The Last Word on the Election

I had a ghostly visit ironically on All Souls Day – November 1st. I don’t usually have these sort of visits. And they had sort of died down – no pun intended there. I can tune into spirits when asked, but it was never my thing. And it wasn’t until about 6 months before I got pregnant that I started seeing ghosts just pop in without any reaching out on my part or being in a haunted house, etc.

It started at the Grove (of all places) a busy outdoor mall in Hollywood that my deceased father appeared next to me. I was sitting down waiting for my husband who was shopping inside (talk about role reversal) and just relaxing. All of a sudden I felt someone pull up the chair next to me. When I turned to see who it was – there was no one there, but I felt my father’s presence and he materialized. We had a nice conversation and he continued to follow me around for several years. He died when I was ten and I’d never been contacted by him before so it was really a major surprise to say the least. I asked why he was there (turns out he was there to deliver my kid from the other side and warn me that I might die but that’s another story).

So back to my main story; the ghosts were around for the year before my kid and a couple of years after. It had been a while since I had an unexpected visit. But to my surprise I was listening to NPR and all the back and forth about how tight the election was – how it might take weeks to get a count, etc. And I just was thinking to myself I didn’t believe it at all.

I got out of my car and saw my aunt. Actually an old conservative Republican in life but now a much happier, more relaxed spirit. She was laughing and told me that indeed I was going to turn out to be right. And the part of the statement I had heard that “Obama is going to win the election but it’s going to be a real nail bitter even though it shouldn’t be,” the part about “it shouldn’t be,” always confounded me a bit. Did they mean that Romney was such a lesser man, or it wasn’t in Romney’s fate or that shenanigans were going to make the race tighter than it actually was? I really couldn’t tell and since that statement I had been trying to decode it. I finally came to the understanding that it was all of the above and to this my Aunt affirmed as did her mother (my grandmother) whom I had never met in life. They were both giddy and excited about all of it and some other things that they were vague about that seemed to be related to me and my family, but anyway – just VOTE and remember you count. And WE the PEOPLE will win this time.

Our next goal will making sure it stays that way. I guarantee you Obama’s win will push the zealots on the right to even greater extremes and after exploiting all the racism – next will come the intense misogyny and attacks on women’s rights. However the women of this nation will not go quietly into the night. I am starting to believe that the discovery of Eris will be about this very thing – feminist revolutions due to the attempts of those in power who will continue to try to control and take women’s rights away. Problem will be for them – we won’t go quietly into the night and if anything this very issue could be the impetus for the next wave of revolutions – guerilla style. I will save all the visions I’ve been having about this subject for after the election.

ERIS is here and she isn’t going away.

For now we will enjoy our victory – those who want a level playing field and democracy for all.

But always remember how fragile our democracy has become and how easily corrupted. It has only been because of the work of some decent people in government that we don’t live in a theocratic plutocracy (BTW Romney would pretty much cement that path having been a BISHOP in his church and a solid Plutocrat.) It will be vitally important now more than ever that PEOPLE really be INFORMED and know history, educate themselves and stay active in politics or we will be conceding our nation to the corrupt and all that has been positive about our legacy will be seen through the dirty glasses of a very dark history.

Best to all and to all a great voting day!

Denise

Thunderbird and Heyoka

I’m reprinting the information from another site the author is Steve Mizrach.  I’m doing so because this information is important to me. I dreamed of lightning and was approached by Thunderbeings who told me, “We are walking in a sacred manner,” the repeated this over and over. I had this dream about six months ago and I knew at the time it was a harbinger of chaos and war. The next night I had a visitation from an angel Yah-Shew-Ah or Joshua at first he came to me in a white tunic covered in dirt and then revealed himself to be an angel. He claimed to be an ancestor of mine. He then gave me a spiritual gift that I have been spending much time using. It is the gift of protection – in the way that those who were spiritually pure were protected during passover.

I had wanted to give readings for people on the site, but my life became very hectic, as I dealt with many friend’s crisis’ as well as trying to work and raise a toddler. So I will do this instead. I can offer this gift. It is the gift of spiritual protection. Anyone who needs it can contact me via this website through a comment or through the e-mail: astrologyandpsychicpredictions@gmail.com. I know it sounds strange but there are many weird things to come and if you give me your name, birth date (time would be good as well as where you are born so I can locate you on the Auric plane) I will put protection around you. My only caveat is that if you ask me to do this I will get information about you and if I can’t protect you I will let you know the reason – for example if you are sick and are ready to cross over I can not protect you from that or if you have done heinous things I can not protect you from your own karma. If this occurs I will contact you via this site in a post stating your initials and place of birth and ask you to e-mail me so I can let you know why the protection did not work – if of course you contacted me for help in post form if not I will just e-mail you back from the astrologyandpsychicpredictions@gmail.com.

This is a crucial time in human history. It is not the end but it does have the potential to be the end of many things which could lead to major re-adjustments. If you want spiritual protection during this time of transition please do not hesitate. I will make a nightly list and do the ritual for you. This is the most I can offer at this time but in my opinion it is much more powerful and helpful than simply “knowing” what you will live through in the next year.

Please read this very interesting article that I reprinted which was sent to me by my husband due to my connection with the Thunderbird spirits and heyoka. Interestingly my husband is of Native American ancestry (I mean he’s nearly half and a registered member of a tribe – a direct ancestor of those that walked the trail of tears) as far as I know I’m not, (I’m almost entirely Eastern European w/some Scottish/Irish on my mother’s side, but I know nothing about my mother’s father (the Scottish/Irish side) so perhaps I have some Native American roots I am unaware of. Either way all humans are related and all racial memory becomes universal human consciousness that we can tap into.  Also on a side note the angel was from the old testament (which I don’t know very well since I was raised Catholic after my Jewish father’s death – despite being raised culturally Jewish – crazy, huh? I guess that’s why I figure all religions are fine as long as they make sense to the person who belongs to them – different strokes and all. Whatever gets you close to the Great Spirit/God-Goddess is great.)

