Billabong Dreaming

When I dream I see and hear through Raven’s eye and learn to think like Raven. Each day I take my divining sticks and walk the landscape of my dreaming, listening, hearing, feeling the vibrations that pulsate and ignite my creativity. Raven is my guide. The landscape of my dreaming is a portal to the world of my ancestors, a conduit for ancient knowing. Here within the landscape of my dreaming live the guardians of Soul Food and Lemuria.
Heather Blakey

If there is somewhere you would rest,
it is beside Memory’s molten stream.
William Michaelian

 

As you begin to journey along the Serpentine Road there are places, billabongs, to stop at and replenish. Consider the landscape that nourishes and replenishes your creativity. Consider what fills your well and is your mead.

The Billabong is fed by the stream of Mnemosyne, whose name means memory.

 

Stream of Mnemosyne

The Greek poet and mythographer Hesiod said that Mnemosyne was no minor deity, but one of the wisest of the Titans, the offspring of Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth). It was her function to remind the soul of its higher estate and noble powers of reason, proportion and harmony. She was not merely the goddess of recalling the shadows of past events, but the patron of recapturing our other modes of being; of remembering whence we came, and where we may return.

Mnemosyne was a Titaness, a daughter of the first generation of deities in Greece. Her parents were the rulers Cronus and the goddess Gaia.

There are few stories about her even though she is often mentioned by the ancient poets who recount her awesome gifts to mankind.

The goddess Mnemosyne is sometimes credited with being the first philosopher, her gift the power of reason. She was given responsibility for the naming of all objects, and by doing so gave humans the means to dialog and to converse with each other. The powers to place things in memory an that of remembrance were also attributed to this goddess.

The ancients believed that when one died and crossed into the Underworld one would be given a choice . . . whether to drink from the river Lethe where you would forget all the pains and terrors of your previous life (and with them, the lessons they brought), or whether to drink from the Mnemosyne, the spring of memory.

Those who chose to forget had to be reborn, to return to earth to learn the lessons they needed. Those who had chosen to remember were admitted to the Elysian Fields where they would spend eternity in comfort and peace. The esteem in which the memory was held was made clear in the initiation rites of the ancient gnostics, who were required to consult with an oracle.

Before being brought to the oracle, initiates were taken to a place with two pools lying next to each other. They were instructed to first drink from the pool of Lethe, the goddess of forgetfulness, in order that they might forget their previous lives. Then they were taken to the spring of Mnemosyne to drink so that they would remember all that they were about to learn from the oracle.

Activity

Once an important goddess in her own right, Mnemosyne is largely remembered today in her capacity as the mother of the Muses, the nine Greek goddesses whose role it was to inspire poets and musicians and to promote the arts and sciences.

The lure, the temptation of locating and resting beside molten stream of memory is as irresistible as the call to drink from the water’s of Castalia.

Just imagine reaching a point on the Serpentine Road where memory’s molten stream gurgles and dances its way to the sea.

While you lie resting, fingers draped in these honeyed waters, call Mnemosyne, whose name is synonymous with memory, to come from the realm of the collective unconscious and restore your memory.

Immortalize a memory here at the stream.