The Seer; 20 Eyes and more ...

Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Image, The Observatory, Isle of Erraid, Argyll, Alba/Scotland wrf. (early 1990s)

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The Witness

Through whose eyes do you see,

and whose heart beats in you.

Whose energy is behind the breath.

Whose thoughts move through your mind,

and who dwells in thy Soul.

Through whose eyes do you see yourself.

Wendy Robertson Fyfe, 2008

Welcome, this Museletter articulates further something of the vision from Abbey Of Soul one year on and which continues taking shape alongside deep seeing through the eyes of PI’A of Earth Mother, PoEM, Holy Woman and village (human and more-than-human). The Museletter begins to articulate the world-making of ancient-new ways here; what you might expect and why. Abbey Of Soul is a place to cultivate a deeper sense of wonder and seeing as our felt sense of being Earth continues emerging, is lived and embodied into life with different Earth-born gifts to bring forth to serve this world. Abbey Of Soul is here for exploring, cultivating, apprenticing, co-conspiring, re-visioning for these times; living at the edges of the village, of the worlds. Where we is in italics, we refers to the multifaceted layers worlds/constellations and village of Wendy/PI’A. Where ‘we’ is written without italics it refers to the wider cultural ‘we’, though we are aware of challenges with that too as an ancient-new language emerges with the challenges of doing so acknowledged. Bear with, as we feel our way stretching too …

To articulate further, we need to place/position work within a much wider context as we have come to know at this point towards creating a different conversation that is soul-led in which, as Thomas Berry noted, Earth is Primary and humans are Secondary rather than Earth secondary and humans primary. There may well be resonances with where you are already, or/and your longings for such a place. You are invited to take some time here with this ‘more of an article, wander-weaving’. As we write, the stories grow arms and legs, eyes and mouths, hand and heart, brain and blood, and planets, within oceans, canyons and more. You may want to pause here, make a hot cuppa and come back as you offer attention, for which we are grateful. We wonder and wander with ‘human’ further in what follows, that a bigger story and conversation … perhaps even ground… may open up for deeper revelation. You’ll likely notice your own stories as you read and we’d love to hear them either in comments below or message us. If you find the writing helpful and would like to support the work taking shape you are warmly invited to become a paid subscriber if you are not already, or to offer a one-off payment of support. Such support is deeply appreciated, though not required. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

We have now stepped into Imbolc in the Northern Hemisphere, the Celtic Season of Spring and life returning. This Museletter too follows an eye-line and mere glimpse particularly into the deeper waters of inner and outer seer, as ‘The Witness’ at the start wonders with, returning more openly and breaking through Samhain’s surface currently. The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations.

We spoke previously about stretching, even re-visioning, concepts and definitions of what it means to be ‘human’ in a time of deep transformation. As Thomas Berry said:

The historic mission of our times is
to reinvent the human—
at the species level,
with critical reflection,
within the community of life systems,
in a time-developmental context,
by means of story, and
shared dream experience.

This quote speaks to the work of Abbey Of Soul. We spoke in our last ‘Arousal’ Poem post about challenging ‘individualism’ and human-centric ways through using we as a multiplicity of human and more-than-human identity rather than squeezing into another definition as well as opening to playfulness and imagination, ‘trying it on’ to wonder ... We’ve heard this has opened/relaxed ways of being for some.