Many blessings to all of you – make everyday count – let the Great Spirit whisper to you through your heart and your life will be complete,

Denise

 

by Steve Mizrach

http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/thunderbird-and-trickster.html

Thunderbird and Trickster

Introduction

The Thunderbird is one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology. He is found not just among Plains Indians, but also among Pacific Northwest and Northeastern tribes. He has also become quite a bit of an icon for non-Indians, since he has also had the honor of having automobiles, liquors, and even a United States Air Force squadron named after him. Totems bearing his representation can be found all over the continent. There have been a number of curious theories about the origins of the Thunderbird myth – ones which I will show are probably wrongheaded.

In this paper, moreover, I want to examine how the myths and legends of the Thunderbird tie into the sacred clowning/trickster ritual complex of Plains tribes such as the Lakota. I will show how the Thunderbird is intimately connected to this complex, and attempt to explain why. It is the intimate association between these two traditions that may help explain some features of Plains culture and folklore. Aspects of the Thunderbird myth only make sense in light of these associations.

Plains Indians myth and folklore

In order to understand Plains Indians folklore, we have to realize that their myths were not just “just-so” stories to entertain, divert, or make inadequate efforts at naturalistic explanation. Rather, Indian myth functioned in religious, pedagogical, and initiatory ways, to help socialize young people and illuminate the various religious and other roles in society. Indian myth was always fluid, and grounded in the present, which is what might be expected of societies which largely lacked static, written traditions. Storytelling was an art which was maintained by the medicine people with great fidelity, because it was used to explain the development of certain rituals and elements of society. (Hines 1992)

Some have looked at the Thunderbird myths through the same lens of understanding applied to European mythology. The Thunderbird is like the Indo-European dragon or ogre or Leviathan, a huge monster who kidnaps virginal maidens, and who must be slain by the brave hero. Or the Thunderbird is simply treated as some kind of fantastic oddity, like the mythical unicorn or mermaid – an impossible construction borne from the extremes of the imagination. Both these attempts at explaining myth lose the important point of seeing Thunderbird as a personification of energies in nature – those found in violent thunderstorms and such – and his crucial dual nature.

Still, the Indians were not merely “mythmaking” in the pejorative sense. They no more literally believed in a giant bird generating storms through the beating of its wings, then Christians today literally believe in their divine being as an old man with a beard sitting on a marble throne. Thunderbird is an allegory; his conflicts with other forces in nature are then an attempt to allegorize relationships observed in the natural order, such as the changing of the weather. Like other Thunder Beings, he is essentially an attempt to represent the patterns of activity of a powerful, mysterious force in a way that can be understood simply and easily – sort of the way in which a weather map functions today. (Edmonds and Clark 1989)

The Plains Indians believed that everything that was found in nature had a human representative in microcosm. Everything in nature often contained its own opposite polarity, hence the expected existence of beings such as contraries, women warriors, and berdaches. Because the Thunderbird in particular represented this mysterious dual aspect of nature, manifest through the primordial power of thunderstorms, it is not surprising that his representatives were the heyoka or sacred clowns, who displayed wisdom through seemingly foolhardy action. Western thinking has prevented us from seeing the reasons why Indians perceived this connection. Few anthropologists have sought to locate how Thunderbird may have been mythologically linked to Trickster.

The Nature of Thunderbird

In Plains tribes, the Thunderbird is sometimes known as Wakinyan, from the Dakota word kinyan meaning “winged.” Others suggest the word links the Thunderbird to wakan, or sacred power. In many stories, the Thunderbird is thought of as a great Eagle, who produces thunder from the beating of his wings and flashes lightning from his eyes. (Descriptions are vague because it is thought Thunderbird is always surrounded by thick, rolling clouds which prevent him from being seen.) Further, there were a variety of beliefs about Thunderbird, which suggest a somewhat complicated picture. Usually, his role is to challenge some other great power and protect the Indians – such as White Owl Woman, the bringer of winter storms; the malevolent Unktehi, or water oxen who plague mankind; the horned serpents; Wochowsen, the enemy bird; or Waziya, the killing North Wind. But in some other legends (not so much in the Plains), Thunderbird is himself malevolent, carrying off people (or reindeer or whales) to their doom, or slaying people who seek to cross his sacred mountain. (Erdoes and Ortiz 1984)

Many Plains Indians claim there are in fact four colors (varieties) of Thunderbirds (the blue ones are said, strangely, to have no ears or eyes), sometimes associated with the four cardinal directions, but also sometimes only with the west and the western wind. (According to the medicine man Lame Deer, there were four, one at each compass point, but the western one was the Greatest and most senior.) (Fire and Erdoes 1972) The fact that they are sometimes known as “grandfathers” suggest they are held in considerable reverence and awe. It is supposed to be very dangerous to approach a Thunderbird nest, and many are supposed to have died in the attempt, swept away by ferocious storms. The symbol of Thunderbird is the red zig-zag, lightning-bolt design, which some people mistakenly think represents a stairway. Most tribes feel he and the other Thunder beings were the first to appear in the Creation, and that they have an especially close connection to wakan tanka, the Great Mysterious. (Gill and Sullivan 1992)

The fact that Thunderbird sometimes appears as something that terrorizes and plagues Indians, and sometimes as their protector and liberator (in some myths, he was once an Indian himself) is said to reflect the way thunderstorms and violent weather are seen by Plains people. On the one hand, they bring life-giving rain (Thunderbird is said to be the creator of ‘wild rice’ and other Plains Indians crops); on the other hand, they bring hail, flood, and lightning and fire. It is not clear where with them worship and awe end, and fear and terror begin. Some Indians claim that there are good and bad Thunderbirds, and that these beings are at war with each other. Others claim that the large predatory birds which are said to kidnap hunters and livestock are not Thunderbirds at all. Largely, I suspect that this dual nature of the Thunderbird ties it to the Trickster figure in Indian belief: like the Trickster, the harm the Thunderbird causes is mostly because it is so large and powerful and primeval.

