Reparations and the Land -- Ceremony #3

Ceremonies of Reparation

 

For those interested in the background of these ceremonies, please refer to the September 8, 2021 blog entry.

Ceremony #3, Nov. 4, 2021

Rainy grey skies accompany the work this day.  It is dark-new moon, and I had originally planned to visit a different piece of land.  However, one of the third-year students had informed me that she was renting a B&B on the neighbouring land to a farm I had lived on for 2 years, from 2013-2015.  Each person in their third year of studies has a self-dedication ceremony they prepare 9 months for.  As the B&B and its owners are very familiar to me, I took this as a sign to re-orient my own reparation ceremony to this location in the Koksilah River watershed. 

I drove roads I had not visited in a long time, toward the B&B which is tucked back in the forest along rough roadway, next to Glenora Creek which eventually flows into the Koksilah River.  The rains had deposited large puddles and pools of water, some of which were quite deep -- I was a little apprehensive, fearing my truck would get swamped.  The ceremony shared with my student was lovely and deep, and I feel very honoured to be a part of her journey and declaration of life-purpose.

The weather was continually shifting from drizzle to rain to momentary clearing and back to wetness.  When she and I were complete, I left and drove further up the road, past the farm we lived at to the property just behind and parallel to the farm.  It was purchased some time ago, and has sat fallow for many years -- having been logged/ clear-cut and then replanted in varying stages over the past decades.

I squeezed my way through the front gate (shhhh, please don't tell anyone!) and onto a path I know well, having walked it often over the years I lived on the neighbouring land.

Walking the old, overgrown gravel road, I fell into a prayer with each footstep: "Blessed Mother, please show me where ceremony is meant to be."

After 5 to 10 minutes of walking, a fallen tree presented itself across the roadway.  On my left, between two ferns, I noticed an animal-path leading into the forest.  This was the sign!

Stepping onto the animal trail, I was led to a small grove carpeted with golden leaves.  As I looked around I saw a maple tree, and decided to stop and ask the tree if this was where I could bury the gifts and leave offerings.

I first introduced myself, spoke my intention, and brought memories of my time with the land there.  The tree immediately spoke a simple "Yes", so I laid out all that I had brought with me.

This particular ceremony was simple and "uneventful" in many ways.  However, the background and related stories from our time living on this piece of land are not so simple.  I tell myself a story -- that perhaps the time taken to learn from those experiences allowed the ceremony to unfold with naturalness and ease.  At least, that's what I tell myself.

The first to be buried at the base of the tree, snuggled between roots, was the "egg." (Pysanky are traditionally written and dyed eggs, common in many Slavic cultures, used as talismans and amulets.)  This was not a hen egg, but rather an egg-shaped gourd my husband had grown while living on the adjacent farm.  Not knowing how the gourd might behave using traditional wax and dye techniques, I decided to literally write (pysaty) on the egg with permanent markers.

The first step in designing the egg was to divide it into three sections (which has felt to be appropriate for each of the ceremonies thus far).  The border design is made of small snake-shaped vines.  The vines represent one of the teacher plants that adopted me ("Ma" Honeysuckle, q’ut’q’ut’a’ulhp) while I was living in traditional Tsartlip/ WSANEC territory.  

When I left the land where I first encountered Ma, I moved up to Quw'utsun' territory, to this farm, to live with my (now) husband.  The move was challenging for many reasons, one of which was that I had not immediately found Ma to continue apprenticing with.  I searched on my walks, praying and asking that I find her.  Knowing that she often hid from my eyes until I was truly ready to encounter her,  I knew that I needed to remain open and diligent.  After a few months of searching, I had a dream.  In this dream, I was in the small 2-room cabin that my husband and I shared.  I was attempting to walk from the kitchen to the bedroom, but the doorway was blocked by a thin, lanky, dark-haired naked woman who was sitting on her haunches.  Every time I tried to pass by, she reached out and maliciously grabbed my wrist.  If I stepped back into the kitchen, she let go.  She was wordless in her interactions with me, and slowly, within the dream, I realized her to be the personified spirit of Ma Datura, a second teacher plant who had been given to me in a very powerful dream by Ma Honeysuckle a few months into my apprenticeship with her.  (The other name I use for this second teacher is "Dark Ma.")  Once I recognized her as Dark Ma, I knew that she was trying to show me something important.  

