Spirit Circle, feeling that mediumship isn't really for me. It's not about it being wrong or anything like that. It's just a lot of responsibility. People come for medium reading for different reasons. Some are just curious. Others are on the edge of despair, desperate to believe they will see a lost loved one again. To me, this is a heavy burden on reader. 

I don't know if I want to continue with the circle at this point or not. I've made friends there, and I like going which complicates things. So, I asked for guidance in a dream. 

I had the following dream a few days later. I'm not sure what it says about Spirit Circle, to be honest, but I feel that it's pulling me to something new:

I am standing on the edge of the dream which had come before wondering if this new dream belonged to me or if someone else was dreaming it instead. Immediately before me, a beautiful woman with long curling, light auburn hair is rising slowly and majestically into the air.    

I see flowers and vines and tiny newborn pigs and sparkling drops of what I know to be milk spinning slowly around her. The drops of milk brighten until the shine like stars in the great drifting vortex of animals and vegetation.  I am now suddenly quite close to woman, as if she is no longer above me, and I see each detail of this amazing train of life float past me, with a delicate, hyperreal beauty.

The tiny pigs are pink and tender.  The flowers are colorful and detailed and incredibly vivid.   The small traveling stars shine.  I was in awe of what I am seeing but I am also quite clear.  This is no ordinary woman.  This is a goddess.

It's a wonderful moment.  And then my modern sensibilities kick in.  I find the tiny newborn pigs disconcerting and the milk seems odd and out of place.   'Why pigs?" I asked myself, and then I began to wake up. 

Abruptly, right at the edge of awakening, a white sow's head  flashes across this oddly beautiful scene. She isn't pretty but, like every else in the dream, the detail was remarkable.  I see coarse hair, a single wild eye, a smudge of dirt.   

And then I am awake. 

I was embarrassed by the dream and didn't want to share it. I didn't even actually want to think about it. So I spent three days trying to ignore it. But it stays with.  It is too beautiful, too vivid, too bright.  And I know what dreams with that kind color and light always mean. I know it's a spiritual dream. Disconcerting or not. 

So I decided to write about it.  

UPDATE OCTOBER 2014: I did some reading about pigs and goddesses. At first I was drawn to the tales of Britain. I imagined the goddess traveling from Sumer to Egypt to land of the Kelts though there is no clear indication that's what happened. I read about the cult of the white sow goddess, Cerridwen and the flame-keeper known as Brigid. I learned that Brigid is associated with milk and a magical boar.

Inspired by their Goddess, the Keltic bards drank the fire of inspiration from the sacred cauldrons and called themselves her sons.

I learned that the sow was associated with the Egyptian goddess Nut and sometimes with Isis and would resurface centuries later in the ancient Greek worship of Demeter and Persephone. I read an article suggesting that Israelite sanction against pork was related to the worship of Asarte, who was once called Ishtar. I couldn't find any direct link to Asarte but I read a Bible Hub commentary saying that it was true that the pig was associated with idolatry. 

I still wasn't comfortable with the imagery, but when I thought about the way the word sow or pig has been used against women over the centuries or probably the millennia, I saw my reaction in a different light. 

Most importantly, I knew that without that detail - a detail so significant that it impressed upon my mind a second time as I began to wake up - the real meaning of the dream would have been lost or forgotten and I would have never connected the dots.