Origins of the Thunderbird Myth

Cryptozoologists like Mark A. Hall, having studied the Thunderbird myths of numerous tribes, and compared them to (mostly folkloric) accounts of unusually large birds in modern times, as well as large birds (like the Roc) in other mythic traditions, suggest that there may well be a surviving species of large avians in America – big enough, apparently, to fly off carrying small animals or children, as has been claimed in some accounts. (Hall suggests the wingspan of such a species would be several feet longer than any known birds – certainly bigger than that of the turkey vulture or other identifiable North American species.) (Hall 1988) Such researchers feel the Thunderbird myth may have originated from sightings of a real-life flesh-and-blood avian which might be an atavism from earlier epochs (a quasi-pterodactyl or teratorn, perhaps.)

However, the big problem with this theory is that most ornithologists consider it to be quite farfetched. If such a species existed (a situation akin to the folkloric Sasquatch), it would be amazing that to this point it has remained unidentified and uncatalogued. A species of birds that big, unless it consisted of an extremely small number of members, would find it hard to avoid detection for long. Hall does suggest the possibility that maybe, like the mastodon, these large birds were hunted to extinction prior to the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent. Still, the other problem with his theory is that it ignores what Indians themselves have to say about the Thunderbird.

They describe the Thunderbird as a spiritual, not just physical, being. It is not seen as just a large, fearsome predatory bird that people tell stories about. Rather, it’s an integral part of Plains Indians religion and ritual. Only by ignoring this fact could we put our Western ethnocentric biases into effect, and reduce it to a zoological curiosity. The Thunderbird is much more than that; the Indian attitude toward it comes from more than just the mere fact that it is supposed to be really big. To understand the origins of Thunderbird myths, it’s necessary to see how they connect with other elements of Indian belief and ceremony – especially the Trickster complex – and see how they fit into the structure of Plains Indian myth as a whole.

Clowning around in Plains Indian culture

Clowning, like the icon of the Thunderbird, could be found in almost every North American Indian society. In every case, it involved ridiculous behavior, but on the Plains it especially exhibited inversion and reversal as elements of satire. There were four types of clown societies on the Plains – age-graded societies, military societies, the northern plains type, and the heyoka shamanistic societies. The behaviors of all sorts of clowns revolved around a few basic themes or attributes: burlesque, mocking the sacred, playing pranks or practical jokes, making obscene jokes or gestures, caricature of others, exhibiting gross gluttony or extreme appetite, strange acts of self-mortification or self-deprecation, and taunting of enemies or strangers. (Steward 1991)

The age-graded clown societies primarily consisted of older people who had been inducted into their ranks – groups such as the Gros Ventre Crazy Lodge or the Hidatsa Dog Society. These clowns were assumed to simply be playing a role appropriate to their sodality, rather than receiving some sort of supernatural inspiration. They carried out certain expected ritual performances on proscribed days, such as the Crazy Dance or the imitation of animals. In contrast, the military clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Bow String Warriors, often carried comical or ridiculous weapons, but were also expected to show absurd bravery in battle, provoking the enemy into giving up its discipline and cohesion with taunts and insults. Not surprisingly, they sometimes rode their horses backwards into battle.

The northern plains clowns, found among tribes such as the Ojibway, wore masks which made them appear to be two-faced, and costumes of rags which made them appear comical. All of these three types of clown societies practiced a sort of conventionalized or patterned sort of anti-natural behavior. That is, they might do something which seemed strange or contrary, but under somewhat regular conditions. You knew when they might do something weird – and there were times when they were forbidden to perform their antics. Further, they might often “give up” the clowning way of life, and return to a non-contrary state by marrying and engaging in a more normal mode of existence.

The heyoka were different in three primary ways from the other sorts of clowns. They were truly unpredictable, and could do the unexpected or tasteless even during the most solemn of occasions. Moreso than other clowns, they really seemed to be insane. Also, they were thought to be more inspired by trans-human supernatural forces (as individuals driven by spirits rather than group conventions), and to have a closer link to wakan  or power than other clowns. And lastly, they kept their role for life – it was a sacred calling which could not be given up without performing an agonizing ritual of expiation. Not surprisingly, these unique differences were seen as the result of their having visions of Thunderbird, a unique and transforming experience.

Testimony of Black Elk: the heyoka and lightning

The Oglala Indian Black Elk had some interesting things to say about the heyoka ceremony, which he himself participated in. Black Elk describes the “dog in boiling water” ceremony in some detail. He also describes the bizarre items he had to carry as a heyoka, and the crazy antics he had to perform with his companions. He also attempts to explain the link between the contrary trickster nature of heyokas with that of Thunderbird.

“When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm… you have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better. And so I think this is what the heyoka ceremony is for … the dog had to be killed quickly and without making any scar, as lightning kills, for it is the power of lightning that heyokas have.” (quoted in Neihardt 1959: 160)
Today, of course, Western physicists describe the dual nature of electricity. An object can carry a positive or negative electric charge. The electron is simultaneously a wave and a particle. Electricity and magnetism are thought to be aspects of the same force, and as is well know with magnetism, it comes in polarities, with opposite poles (north and south) attracting. Though the Indians did not have access to our modern scientific instruments, they are likely to have observed some of the same properties in lightning. Thus it would have been intuitive to link the dual spiritual nature of the heyoka (tragicomedy – solemn joking – joy united with pain) with the dual nature of electricity.

