The Sapwood of Synchronosophy 14/18
The Rainbow of Consciousness
We are now synergistically forced to conclude
that all phenomena are metaphysical,
wherefore, as many have long suspected
~ like it or not ~
life is but a dream.
〰 Buckminster Fuller 〰
The Serpent and the Rainbow
The serpentine spirit corresponds in the life system of the planet
to the subtle energies of the human body.
〰 John Michell 〰
The oldest known cosmology is the Rainbow Serpent of the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime. Serpents were revered in many ancient civilisations. The snake biting its own tail was a sacred symbol for the Egyptian Pharaohs, the hierophants of ancient Greece, and the Gnostics from Alexandria to Persia and beyond. The Ouroboros symbolises eternity and the soul of the world.
In Southern Asia, where the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree in a state of ‘ecstatic meditation’, a mighty serpent called Mucalinda rose from the earth to shield the sacred man against a terrible storm. As legend has it, “the serpent king enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, so as not to break his ecstatic state.”
In Mayan mythology serpents are considered vehicles by which the sun and stars travel through the celestial sphere. The Mayan ‘Vision Serpent’ ~ a bearded snake ~ was revered as the centre of the world and served as a gateway between the spirit realm of the gods and the physical world. It’s name in the Yucatec Mayan language is Kʼukʼulkan (from kukul = feathered + kan = snake).
The Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl (= literally bird snake) is a close relative of the Kʼukʼulkan from Yucatán. Depicted as a feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl contributed to the creation of mankind. According to one variation of the Aztec creation myth, Quetzalcoatl was “born by the virgin Chimalman to whom the god Ometeotl appeared in a dream.”
In the Abrahamic religions the chthonic serpent is coiled around the Tree of Life. Presumably the same serpent seduced Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
The serpent of all cultures unifies the feminine and masculine. This is not a pair of opposites but a oneness of the two principles which give birth to life. The ‘inner hollow’ of the snake represents the womb, the outer shape is a phallic symbol.
The Serpent of the Dreamtime is also a symbol of wholeness and unity. “The Rainbow Serpent is the first cosmological Model for the spectral order of universal energy.” Robert Lawlor writes in his book Voices of the First Day.
The colours of the rainbow show the narrow spectrum of electromagnetic frequencies visible to the human eye. “Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.” Buckminster Fuller pointed out.
This means, “ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.”
The aboriginal people were fully aware of the invisible realities beyond the tangible physical world, tens of thousands of years before the discovery of the electromagnetic spectrum. The same is true for indigenous people all over the world.
In all shamanic traditions, medicine people are able to enter the invisible realms to connect with spirit guides and power animals, who offer information, teachings, or guidance.
In contemporary Western culture, ruled by the mythologies of science, the electromagnetic spectrum has taken the place of the Rainbow Serpent. Although most of the frequencies are invisible, we know there is a whole universe of electromagnetic frequencies. We know they exist and they affect our lives.
We know that our range of perception of the wholeness of the universe is limited to less than one-millionth of reality. The prismatic spectrum accessible to our senses is this tiny slither of reality, which represents the wholeness. It can also be a portal which gives us access to the invisible universe.
Vision Quest
Only an open heart will catch a dream
〰 Native American Wisdom 〰
In the spring of 1999, Josh and I spent five days at WindTrees in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California. We had been invited to do a Vision Quest, along with three other ‘Seekers’. Each of us was assigned one of the Keepers of the Delicate Lodge as a personal guide.
It was our first encounter with Native American Medicine teachings. Inspired by a friend who was in training with the same people at a Medicine Circle in Cornwall, we decided to visit these teachers, dedicated to sharing the ancient wisdom of the Native American Medicine Wheel, on their home turf.
Having planned a trip to California, we thought we’d sign up for a workshop while we were in the area. As it happened, the only ‘course’ on offer during our holiday was a Vision Quest.
As luck would have it, the VW camper we’d hired in LA broke down on our way up the hill to WindTrees. Perfect timing. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, no garage in sight, we made a memorable entrance by having to be rescued by the Keepers of the Delicate Lodge!
Arriving at WindTrees was like stepping into a parallel reality ~ beyond the ordinary visible spectrum of the contemporary Western human world. After a brief introduction we were guided to the spots in the forest where we would spend the next five days and four nights, in solitude.
One of the Keepers of the Delicate Lodge volunteered to take care of our van issue, so we wouldn’t be troubled by ordinary-worldly-hassle, and promised it would all be sorted by the time we had to leave. Magical solution!
During those five days in the forest we did powerful Medicine work ::: making a personal altar, receiving an initiation into shamanic journeying, meeting our power animal, receiving our Medicine names, and whatever else our spirits called us to do.