So let’s begin this Museletter now … or is that, begin again:

~~~~~

She’s looking at us as we both sit at the kitchen table. After a while we ask what she’s looking at, what she’s seeing. She says:

You have 20 eyes.

Seer to seer… One 6, one 66 … one taking a long lifetime cultivating and living fully into, acknowledging, honouring, encouraging others’; the other, Mystery willing, with a long life living and cultivating such a way. The seer is any age. Not that a seer is ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’. Rather, a seer is natural, a healthy normal capacity, an essential life-enhancing contribution/guide in and for any culture; a gift that offers food from a deeper root and fountain of wisdom. Seer, arousing and stirring, becoming tangible and embodied from the depths again being more widely seen and known through healing, vigil, ceremony, dreaming, deep imagination through and from multiple generations of oppression and repression by many in the dominant Western cultures. Seer, emerging, Earth-born for current critical times. It is so. The seer is surely needed. The difference of arrival is how the seer is mirrored and valued (intra/inter), and feels longing more than resistances enough to cultivate, practice, offer devotion to/for such a life-living-giving way.

~ Eyes ~

20 eyes; a pilgrimage. Imagine being 6, earlier for most people, and having to squeeze into a smaller distorted skin of ‘who you truly are’ to live in a culture that has been distorted for so long that the distortion too is forgotten, falsity now being ‘the norm’; when it can be challenging to tell the difference between distortion and clarity/truth more and more. However, the soul, and psyche in utter astonishing magnificence do not forget, move into action:

*by creating various protective personalities/dynamics/relations to live and keep i.e. the wounded/traumatised one safe. Imagine walking/living in a hall of curving mirrors (i.e. protectors such as victim, co-dependent, addict, conformist, robber baron, monster) with the clear deeper self, i.e. the seer, safe behind them unseen. Paradoxically, we can say how creative that response to mirroring generations of distortions initially is; a meaningful and important part of a story though not all of it. Imagine most people currently living in that world of distorted mirrors over time amplifying further into particular behaviours/economies such as war, poverty, extraction, extinctions and more whilst continually being mirrored as ‘the reality’. We call it ‘the reality loop’. This cycle goes round and round, or swings back and forth. In this loop, no one truly knows who they are, often lost which then initiates particular longings and searching. Whilst these protective parts genuinely feel/experience themselves/ourselves as if those distorted mirrors are the reality, all that’s known, also reflected wider culture and ‘the news’, they are not who we are underneath, at a deeper level. There’s usually a rub somewhere along the way such as ‘not fitting’ or ‘falling apart'. Whose eyes are you seeing through currently?

**The protectors created are very particular, like ‘breadcrumbs’ as it were, showing where to follow and track our way back home. Very particular too are the ways the psyche enables/cultivates the parts of wholeness such as a healthy nurturing parent/adult to bring home the co-dependent, the victim and so on. The protective parts, initially unconscious/in the shadow, are increasingly held and brought home with gratitude from parts with clearer mirrors, by cultivating more inner resources and resilience; for us a kind of moving hologram of kaleidoscopic colours. So, for example, first protectors keep both the wounded one/s (and, i.e. the seer safe), then ‘wholeness’ grows bringing them in…

***Longing and searching for/from the deeper self/ves increases as a love-longing affair emerges with soul. The seer, for example, begins being revealed breaking through the Imbolc soil surface of wholeness through holding the wounded one. The very particular sacred comes through the very particular wound. The psyche develops the exact capacities for the particular return pilgrimage home for a deeper transformation altogether; diving into soul and Mystery for the image, a gift, born with; a mythopoetic identity beyond the ‘human’ realm, an eco-niche in intimate reciprocity as Earth expression/conduit. This is why clear mirroring and tracking is so important.

Even in a healthy culture, there is a pilgrimage to return and find/be found by the gifts we’re born with. Though in a healthy culture, our intimacy depth is Earth-centred and part of Earth Community, is in conversation with a more-than-other-than-human world in a way currently not. There aren’t human-centric distorted lenses to the same extreme and there are healthy earth-based elders. We also wonder how far our understanding of ‘l’ and ‘self’ are from distorted mirrors too, hence exploring different pronouns. The points above are not necessarily so linear or neatly divided in daily life, though offer some brief clarity for purposes here.

~ Ears ~

Such ways seen above are also told in the old stories and myths where characters who, perhaps stuck in old identifications, are turned to stone and on return restored to flesh, movement and voice; from beast remembering beauty; landed selkie returning to sea with their true song/skin; Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and returning as Queen; Psyche assigned with all the return tasks to meet herself and Beloved Eros transformed into human/divine. Imagine cultural learning focussing on our authentic pilgrimage to remember, with skills and qualities to navigate an adventurous and mysterious life journey. Imagine transformation, retrieving inherited treasures we are born with and for our communities being of service to Earth and Cosmos rather than learning to ‘fit’ into an Earth-killing suicidal economy skin. There are many eyes here. Whose eyes, how many, are you seeing through now?