Thunderbird and Heyoka, the Sacred Clown

It was believed among the Lakota and other tribes that if you had a dream or vision of birds, you were destined to be a medicine man; but if you had a vision of Thunderbird, it was your destiny to become something else; heyoka, or sacred clown. Like Thunderbird, the heyoka were at once feared and held in reverence. They were supposed to startle easily at the first sound of thunder or first sight of lightning. Thunderbird supposedly inspired the “contrariness” of the heyoka through his own contrary nature. He alternates strong winds with calm ones. While all things in nature move clockwise, Thunderbird is said to move counterclockwise. Thunderbird is said to have sharp teeth, but no mouth; sharp claws, but no limbs; huge wings, but no body. All of these things suggest Thunderbird (and the heyoka) have a curious, paradoxical, contrary nature. You could become heyoka through a vision of the Thunderbird, or just of lightning or a formidable winged being of power. (Steiger 1974)

While clown societies were found throughout the Plains, the heyoka, or sacred clowns, were usually few in number, but were found in almost every clan. Heyoka were contraries, often speaking and walking backwards. They acted in ridiculous, obscene, and comical ways, especially during sacred ceremonies. They were thought to be fearless and painless, able to seize a piece of meat out of a pot of boiling water. They often dressed in a bizarre and ludicrous manner, wearing conical hats, red paint, a bladder over the head (to simulate baldness), and bark earrings. The heyoka was thought to usually carry various sacred items – a deer hoof rattle, a colored bow, a flute, or drum. His “anti-natural” nature was thought to be shamanistic in origin — and as a contrary, he was expected to act silly and foolhardy during battle (although this was found more among warrior clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Warriors.)

However insulting or sacrilegious heyoka actions might be, they were tolerated, since it was assumed they were acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. Heyoka were freed from all the ordinary constraints of life, and thus were usually not expected to marry, have children, or participate in the work of the tribe. Despite their bizarre acts (such as dressing in warm clothes during summer or wearing things inside out), they were trusted as healers, interpreters of dreams, and people of great medicine. Whenever they interrupted the solemnity of a ceremony, people took it as an admonition to see beyond the literalness of the ritual and into the deeper mysteries of the sacred. Like the flash of lightning, the heyoka’s sudden outbursts and disturbances were thought to be the keys to enlightenment – much like the absurd acts of Zen masters in Japan. (Hultkrantz 1987)

Thunderbird and Trickster

Part of the link between heyoka and Thunderbird comes from Iktomi, the Trickster figure. Iktomi is said to be heyoka because he has seen and talked with Thunderbird. Iktomi is the first-born son of Inyan (rock), and is said to speak with rocks and stones. Like Coyote and other Trickster figures, Iktomi likes to pull pranks on people, but is just as often the victim of tricks and misfortunes. This makes him at once a culture hero, and a figure to be feared and avoided. Iktomi was thought to be a hypersexual predator, one who frequently pursued winchinchalas (young virgins) who bathed in streams, through various methods of deceit. Yet his pursuits and antics often wound up with him inadvertently getting hurt or winding up in trouble.

Paul Radin suggests that Iktomi and other Trickster figures are akin to the Great Fool or Wild Man of European folklore, who often shows up in the Feast of Fools and other ceremonies where the social order is turned topsy-turvy. (Radin 1956) Jung, following his lead, claims the Trickster as an archetypal part of the collective unconscious; and his “crazy wisdom” as emblematic of humankind’s earlier, undivided, unindividuated consciousness. Iktomi and other tricksters seem to be at the constant mercy of their desires; yet their blind luck always seems to protect them from the consequences of their missteps. He is dangerous primarily because he is so powerful, yet so rarely has the forethought or good judgment to use his power wisely. Radin and others proclaim him the representative of untamed, unpredictably wild nature, within the confines of culture.

In other cultural traditions, thunder and lightning are connected with the unexpected. We talk about a “bolt out of the blue.” In American folk culture, there are a host of legendary stories of mysterious cures or transformations wrought by someone being struck by lightning. It’s at once dangerous, and a symbol of sudden, shocking revelation and inspiration. It’s also the primary weapon in most pantheons of the chief sky god (such as Zeus in Greek mythology.) For the Plains Indians, thunder and lightning symbolized the vast, uncontrollable energy of nature. It’s not surprising, then, that the Thunderbird is connected with the strange, uncontrollable force of the Trickster figure, and his avatar, the heyoka.

Significance of the Trickster Figure and “Contrariness” in Plains Society

Psychological anthropologists, especially those oriented toward psychoanalytic theory and depth psychology, point to the Trickster figure as a sort of important cultural “release valve.” He represents the “return of the repressed,” the Dionysian aspects of life only temporarily held in abeyance by the Apollonian forces of civilization. The carnivals and feasts held in honor of fools in Europe, suggest some anthropologists, are “outlets,” allowing people to invert the social order temporarily as a way of promoting its continuity in the long run (avoiding its ultimate collapse.) The ruler is dressed in peasants’ clothes, and some ignorant serf is crowned king. Symbols of authority normally held in extreme reverence are mocked and desecrated.

Clowns and contraries in Plains societies do not just come out once a year, however. They are permanent parts of the society, and are seen as continual reminders of the contingency and arbitrariness of the social order. Long before French theorists came on the scene, the heyoka was reminding his own people about the social construction of reality. By doing everything backwards, the heyoka in a way is carrying out a constant experiment in ethnomethodology, showing people how their own expectations limit their behavior. Like a good performance artist, the shocking behavior of the heyoka is supposed to confront people and make them reconsider what they may have arbitrarily accepted as normal. It’s to “jolt” them out of their ordinary frames of mind. (Steward 1991)

More importantly, as a representative of Thunderbird and Trickster, the heyoka reminds his people that the primordial energy of nature is beyond good and evil. It doesn’t correspond to human categories of right and wrong. It doesn’t always follow our preconceptions of what is expected and proper. It doesn’t really care about our human woes and concerns. Like electricity, it can be deadly dangerous, or harnessed for great uses. If we’re too narrow or parochial in trying to understand it, it will zap us in the middle of the night. Like any good trickster, the heyoka plays pranks on others in his culture not to make them feel embarrassed and stupid, but to show them ways they could start being more smart.