We each had our own fire place and were well stocked up with fire wood. It was the middle of April, the ground was covered in snow, my borrowed tent wasn’t waterproof, and the sleeping bag got soaked in the first night, but none of that mattered. Somehow every mundane issue resolved itself.
On the heels of a deep dive into the teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel, and a life changing week in a snowy Californian forest, returning to the ‘real world’ felt surreal. As promised, our VW camper had been fixed at a garage in Santa Cruz. A Medicine woman we hadn’t met before introduced herself as MedicineEagle, and called us to meet Gary, the mechanic who’d come to pick us up.
Powerful Medicine
The world has a way of guiding your steps
〰 Robin Wall Kimmerer 〰
Following our Vision Quest at WindTrees, we became part of the Medicine Circle in Cornwall. At the time, the Keepers of the Delicate Lodge visited Cornwall on a regular basis to share their knowledge and offer training in the teachings of the Delicate Lodge.
We attended a few weekend workshops with the Cornish Medicine Circle, yet our involvement with shamanic teachings remained ambivalent. Should we take the plunge and commit to this training ourselves? In the midst of our irresolution, we received an unsolicited message from the ‘Dreaming’.
It was a Thursday in August of 2001. That afternoon we spontaneously decided to drive to Land’s End. The café-bar in the small run-down hotel on the ‘Last Cliffs’ of England, with its row of west-facing windows, offered shelter from the coastal winds and far reaching views over the Atlantic ocean.
Watching the sunset at Land’s End had helped us gain clarity in various quandaries charged with emotional turmoil. This time we were holding the question about how to proceed on our journey with the Medicine Teachings.
"You know ~ one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..." the little prince added.
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
〰 Antoine de Saint Exupéry 〰
Sitting in the café with our drinks, we saw a man walk past our table to the bar. A glance at his face made me gasp. Josh only caught sight of the back of his head, the long white hair tied into a ponytail. We looked at each other, startled.
‘RainbowHawk?’ Josh mouthed the name without a sound.
I nodded. When the man walked back to his table, two glasses in hand, Josh managed to see his face too. There was no doubt.
We’d met RainbowHawk only once before ~ at WindTrees! ~ at the final ceremony of our Vision Quest. He had given Josh a ceremonial sword in exchange for a red feather… A full size metal weapon! While we’d been holding our breaths, Virgin airlines crew members hadn’t skipped a heartbeat and wrapped it up as ‘excess luggage’…
What was he doing in Land’s End?! Had he ‘beamed’ himself over the Atlantic to help us get out of the doldrums of indecisiveness?
We scanned the tables in the direction he’d gone. There was his wife, WindEagle, sitting at a table not far from ours. They hadn’t recognised us. Why would they? We had only been to WindTrees once. They’d only met us briefly at that one ceremony, with about 20 other people in attendance.
We had to make contact. This was an opportunity impossible to miss.
“We are running a training course here in Cornwall over the coming weekend,” WindEagle said.
“We like to come here to Land’s End,” RainbowHawk added. “Stay at the hotel for a night before the event.”
What?! Wait… the simple explanation unleashed a flood of questions in our minds… Why didn’t we know about this?
The organisers of the Cornish Medicine Circle had notified us before every full moon ceremony, and any other minor event happening in the area. How come we hadn’t received news that RainbowHawk and WindEagle ~ the founders of WindTrees! ~ were coming?
Instead, the spirits of the ancestors chose to arrange a private meeting, just for us.
Later that evening, after dinner, the four of us sat together and talked. We mentioned the conception of the Noctarine, which had happened about half a year after the Vision Quest. We told them about our visit to Japan in the spring of 2000, where we ran two workshops to introduce my embryonic theory of Consciousness. Josh spoke about shamanic journey dreams, which had been coming to him regularly since the Vision Quest…
The magical encounter, ended with the parting words from RainbowHawk and WindEagle ::: “You have powerful Medicine.”
Dreaming as Nighttime Therapy
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep
because reality is finally better than your dreams.
〰 Dr. Seuss 〰
“To this day, most introductory and even advanced texts on the science of dreams begin with one author: Freud.” Antonio Zadra & Robert Stickgold write in their recent book When Brains Dream. According to the authors, the fourth (1914) edition of The Interpretation of Dreams cemented Freud’s position as the ‘founder of dream theory’ firmly in Western consciousness.
What Freud didn’t reveal until later, is that many of his theories were ‘borrowed’ from earlier writings by a surprisingly wide range of dream researchers, nobody’s ever heard of. The self-proclaimed ‘founding father of psychoanalysis’ made sure they remained in the shadows, while he established himself as the go-to authority on dreams.