As if directing the dream, a second viewing panel opened to reveal a dark room with my husband standing under a spotlight.  He was dressed and acting like a showman, and pointed to yet another projected image -- that of a tree with Ma Honeysuckle on it.  He then pointed to the general location I would find her on the property -- just behind the farm-field.  At this point in the dream, I found myself back in the kitchen, looking at Dark Ma.  Holding this knowledge of Ma's location, I stepped through the doorway -- Dark Ma let me pass without grabbing me.  The dream was complete.

Dark Ma's lessons, from the first time I encountered her in 2011, were centred on understanding how to remain in a clear and open heart in the midst of "poison".  Basically, experiences and challenges that would normally lead to blockages, tangles, pain and detrimental situations (in other words, "poison") would instead be encountered as medicine when one lives with clear and open-heart seeing (<<Ma's words).

 While I did not know it at the time, this dream of Dark Ma in the doorway was a foreshadowing of the deeper teachings I would encounter during the years to come -- both at this location and elsewhere.

The first side of the egg that I wrote depicts a spiral -- the shape of Ma's pathway as she climbs up companion trees, and also the shape of the Datura flowers as they open to reveal their centres.  Surrounding the spiral are "spikes" which are part of the Datura seed-pod.  These spikey pods and the seeds they contain are extremely toxic, and not to be messed-with!  They are also protection to those who are in alliance with Dark Ma.

 

The day following the dream, I walked to the back woods and looked and looked for Ma amongst the trees.  She was not obvious, though I eventually found her climbing up the back-side of a tree that looked very similar to the one in my dream.  Viewed from the front, she was completely hidden.  It was truly by chance I had turned around after wandering into a nettle patch that I saw her snaking up the back of the tree.  The irony of finding her while standing in a stinging nettle patch (like the toxic "bites" of Dark Ma) did not escape me.

And once I found Ma, many other vines began to make themselves known, in the true fashion of Ma hiding and then revealing herself to me when she deems I am ready.  How many times had I passed by these various emanations of Ma during my previous walks?!

Shortly thereafter, a series of difficult personal experiences ensued.  It was through these experiences I learned about the absolute necessity to walk a very integral and clear-heart line.  And in keeping with most of my learning, it was ass-backward -- learning through messy experience, the hard-way.

I learned, for example, that the "inner child" in me is deeply magical and powerful.  If she is threatened or deeply hurt, she might lash out in pain with what one would essentially consider a "curse."  Thus it became clear to me that I must be fully awake and in-control of my impulses, intentions and thoughts, and absolutely committed to healing anything that lays in the darker shadows of my being.

In tandem with this, I learned about alchemizing, transmuting and elevating that "hurt energy" into medicine through prayer and handwork (sewing, art, crafts, gardening...).

Following these lessons, I then found myself learning how to deal with spirit intrusions -- spirits and forces that had found cracks and fissures in the psyche of some of the people around me, influencing their behaviors and personalities.  It was a very confusing time.  

One evening I was spending time with one friend who had been exhibiting some of this confusing behavior for several months.  As I sat with them, and as their behavior "shifted," an apparition appeared in the middle of the room -- a young girl dressed in a school outfit of plaid skirt and white blouse, holding textbooks close to her chest.  She stood still, looking at me with pleading eyes.  All at once, I received a "download" of her experience of being abused by a man I named "Bob".  Bob then appeared in my mind's eye, juxtaposed to the girl who continued to stand in the room.  He was sitting in a smoke-filled bar, drinking, wearing a tweed jacket.  He had died in the 1960's.  He had a sad life, and began to reveal some of his own history of being abused by his father.  At the end of his story, I asked if there was anything he needed?  He was simply happy to have had an opportunity to tell his story -- to have been heard, to have his own history and trauma acknowledged.  The girl disappeared from the room.  

Following this, the friend was no longer plagued by behavioral shifts.  I then applied this same "listening" to yet another spirit-intrusion plaguing another person -- this one was even more troublesome.  While it felt scary to open up to these entities, it was also very effective in releasing and freeing them.

There were many other incidents that happened at this farm that were "other-worldly".  At the time, I was simply doing what I could to deal with what was presenting itself to me.  It took some time for me to begin to question -- why were these things happening here, in such a concentrated form, on this piece of land?   The answer to that question is a long story for another time...!

The second side of the egg depicts a squiggly swirl of energy representing the various encounters and sorcerous experiences of our time at this location.  Surrounding this mass are different protection symbols.

   

The bottom of the egg depicts Sasquatch.  Yes, if you think the previous part of the story was -- well, weird or bizarre -- then, its about to get weirder.

