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Tales from the Other Side of Language 99 Dogwood blossoms flood around my head and shoulders. Their scent hugs into my breath. It is a magnificent day. I’m sitting on a great rock near Ruth in a Japanese garden, and we are meditating together. I hear her opulent words calling in the spirits of the directions. “Come to us, Spirit of the South, with your moist, verdant vitality, your boastful rush of growth. Come to us, Spirit of the West, your deep waters, your running of emotion through the setting sun. Spirit of the icy cold North, come to us with your expanse of mind through forests of mystery where Eagle lives. And now come to us, Spirit of the East, your first scarves of light, your fresh scents of morning dew across the budding fields.” This time together marks my graduation. She has brought me to the time of the ceremony, and I’m ready. Now it is a soft sunny day in the rural mountain home of the shaman, and I put several pillows on the porch floor, hang two of my paintings on the side of the house behind me, one of eagle and a self-portrait, both large and awesome canvases. The West Gate, one of the four directional protective gates, faces into the dappled green of dense trees and bushes. I brought stones, a quartz heart, and objects I’ve made, a gold helmet, not knowing their usefulness. I’m told I can’t leave this spot for any reason at all. “Pee in your pants if you have to,” the shaman said sternly. The Keeper of the East Gate, an old friend and psychiatrist, has been in service to her in many ceremonies. We chat easily, and then he warns me. “The dangerous energies coming will feint first to the East Gate, where I am, and then come full bore to you at the West Gate. The Fire Keeper has seen this in his meditation.” My body runs icy cold; I’m afraid. Before I can speak, a runner comes, “It is time. We’re starting now!” she says. I step onto the porch at the West Gate, apprehensive, then abruptly I’m in deep meditation. Without plan, I put on the soul mask I made in the Women’s Medicine Wheel. Wearing it today depicts my soul name. I am nakedly vulnerable with it on, but also in my spirit’s power, able to face to the dangers that will come. My daughter has been meditating at the fire below and comes onto the porch to enter the ceremony room. As she passes I can barely nod to her for depth of altered state.
100 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance: The ceremony begins. I call my three spirit guides. A sensation of power whooshes in around me, and I gasp, astonished. I sense in my body the Great Mother Kali around me and in my inner mind see her vast armies arrayed in front of me to my left. The spirit of eagle circles above my head. Crow is close above my right shoulder, and sometimes sitting there. While I call them today, as so many other days, I feel a deeper, definite choice they make to come, to stand, and to act alongside me. I fully make the quantum leap into a larger sensory mind, know them as beings, essences, acting with me in a larger universe that contains the ceremony. At once I’m aware of something unfriendly coming toward me. In my mind’s eye it is hidden in the trees just in front of me. Without thought I take the rose quartz heart from my meditations out of my pocket and extend it toward the trees in front of me, cradling it softly in my hands. In my mind I declare, “I am here. This is my daughter’s heart. You will have to go through me, kill me, to get to it.” I draw the stone back and place it on my heart. My observing self asks, “What the hell are you doing? What kind of stagecraft is this, so dramatic!” My meditative mind answers, “Shut up! I’m busy!” For four hours I sit at the West Gate in meditation, a kind of prayer, fulfilling what I was asked to do. Occasionally there are breaks, and I come out into the soft green day. Once when I re-enter I sense a connection with the North Gate against another dangerous intent that moves in the woods between us, serpentine. Without thought I put on the golden helmet I made from one of my meditations connecting Joan d’Arc with my French ancestry. With the helmet, I have no fear; I’m at attention. I hear voices behind me in the ceremony room, listen to them singing as I continue in meditation. I do what my intuition tells me. My ordinary thinking, organizing mind isn’t at play. I trust what is happening in me and around me. I don’t know how it affects anything or anyone else. I am alone here with my guides. The ceremony has its narrative; the shaman, the Fire Keeper, the Gates, the dog who chose to sit with the North Gate, and certainly my daughter, all
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Weeds, ink dr
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PART ONE: THE PRECIPITOUS ABYSS
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