In his initially unsuccessful publication of Interpretation of dreams (1900) Freud introduces his theory of the ‘unconscious’, suggesting that dream interpretation gives access to contents of human Consciousness, of which we are unaware, and that those contents are centred on repressed sexuality. This became the basis for his theory of the so-called Oedipus complex.
Most of Freud’s conclusions turned out to be errors ~ as the authors of When Brains Dream discovered. Despite this fact, due to his surprising rise to fame, the interpretation of dreams became a major focus in the field of dream research, while blocking many other explorations of the true functions of dreaming.
Now we know that our interpretation of dreams is largely irrelevant. We don’t even need to remember our dreams for them to fulfil their functions. What our dreams need is a good nights sleep of approx. 8 in every 24 hours so they can fulfil their vital functions.
The work of Ernest Hartmann (1934-2013), one of the world's foremost researchers on dreaming, sleep, and personality, helps to understand the functions of dreams. In his work with trauma victims, he discovered that emotional turmoil following traumatic experiences flow into existing memory in an attempt to assimilate the upsetting event.
Hartmann called this spontaneous activity of the imagination ‘Nighttime Therapy’, based on his observation that connections made during dreams are guided by emotions, and that the dreamer doesn’t need to remember their dreams in order to benefit from the therapeutic effects.
We’ll explore the functions of dreams further in a later chapter.
Visualisation
You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.
〰 Richard Bach 〰
On the other side of nighttime imagery there is another type of dreaming known as visualisation. This is does not relate to physical seeing, but to mental vision. Dreams which appear on the inner screen of the mind during waking hours.
Visionaries, regarded as impractical and unrealistic daydreamers in the 18th century, or idealists at best, were promoted to leadership status around the time civil rights activist Martin Luther King jr. spoke his famous words “I have a dream!”
In the later 20th century, visualisation became a popular tool to promote the ‘manifestation of dreams’. All you need to do is focus on a goal, then visualise a successful outcome, where you have achieved that goal, and the universe will miraculously make your dream come true. That’s the theory.
In practice, many people use techniques of deliberate mental envisioning to enhance their success rate in a wide range of activities, from professional athletes to entrepreneurs, and from students to sufferers of serious illness.
Intentional, premeditated visualisations are associated with the so-called ‘law of attraction’, which in turn is entwined with ‘positive thinking’, and the lesser known ‘law of assumption’.
Applying the law of attraction means the visualiser focuses ~ via inner vision ~ on attracting an external desirable outcome.
The mental practice of positive thinking implies that the practitioner attaches exclusively ‘positive thoughts’ to their dream result, without deviating into doubts, worries, skepticism etc.
The law of assumption emphasises the that the visualiser assumes an internal attitude of having already reached the desired goal and cultivates their state of being accordingly.
While this type of visualisation can accomplish the promised result in the short term, it has three major drawbacks:
1 ~ deliberate visualisation is an anthropocentric tool of mental practice. It actively promotes control over one’s own imagination, thinking and emotions, at the expense of spontaneous (potentially undesirable) mental activities. It can easily slide into manipulation.
2 ~ deliberate visualisation is always based on the current paradigm. It enables the practitioner to make certain changes and achieve certain results, which appear desirable from the present perspective. Despite the assumption of inner changes, these remain comparatively superficial.
3 ~ deliberate visualisation is hard work and requires continuous attention and reaffirmation until the visualiser achieves their goal.
As a means of differentiation, I’ll call this type of engagement with the imagination anthropocentric visualisation. The focus of attention is on a future fictional outcome, conceived by the present mindset, while ignoring material reality in the present, and any unprocessed experiences from the past.
As a viable alternative, we can practice modes of visualisation which resonate with the symbiocentric paradigm. These are not linked to either of the laws mentioned above and don’t rely on ‘positive thinking’. Let’s call this kind of mental envisioning symbiocentric visualisation.
The starting point of a symbiocentric visualisation is often a question or a problem that needs to be resolved (rather than the formulation of a specific goal). The visualiser may have the intention to achieve a goal ~ e.g. solving the current problem ~ however it is not the focus of attention.
Full attention is directed towards the present real life situation, and the visualiser uses the imagination as a parallel reality, in which they can travel towards a desired destination (e.g. the solution of the problem).
The major difference is that in the symbiocentric approach the visualiser doesn’t use voluntary control to manipulate the imaginary journey but allows it to unravel spontaneously. The process begins with a specific question or brief, but the autonomous side of the Imagination is left in charge of the unfolding of events.
Used in this manner, the symbiocentric visualisation has similarities with nighttime dreaming, and with shamanic journeying. For this reason it also has similar therapeutic effects, comparable with the functions of night dreaming (which will be discussed in a later chapter).