The Account of John (Fire) Lame Deer: Heyoka and ASC

Lame Deer calls the heyoka the “upside-down, forward-backward, icy-hot contrary.” He describes in detail one particular heyoka trick which may give some clues to the nature of their antics. Apparently, they would grab pieces of dog meat out of a pot of boiling water, and fling them at a crowd of people, without being burned or harmed in any way. (Why dog meat? Lame Deer gives a clue when he says, “For the heyoka, he says god when he means dog, and dog when he means god.”) Lame Deer suggests before doing this they chewed a grayish moss called tapejuta. I suspect that heyoka were able to perform this feat through going into trance, an altered state of consciousness, by utilizing this and other psychotropic plants on occasion.

More importantly, I think they induced trance in others through their contrary behavior. Psychologists have noted that trance does not always occur through rhythmic repetition. Another way in which it occurs (the “paradoxical state”) is through a sudden shock to the nervous system. Ethnomethodologists have often noted the blank, glassy stares and strange states produced by violating peoples’ expectations – by, for example, getting into an elevator and facing the other people in it. It’s in such “paradoxical states” that people often may assimilate new information quickly, without filtering. They also may be able to “abreact” psychological trauma. For these reasons, the heyoka may have been seen as a source of wisdom and healing.

Lame Deer seems to suggest the power of trance is connected to the power of Thunderbird. As a paradoxical state of consciousness, it ties into the paradoxical energy of thunder and lightning. The crash of thunder can startle us and wake us up out of dreaming sleep. The trance of the heyoka comes from sacred power. He ties it all together in a way that’s fairly succinct:

” These Thunderbirds are part of the Great Spirit. Theirs is about the greatest power in the whole universe. It is the power of the hot and the cold clashing above the clouds. It is blue lightning from the sun. It is like atomic power. The thunder power protects and destroys. It is good and bad; the great winged power. We draw the lightning as a forked zigzag, because lightning branches out into a good and bad part… In our Indian belief, the clown has a power which comes from the thunder beings, not from the animals or the Earth. He has more power than the atom bomb, he could blow off the dome of the Capitol. Being a clown gives you honor, but also shame. It brings you power, but you have to pay for it.” (quoted in Erdoes 1972: 251)

Conclusion

The Thunderbird’s association with heyoka clowns is not simply serendipitous. The fact that the Thunderbird displays many paradoxical and contradictory attributes links it to Trickster figures and to the contraries of Plains  Indians culture. This culture complex probably resulted from Indian beliefs about nature and the ways in which thunder and lightning exemplified the manners in which it could be at once capricious, beneficent, and destructive. The Thunderbird’s own link to the original Great Mystery suggests that the role of the sacred clown was seen as one of the highest in Plains society – like wandering fools in Europe, they were thought to be touched by the Divine power itself. Like Thunderbird himself, the heyoka was thought to be a conduit to forces that defied comprehension, and by his absurd, backwards behavior he was merely showing the ironic, mysterious dualities that existed within the universe itself.

Bibliography

Edmonds, Margot, and Clark, Ella E., Voices of the Winds: Native American Legends, Facts on File, New York, 1989.
Erdoes, Richard, and Ortiz, Alfonso, eds., American Indian Myths and Legends, Pantheon Books, New York, 1984.
Fire, John, and Erdoes, Richard, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, Washington Square Press, New York, 1972.
Gill, Sam D., and Sullivan, Irene F., Dictionary of Native American Mythology, ABC-CLIO Inc., Santa Barbara, 1992.
Hall, Mark A., Thunderbirds: The Living Legend of Giant Birds, Fortean Publications, Minneapolis, 1988.
Hines, Donald M., Ghost Voices: Indian Myths, Legends, Humor, and Hunting Stories, Great Eagle Publishing, Issaquah, 1992.
Hultkrantz, Ake, Native Religions of North America, Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1987.
Neihardt, John G., Black Elk Speaks, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1959.
Radin, Paul, The Trickster: a Study in American Indian Mythology, Greenwood Press, Westport, 1956.
Steiger, Brad, Medicine Power, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1974.
Steward, Julian Haynes, The Clown in Native North America, Garland Publishing, New York, 1991.
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New Predictions

A couple of times I had tried to write posts, but things have been upside down and crazy the past few weeks.  In the last post I tried to complete I had technical difficulty and still it seems everything conspires to keep the revelations and visions secret. But I have decided that warnings must be issued, as my hope is that enough people will take heed and change the course of what is to come.

As I said a while back financial markets would spiral down in a roller coaster-like manner. But my warning right now is really about something much more disturbing and related to the other warning that we are living in the age of revolutions.

To those in power I beg you not to proceed violently against the non-violent protestors. There is a stew brewing, one in which the consequences will be deadly and lead to another revolution here on American soil. I can tell you as well that the people will be victorious and those in the 1% take heed to start doing the right thing and correct the wrongs and injustices or take a lesson from the French Revolution.

I don’t want to get into too much detail except to say that I have never really (logically) believed people here in the US would be desperate and hopeless enough to put their life on the lines as their forefathers had, but now I know this to be untrue.  And as the middle-class and all the progress that was made to equalize our society has gone backward we will see a new caste of warriors – some cracked by the wars overseas meant to protect the interest of the 1% – and some perfectly well only to come home to a nation without hope, jobs, freedom or really any of the things our warriors felt they were going to protect.

There is always hope that things can turn around but there are three things required for this to be so: 1) The political system must change to reflect the will and needs of the people. 2) The financial market must be radically renovated and regulated – no more theoretical math to squeeze money out of thin air. 3) Total and complete freedom for regular people to protest, and participate in the political system without any negative recourse or violence perpetrated against them.

At this point I see no way for any of the current line-up of Republicans to win the next election. Obama will be forced to take a more hard line approach to the violence happening toward protestors and the financial free fall will force him to take a stand against the wealthy 1%. The only chance of Obama not being re-elected comes from the possibility of a third party emerging out of the 99% movement (which will eventually happen but further in the future) and it is only this possibility that stands a shadow of a chance and this chance is microscopic at this point if possible at all. It would take something short of a miracle for this to occur.