There are multiple levels within moving multiplicity within and between; all are like moving constellations that relate with the ways psyche creates stated above, not ‘fixed’:

~ Feet ~

One level is the ‘dayworld’, which is more horizontal/flat than vertical/depth level; with roles, responsibilities, jobs, careers, bills to pay. This level is often a distortion described above in order to live in a distorted world with distorted characters/personalities/economy. For example, Wendy (wend/wanderer) with the inner village of parts that psyche created also for the return pilgrimage. In earlier identifications and stories, her eyes were looking through many parts, such as victim, co-dependent, conformer, student, teacher, daughter, tenant, dancer, lover. These ones truly kept us alive, alert, not only in survival but also longing through study for adventures integral to moving towards authentic being in wholeness. For example, rebel as a teenager, later, to a certain degree becoming conforming to nature-based ways though not fully in alignment with a deeper place.

Then there’s the even deeper Underworld level of mythos. For example, for us, PI’A of Earth Mother/PoEM whom we’ve written about in earlier posts, even just the ‘I’ of PI’A pointing to Calleach’s Eye, Iona’s jellyfish eye seeing also down into the underworld/up to the upperworld, the ‘I’ of ‘I Am’ (in the Celtic world, everything) carved into canyon rock and co-breathing with Earth, seen and unseen including the dead. There are indeed many eyes (way more than 20) which expand the current dayworld definition of ‘human’ aching to be stretched into a different shape.

Imagine humans shapeshifting; with many eyes, the many eyes of protective parts, wild facets of wholeness, of mythos. For us the mythic eyes of gold eye butterfly woman, canyon, wind, water, Mystery, the ‘I Am’ all seeing life beyond human, hummingbird, lizard, yew, eucalyptus, kookaburra, snake, moon, sky, oceans, blackbird, coyote, mountain lion, chieftain warrior, and so much more and that’s even before including the ones we eat that become transformed in part of our now changed physical body.

Masks and costumes, deepening/embodying the distorted and the mythopoetic, here the latter. Venice. wrf.

~ Mouth ~

Living such a wild embodiment into the world with others at this time, we believe, is also to be part of a wider metamorphosis of ‘embodying human’ differently, living into the next Earth ‘form’ which may be unrecognisable now. Would ‘apes’, as represented in early images of human evolution, have seen/recognised us now? Though maybe they too were carrying the imaginal cells/DNA, like a butterfly equivalent as it were, through generational pilgrimage. No one knows what/who is to come, but we believe courage is needed to dive in and live in deep authentic sincerity, to risk living differently, imagine. Is that what the cyanobacteria did in creating the ozone over millions of years ago? They knew to risk everything? Perhaps, in this way, sacrifice takes on a whole new depth. What is needed to be sacrificed now? We are inviting a stretch of imagination. Another way to look at this is through Rilke’s words:

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions…For the God

wants to know himself in you.

Rilke

We may sound like part of a ‘fictional’ character here, but we’re feeling/experiencing being more real and undistorted, clearer than we’ve ever known ourselves through tracking for many years. PI’A, with others, as part of/bringing in future form, or rather, of the ancient/future and with other seers. Are you resonating with what is being said here? You might take some time to note, wonder, be curious. What and who are you seeing, through whose eyes now? Stretch practices, awaken eyes, gifts, powers and ….

~ Arms ~

It seems that part of the natural process of transformation and imaginary cells inside a caterpillar to butterfly cocoon includes resistance and being blocked. It seems parts of the old cells (ie * protective and distorted identities earlier), attack new cells in the caterpillar soup (towards *** wholeness, awakening to deeper understandings within an animate world, myth). It’s a mysterious thing, the old parts attacking; the new cells calling them home. The metaphor of caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly is offered by Plotkin for stages in human transformation on the descent to soul.

As we write here, we also wonder about the transformations currently happening in both ‘personal’ human and nature realms in inner and outer worlds by/from Earth. If this is the case, we wonder if, for one example, Trump is both ‘real’ (or ‘real distortion’;) and symbolic of such a resistance, old cells within Earth’s current metamorphosis attacking new cells. From this way of seeing, what then could be the way to go that is different through a deeper participation/contribution/understanding, of bringing home rather than swinging back and forth in conflict/counter resistance (or only). A shift in the conversation may become possible? We’ll come back to this a few paragraphs below …

Painted Lady Butterflies; it takes 10 generations to fly across lands and oceans to Scotland/Alba … and what if so for humans, and how many generations of caterpillars and moltings before …