All Our Relations
There is a dream dreaming us.
〰 Bushman wisdom 〰
The colours of the Noctarine represent six frequencies of the rainbow spectrum + two extraspectral hues ~ magenta and turquoise. These eight colours ~ turquoise, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and magenta ~ represent the ‘frequencies of Consciousness’.
This colour range is neither related to the chakras nor to any other ‘colour system’. It is important to keep in mind that the organism of human Consciousness according to the Noctarine is free from hierarchical order.
By comparison, several other theories of consciousness use a spectrum of colours in varying numbers. The colour range is meant to represent different ‘levels of consciousness’, related to emotional states. In such hierarchical models, ‘shame’ is usually associated with the ‘lowest level’ and ‘love’ with the highest. Between these two emotional experiences there can be as many as 15 interim stages.
The colours symbolising such ‘levels of consciousness’ are also linked to different ‘evolutionary stages’, implying that ‘negative emotions’ are expressions of a ‘lower evolved consciousness’ while ‘positive emotions’ reflect a ‘higher stage of evolution’.
The Noctarine is a synarchical model of Consciousness, where all Faculties play an equal role in governing the organism. No colour or Faculty represents a higher or lower level of ‘better or worse’. None can be more or less ‘evolved’ than the others, since a healthy living organism is likely to grow and unfold as a whole.
“Dreams and imagination are the faculty of the mind in which the unbounded configurations, the flowing patterns of time and space can be visualised,” Robert Lawlor writes in his book Voices of the First Day.
The Faculty of the Imagination, a.k.a. Inner Artist, supplies the organism with the 8 Spheres of Reality, as added into the following table of the Noctarine:
In the early days of developing this map of Consciousness ~ soon after my introduction to the Native American Medicine teachings ~ my mind kept wandering to what I had learned at WindTrees.
The Keepers of the Delicate Lodge are rooted in ancient teachings and traditions. Their roots are sustained by knowledge, stories, and connections between humans and the land, the natural environment, and the universe, which indigenous people all over the world have nurtured and protected.
Since we have collectively lost our connection to our indigenous roots, abandoned our home on the planet, and destroyed most of our natural environment, I held the question and asked my Spirit Guides, “What is the equivalent to the natural environment of our ancestors NOW, in our contemporary world? What would it look like within the framework of the Noctarine?”
The answer came without hesitation. It is what it has always been. It’s all your relations.
All our relations…? ~ of course! I had never understood it in this way. As a response to my question, it became obvious in a flash.
The Medicine Teachings remind us in every ceremony, every gathering, every ritual to honour ‘all our relations’. These are not only our human relatives, our ancestors, tribes and offspring.
All our relations include all sentient beings with whom we live in kinship, including the ones rooted in the earth, the winged ones in the sky, the four-legged on the ground, all natural phenomena, and all invisible and visible creatures who are our symbionts in this life… in the outer world.
Extending our awareness a step further, this means, all our relations include everything that happens in our outer and in our inner world .
All your relations ~ in the symbioverse of Synchronosophy ~ embrace your subjective experiences, the vital Faculties of your Consciousness, the atmospheric phenomena of your inner climate, all aspects and symbionts of the inner and outer ecosphere, and all indigenous sentient beings who populate the inner territories, including the dreaming born by your Imagination.
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.
〰 Langston Hughes 〰
Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links
The Rootstock of Synchronosophy
Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma
The Heartwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 Subjective Experience, Chapter 11 The Inner Wilderness, Chapter 12 Polarity and Wholeness,
The Sapwood of Synchronosophy
Chapter 13, Symphony of Senses
My inner artist dances with this post! At last someone else willing to let go the hierarchical view of some colours being higher than others. Yes, to the inner attitude of surrender to whatever image wishes to be formed, longs to come up, to be encountered. Yes, of course! Dreams not needing to be remembered, or put through analysis, to do their thing.
Guided meditation is such a cringe for me. I can be guided, yes, by the drum, the song, the ritual, the place, the other being, but not by words alone. Someone telling me when to breathe in or out, only messes up my breathing.
I deeply feel the loss of place, of tribe. I hardly am indigenous. But the answer given to you is so true. It is all the relations, of which we only know one millionth I suspect. We are only just starting out on that journey.
And yes to the vision quest, of giving space and time to the imagination during the waking hours....
Ah, so much in here. The feathered dragon... where to start?
Wow. Great chapter. Read a few times. Brings to heart- McGilchrist The Master and Emissary and The Matter With Things dancing with Plotkin and Richard Wagamese. Swimming in coulor. Turquoise oceans and Magenta skies. As above. So below. A door. A poem. A life. A soul. Bless you Veronika. Your writing is a vision quest. 🙏❤️