The other set of disturbing revelations are about the earth itself. I was shown 7 places all over the globe that would have extreme geological activity starting with the second tip of Spain, the Lapland boarder region, an area that is between China/Russia and Mongolia, The boarder between the Dakotas, the northern most tip of Australia, the Poles (north and south). I wrote down what I was shown and in order but the paper mysteriously disappeared the next day never to be found. I was told the area near the second tip of Spain (near the Mediterranean sea, just a skip across to Morocco) would be a major earthquake, the area up in the Lapland/Scandinavian area would be a volcano (I thought but wasn’t sure), the area in China/Russia/Mongolia would be severe flooding, the Dakotas I think again are earthquake.

I was told that the increase in earthquakes will only keep increasing as the polar ice caps will break off and for a little while large pieces of the polar ice caps (glaciers) would make their way around the world and be seen in the ocean in strange unexpected places. Most importantly that the earth was sick and that what She was experiencing was akin to seizures, small ones that would lead up to a major world shaking like a horrible grand mal seizure felt around the world. The period of time given for this was starting in 2012 and would happen over a period from then for 5-7 years. After which a cycle of renewal would begin. Unfortunately, there would be horrible damage done and a lot of people exiting this world. However it isn’t the end of the world, just a change, simultaneously our political system will change dramatically and power will once again reside in the people. The meek will indeed inherit the earth again. Those who align themselves with the needy, weak and helpless will be pivotal and saved – this will not be like the 1960s. This will ultimately lead to a violent uprising if things continue as they are.

This is something I’ve known since I was 12 and spent 7 months alone, on my back in my sick bed (literally true). I had visions of this period. I had hoped this period would never happen. I had several dreams along the way and signs that we were traveling on this dark road but believed we would correct it. I have been given confirmation by a terrible dream recently that there is now very little chance of changing this future which in hindsight seemed inevitable.

I have struggled with informing people about this as I have seen all the signs and been given confirmation through various spiritual sources that this would be. I wasn’t sure if telling people would help or hurt. But I have no other alternative now except to hope those in power will heed this warning to restrain the police and take control of the violence against the innocent or this will go from a movement into a civil war and no one wants to see or live through the horrors of war on our soil.

Many blessings,
Denise

PS. I’m sorry I will go through individual requests soon. What has come upon me in the past couple of months has been large and oppressive and the tip of this iceberg has already turned so many people’s lives upside down – I have been trying to help put out fires among those in my sphere. A lot of people are depressed now which is why I was afraid to post this information but again the positive thing to take from all of this is the people will ultimately win as they have in the past. And the changes in the earth will eventually calm.

For those who are depressed try to realize you are here, now for a reason. You are meant to do your part to move the earth and people to a new consciousness and what was once a simple prescribed path will be replaced by one full of novelty and change in which your decisions will have impact on the whole of history if you so choose.

Earthquake… Haiti…

I would not normally post a vision that I hadn’t really decoded completely or one that could be seen as so strange an absurd, but I felt in light of the earthquake in Haiti and the nature of this vision I had to go forward. I wish I would have posted it the night I received it, but usually my visions are not so close on the heels of disasters like this. There is usually more lead time…

I had a strange vision a couple of nights ago as I was falling asleep. I told it to my husband and as it turned out he had had a similar/almost identical dream. I was looking out or sort of hovering over the ocean I thought I was off of the West Coast pretty far North, probably near Oregon, maybe as far as Washington or as south as far Northern California near the border of Oregon. Above me was a strange UFO, like something I’ve never seen, not even in depictions of any kind. It was dark and octagonal. As I watched it, these strange legs appeared and from the legs bright lights shown. The word bipedal came to me although there were more than two of these legs, perhaps it only used two to walk on land or sea. Anyway, it was black, ominous and metallic and definitely alien in origin. However it did not have good or even neutral feeling about it. This thing was here to start a war on earth. A war against the earth as we have known it, using all the disadvantages we have provided by way of global warming and whatever natural earth changes scheduled to come down the pike.

I was also told there would be an explosion deep underwater near or in the Bermuda triangle area and this would cause a terrible series of earthquakes. People would not know that these earthquakes were not entirely natural, of course they would assume as I or any rational person would nothing unusual about them other than the nature of these earthquakes themselves. I also so that where this strange UFO was hanging out, over an obscure (literally) off the radar place in the middle of the Pacific, there was a base being set up.

OK, this may sound insane, but I was told this was the beginning of a war of the worlds. The end game of two alien races, both with different agendas for our planet. The one I was seeing was the very evil one. The other alien race I think was/is the Grays – whose purpose is more neutral in regards to us and our planet. Not benevolent, self-serving on their part, but sort of like a giant experiment they had started ages ago which they need to see through and also because they have a vested interest in us as we are a hybrid race related to them. In a strange way they are mining our reproductive systems in order to keep their own race alive.

I was then startled out of the vision by the sound of two loud bangs on the outside of my home. I’ve had this happen before major earthquakes before and wondered if perhaps southern California was also going to get hit but dismissed that notion for the time being.

Now the thing that kept me from posting this (other than it is completely crazy sounding) is that often visions and dreams in a metaphorical language which needs decoding. The aliens could be an alien culture. Symbolic language is often exaggerated for emotional impact. The fact that the aliens were going to detonate some sort of nuclear device deep under the ocean floor to cause these earthquakes could mean that there is something unnatural about the earthquake in Haiti or the earthquakes themselves could be so extreme that they are “mind-blowing” like a nuclear explosion. Again the Bermuda Triangle and the Bahamas were the area were this energy was despite the feeling the UFO I was seeing was somehow connected to the West Coast. This also confused me so I figured I’d wait it out to decipher the meaning but again the voice told me this would be a series of earthquakes all over connected deep under the earth which made me wonder if there wasn’t going to also be something happening up in Northern California sooner rather than later, again the whales, the sea lions also seemed like signs…

The next night I had a dream that I was flying in an aircraft when a terrible storm came, and somehow the aircraft ended up adrift in the water in what looked like a bay of a large island near the Bahamas although I’ve never been to the Bahamas or anywhere near there, I knew it was the area. When I saw some news of the Haitian earthquake after being at an amusement park all day for my daughter’s birthday, I saw the very same bay that the airplane was floating in from the dream. In the dream I was amazed the aircraft was able to float and we seemed to be OK for the time being before I was awoken by my husband to go to the amusement park.