During the final year living at this location, we moved to a different house on the farm.  This house was mostly open-concept.  Our bedroom was in the upper loft which overlooked the lower floor.  After living in this house for a few weeks, a curious thing began to happen.  Each night, somewhere in the depth of the night, I would awaken to the sound of loud foot-stomps echoing in the valley.  Now, it wasn't like a human foot-step.  It was a loud pounding sound that resembled the sound you would imagine something of considerable size making as it runs down the hillsides and then through the forest at the base of the hills.  The sound would then disappear into the depths of the night as whatever-it-was continued to run further down the road or through the forest.  Sometimes, however, the stomps would be so loud it was like a train approaching the house.  The creature would run just past the house, or, occasionally, stop at the house.

When it stopped at the house, an even more curious thing would happen.  The porch light would begin to flicker on and off, on and off, on and off... for HOURS!  The most annoying part of this experience was that the light was connected to some sort of electrical switch-board that seemed to be just behind the wall where our bed was.  Click, click, click...  Blinking light that flooded and then disappeared from the loft walls and ceiling, over and over.  It was difficult for me to fall back asleep.  This went on for months.

I tried everything -- readjusting the porch light setting did nothing.  Even turning it off did nothing to stop the stomping light-flickering entity.

Finally, one night, I was simply fed up.  The stomping had woken me, and as whatever-it-was stopped in front of the house and began to flick the light, I asked in my heart to be able to "see" the creature.  What appeared in my mind's eye was a large creature (maybe 8-10 feet tall) covered in grey-brown long hair, sitting on its haunches, one hand directed toward the porch light turning it on and off with a flick of its fingers.  The other arm was bent, elbow resting on its knees and chin resting in the heel of its hand.

As if I somehow had access to understanding it's heart, I could see/ feel the creature was somehow "captive" to a curse or directive that had it act in this way.

I reached out in my heart and mind and said, "You have a choice, you know.  You CAN choose "goodness" over darkness."  The creature paused, lifted its chin, and slowly turned its head to look at me. The light stopped flickering.  After several minutes, it resumed the flickering.  However, I could sense something had shifted.  I knew the creature was thinking about what I had said.  The light continued to flicker, and I fell asleep.  And that was the last time the flickering ever happened.

I dug a shallow hole in the soft earth between two roots, and covered over the egg.  After covering it I noticed a centipede curled up directly over top the egg (see the right side of the picture below, in the centre of the frame).  It shares markings similar to those on the egg, and I felt this to be a good sign.

When sitting with the elder Qwiahwultuhw the month previous, I had asked him if there were stories of Sasquatch in the valley.  He had looked at me in his quiet way, smiled, and then carefully said "Yes."  I was expecting more explanation or a story, but he remained relaxed and quiet.  I explained what I had experienced while at this location, and he said, in response that the Sasquatch move about at this time of year -- that they have paths that the Quw'utsun' people do not walk so as not to disturb them during their movements.  He said that he leaves meat or fish for the Sasquatch as offering, and that it would be important to do so especially if you see or hear one.

Once the egg was buried, I turned my attention to the fancy Motanka.  Similar in its components to those described in the Sept. 8th blog entry, this doll is usually more refined in clothing, has hands, and has face-weaving which acts as a portal to invite ancestral wisdom to reside within.  This doll was specifically made with the intention of stability and protection.  The "horns" on the top of the head-cover are for channeling cosmic forces (sun, moon, stars, and upper-realm energy).  I felt it was fitting this doll found her way to this location -- a gesture to match the intensity of teaching that was received during my time there.  She, in addition to the egg, is to act as protectress for the land, and also for ourselves in relation to the energies we encountered on the land.

  

The next Motanka to be buried was made in the tradition of "temporary" Motanky -- basically, less fancy and refined.  She was a gift to the land and spirits of the land -- a thank you for all they had offered to me in my time there.

Once everything was snuggled into the earth, I turned to find something that could hold my final offering.  A lovely large green leaf sat amongst the golden leaves.  Perfect!  It would act as a "plate" to hold the dried meat offering, being left for the Sasquatch and other land entities.

I spent some time with the tree, asking it to carry my prayers and protect that which was buried at its base.

And then I turned to leave.  My legs felt heavy, and my body felt tired, as if I had just run a marathon.  The return walk was lovely as the sky began to clear and I progressively felt lighter and brighter in my body and heart.

I leave you with a few photos of the remaining walk...

In gratitude for accompanying me in this special year,

Nikki