While we were at the amusement park waiting in a dark room for a show to start my husband told me about some friends of his who were going to go to go on a cruise (work related) to the Bahamas. I freaked out and said, “No, you can’t go it’s too dangerous there. Something terrible is happening there.  I’ve had a bunch of dreams about it.” This is when a bunch of those references started really coming together in my head. As it turned out it was at about 2:15 PM PST right around the time or just after the major earthquake in Haiti was happening.

Now one could dismiss all this as coincidence and as I’ve said I normally don’t put out the crude version of a vision without proper deconstruction, but I felt that my husband having had a similar dream and the earthquake happening in Haiti yesterday are reasons to fly my freak flag, perhaps some part of this that I haven’t figured out yet someone else will and it can help someone out figure something out that needs figuring.

By the way there is a terrible storm coming this way next week. And actually it has just started raining here. I will meditate on this and try to make more cohesive sense of it all. Sorry to go the long route but sometimes things are literal and sometimes metaphorical and sometimes it’s not for me to figure out completely. Maybe for someone out there they will read this and it cause someone to reflect on a strange dream and another piece of the puzzle will come together. Please post if anyone has had similar strange dreams related to any of the issues discussed here…

Best wishes and please pray for the Haitian people,

Denise

Readers & Questions & Premonitions…

From Wei:

Thanks for the analysis of the stock market. I try not to think about it too much. I’m kinda hedging against a bad economy since my financial health depends on a good economy, so it’s fine either way, I will wind up flat in the end. I’m not meant to make a million dollars.
I bought a tibetan singing bowl recently and I love its sound and vibration. I dedicated it to the light and it seems to clear out some negative energies. The vibrational qualities and sound has some healing properties that I’m interested in. I’m played a CD of tibetan singing bowl music with headphones on, and it buzzed my third chakra, never happened before and it became slightly uncomfortable. Hands and feet were buzzing also, but I’m used to it. Really interesting instrument. Some antique bowls are said to call up certain deities and spirits.

Hi Wei,

Tibetan singing bowls are marvelous. They are amazing at clearing negative energy.

OK now about GM. I’m not that much of a freak about the moon void of course but I do think it indicates what the natal chart and transits showed, that it will eventually go belly up. So perhaps the moon void of course is a sign that this attempt to restructure won’t work.

Did anyone see the special I think it was called 2100 or something like that about climate change? It was on NBC tonight. It really creeped me out because it was so similar to the visions I had back in the 1990s about this century and the changes we were going to go through if we didn’t shift our course. We don’t have much time and unfortunately having Bush in office for 8 years really threw a monkey wrench in the wheels of progress. Not just in terms of the Kyoto Treaty and green energy, but also the insane deregulation that has pushed us into this horrible economic disaster which is taking our focus off of the extinction level event we are currently facing. It’s sort of like we are in the final stages of cancer and trying to figure out how to pay for our hospice bill when if we focused on taking care of the cancer there would be a chance of survival.

I want to share something with everyone. For years I would see the future, usually between 5-10 years ahead of time. There were a few instances when I saw things further down the road than that but usually my visions were on average about 7 years before the event played out like the LA riots, the big earthquake of 1994 here, etc.

But in the mid 1990s there were 2 distinct paths we could choose and we chose the wrong way. But then we made a correction so I felt a sense of optimism about our potential fate. Then in the  late 1990s something shifted. It was as if a wall was erected and things were so out of control and random that the future could only be seen about 6 months to a year ahead of time, closer to 6 months.

It was as if time had sped up and our collective decisions we rebounding and coming to fruition more quickly. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why this strange shift had happened. Why it seemed we no longer had a fate if you will, but rather a co-creating sort of interaction with time. I have come to believe this is because we are at a cross road and within the next 5-10 years if we don’t truly make some dramatic changes our fate will be sealed. It won’t be good. But right now we have the opportunity to change things. This is a rare gift and we need to push ourselves and our leaders to really embrace serious changes in the way we interact with our planet.

We are killing her. And she will fight back. She’ll burn us off and our race will start over again. We’ll loose all our technology and all that we’ve achieved so far and be relegated back to a small presence on this planet just trying to survive. We will have blown it and taken a bunch of innocent species along with us. We will in essence (as a collective) jump back on the karmic wheel, and go backwards instead of forwards to the next level of development.

This makes me very sad. I sometimes cry over all the pain and suffering we are creating and the world we are leaving to the generations to come. It’s as if the earth herself is always weeping and I can feel her pain, like those statues of the Virgin Mary who bleed tears.

Our world is in peril. I don’t want to be a pessimist because we still have a chance to change our future and I believe that most of humanity leans toward the good. It’s the people in power  who are at the helm and pressure has to be put on them to do what is right, not what is easiest.

I have to be honest. I was worried early on that Obama would be too diplomatic, too much of a people pleaser to be the bad guy when necessary and really lead the charge. But when Hillary Clinton did her bull dog routine on him, I turned as so many did away from her. Anyone who could do that to someone in their own party seemed too hungry for power and anyone that hungry for power seemed ripe for the abuse of it.

Our government is a mess. Our economy is a mess. Our world is a mess. And we are individuals. We can’t clean it all up by ourselves. We have to make our world governments do the hard work. Please stay active in the environmental causes and put pressure on our world governments to do the most radical things we can possibly do. It’s either that and a little bit of sacrifice now or there won’t be anything left. I don’t think it will be 2100 when we see the population decline to almost nothing. I think we will start to see some very radical shifts in our lifetime if something isn’t done now.

I hate to be a bummer, but we need to stay on task. The economy is just a small problem compared to what we will see. It will be a time of reckoning. Not the kind the Christians are pushing for, no savior will come and save us. We have to save ourselves and our world. We were given the keys to this car and if we wreck it, we will be responsible. And that karma will be on all of us.

Many blessings,

Denise

Oops…

In the previous post about Global Warming I meant the Arctic not Antarctica. I think I wrote Antarctica because it’s been on my mind. As the polar ice caps melt, it is the melting over the Arctic and Greenland that will cause the dramatic shift in the global shoreline. But the issue of Antarctica isn’t discussed much. From what I’ve read there have been huge changes in the ice down there. I suppose Antarctica is also more difficult to study because there is no land base which will ultimately make it more and more dangerous to observe if things keep escalating at the exponential rate they have been, far beyond scientists wildest expectations.

In the late 1980s throughout the 1990s I kept having dreams and visions of a post-apocolyptic world which is what inspired Americhrist. In the dreams there was a small group of people who had survived and they lived in a rain forest, under the canopy but on a system of platforms. It was pretty much the opposite vision given by the Mad Max films. I never got much from the visions except that the people were OK, peaceful and waiting things out. I wasn’t sure if I should be re-assured by these visions or terrified as it was my feeling that this was the only pocket of human life left on earth for perhaps thousands of years before the earth healed and we started spreading out again.

So when an article came out in US News about what was still supposed to be just a theory of Global Warming, in the late 1990s (according to the media) I felt impelled to write the book because I knew George W. (oil man) was going to win despite every ounce of logic that would have dictated the opposite. I wanted desperately for this not to be true, ran God knows how many charts and what I always came to was George W. would ultimately win the office but that Al Gore would actually win the election. This made no sense to me. But I thought back to our electoral college and thought perhaps Gore would win the popular vote and Bush the electoral, which of course would determine who took office.

But it looked weirder than that and it felt like there was going to be some serious malfeasance, perhaps even a sort of coo. It was too much and it really started making me irrationally angry. I knew the Neocons would find a way around the system by infiltrating it and we would come as close to losing our Democracy as anyone in the last hundred years has. Since Reagan I felt this brewing. I think a lot of people did and many of us had lost such hope in our system we didn’t actually believe this time around Obama could win because our Democracy was broken.

I point this out now because it’s like a half-remembered dream. And the only way to insure our great Democracy is to keep our voices as loud, clear and reasoned as we can above the din of the small crazy minority of self-centered, hypocritical blow hards who take up too much band with on TV and Radio with their nonsense. There are some major issues coming up that we have to participate in like Global Warming and Universal Health-care. We can’t afford to be complacent ever again.

The last 30 years has shown us what apathy can do. It is a disease that erodes the moral fabric of a country. We can no longer say, “that could never happen here,” we have seen first hand that it does and will again if we don’t keep the psychopaths and greedy thieves (or as some call them Neocons strategists and captains of industry) in their place with laws, you know the “rule of law,” they all kept going on about when the Supreme Court handed them the presidency back in 2000 until of course that “rule of law” meant they had to pay their fair share of taxes or not torture people or disallowed listening in on private Americans’ phone calls or gave women choice and control of their bodies or, you know, any law they didn’t like. Let’s not forget how horrible the previous 8 years were. And lets all thank goodness that we have the chance now to set our country back on track.

Don’t forget to keep your voices heard.

I have no idea what inspired that but maybe it will make sense in the next week or so.

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good, kind people,
Denise

P.S. And I think we are seeing the death rattle of the Republican Party unless they do a doughnut and spin a 180 out of their ideological parking lot. Otherwise I predict a 3rd party will rise up and squash them. They’ll go the way of the Whigs.

Twit(ter) and Swine Flu

I didn’t mean to sound to cavalier about the swine flu. People have died from it. I just listened to an NPR broadcast about Mexico City shutting down all its schools until May 6 because of the outbreak. I’m glad everyone is taking this seriously, however, because they are it’s been my intuition all along that this will be contained pretty well. I have heard that it jumps species so this was part of the freak out over this particular flu. With all the trouble in Mexico I don’t see why anyone would want to vacation there for the time being anyway, so it seems they are probably more isolated than they would have been 10 years ago and this will also help contain the epidemic, although it has been found in New York, CA, Scotland and I think there was a case found in Spain. Again though every time I concentrate on it I don’t get any crazy feeling. 

Although I have been feeling there is something brewing behind the scenes and once I figure it out I’ll let everyone know. I’ve had some weird dreams and odd visions but haven’t quite figured them out yet. I get the sense that what I’m picking up is more long term, over the next 5-10 years. To me the scariest news I’ve heard in a long time was the admission by scientists that global warming is exponentially worse than any model they have come up with. There is talk that the ice caps will be gone in as little as a decade, some think even 5 years, some even sooner. I heard one scientist say that there was a chance most Antarctica would be melted by this summer but that seems a bit early, probably not by as much as we’d like to think though. We are really poised here for a serious extinction level event and it’s not even newsworthy. Sometimes things are so scary we can’t even look at them. I’m thinking I need to get more involved in the politics of global warming. If anyone knows of a good, effective organization to participate in post it on the blog.

OK, and I”m glad some people like twitter. Perhaps it works under certain conditions. Unfortunately, every time I read anyone I knows stream, it makes no sense to me. They are either talking about something completely out of context that perhaps they’ve been tweeting about for days or it’s about something extremely banal. I really hate small talk. And at least in my estimation twitter is like global small talk. But then again I live in LA so perhaps if your friends are all academics and are insanely brilliant it might be interesting. My friends are all artist/writer/comedians and actors so they have a tendency to ramble about stuff that I would get them not to talk about in a normal conversation. I have a way of deflecting boring small talk, because I have about as much tolerance for it as I do flees. But perhaps this is just my problem.

Many blessings to all you good people,

Denise

PS : The celebrities who twitter (at least the people I know who fall under that category) are actually really twittering. Why? I guess because most of them like exposure and attention. The more the better, think the character of Jenna on 30 Rock and Tracy Morgan’s character. They really are kind of typical of the actor type personality. Not that there aren’t brilliant, deep and intense actors out there, just not as many as they (the actors) would like you to believe.