For now we’d like to bring in one of our golden thread quotes that took us into our life work, first into Psychosynthesis in the mid 1990’s after completing a postgrad Masters in Cultural Studies and before training/apprenticing with Animas Valley Institute, a quote by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet around 1600:

“My Lord, we know what we are now, but not what we may become.”

“What we may be” is also the title of a book by Pierro Ferrucci which influenced us in the 90s. We also found many moments (and longer;) on this Pilgrimage of Soul that we did not know what/who we were either, learning how essential it is ‘not to know’. The quote became more:

“My Lord, we know not what we are now, and not what we may become.”

(And sometimes … mmmm … and what we can be)

Sound familiar? Such an important part of the pilgrimage, to lean into disidentifying with attachments to ways of distortion (though experienced as real) that keep us in old stories so that there may be learning to trust the deeper seer not-knowing to become visible, all seeing. In fact, that is the journey of remembering, following breadcrumbs of return.

The poem, The Witness, at the start of this post is also a challenge to wonder about whose eyes, whose lenses even, ‘you’ see yourself/ves and the world through, and the lenses the world sees you/s now. Lens, conjunctiva (joining together, and separating membrane), we might say is like a veil between the worlds, the inner-outer-seen-unseen and more reminding us now of conjunctio, a key stage in the process of alchemising the union of opposites into a deeper seeing/new seeing altogether. Isn’t that amazing?!?!

~ Heart ~

Continuing now from the earlier previous paragraph regarding cocoon and bring in alchemy, what if one way of looking at the current political events in USA, with Trump returning to presidency and old cells destroying new cells, is the turning up of particular heat needed for a particular alchemising in Earth’s dreaming. From a particular conjunctio lens, perhaps Trump’s presidency is exactly the right thing. Seeing through the eyes of conjunctio such a seeing may enable another way of responding and being currently in service of the intense heat-building and looking for/seeing from Earth’s many eyes rather than reacting in and from a ‘dayworld’* surface level only swinging back and forth. Looking from a deeper place of Earth as primary, like focussing on Earth-seer mythos***.

For example, it could be said that, Musk’s billions in the outer world and focus on travel to the moon is, as a previous trainer Roger Evans used to say, “right intuition - wrong level”. In other words, the ‘real’ treasure is inner and born within; his protectors are out in force to protect the inner treasure whilst actually wrecking the outer, where even the mirroring of that deep loss of intimacy with the world, the moon, the liminal, the mystery and himself is distorted and celebrated. And, we don’t know him, it’s just a wondering … we wonder what the deep inner treasure and relation to the moon is. And, of course, to still ‘call out’/offer clear mirror/call home. Complete the alchemy.

~ Hand ~

The Pilgrimage of Soul offers a deep seeing from Earth’s eyes as Earth’s eyes’ through human expression and transformation as the way Earth is also alchemizing in the ancient-new way. Coming home from/disidentifying from current distorted ways of seeing/sensing, thinking, imagining, feeling enables other ways. Ways invited as from/with an Earth aligned/informed eco-niche-born place in conversation with an animate, alive, alive, alive world into soul encounter rather than being inside a distorted small skin. Another conversation and other possibilities altogether can be invited from deeper eyes. This is the kind of holy conversation invited and prepared for in Abbey Of Soul where Mystery’s revelations can take us forth, shape-shift us into whole different ways of seeing, or seer’ing altogether.

A ‘trickster’ way then, might be not only to follow/react/respond ‘only’ to ‘Trump’ and that particular discourse, whilst continuing cultivating resourcing and resilience where possible, but to come from another place/identity/somewhere/different altogether. For example to contribute and participate from the mythic Earth bringing a different element altogether into the alchemical mix in Earth evolution, with Earth as primary and humans as secondary. We wonder here whether the mythopoetic Pilgrimage of Soul alignment, or ‘homing’ also becomes part of what/who will be in the larger Earth alchemization that is Mystery-led. From this perspective, everything is in transformation, including the currently named map of the world, all in the Earth cocoon, including mythos; everything is in a big transformational soup, as it were:

“My Lord, we know maybe a little of what we are now, but not what we may become”.

~ Heart ~

Whatever ‘happens’ is it enough, indeed important, for example, to live PI’A and often the impossibility of just being PI’A as a presence. That’s enough. (We might wonder why we’re writing;) What if? In such a respect, what/who of you is important for you to live into/be and see, be seen, be with presence, through the eyes/lens at this point in conjunctio, in Earth transformation; essences of the bigger global alchemy?

Here are some examples of a few tracking experiences so far in our (PI’As) many eyes also looking through Earth’s many eyes in particular ways with some further poems by way of deeper illuminating and feeding beauty imaginal cells, aware folks have been locked up, disappeared, burned for less and more. We’re willing to take the risk. We also find links and stories/myths across human cultures and times hold deeper truths being articulated and listened to/for. Another way of Seer carrying and evoking threads of the eternal remembering beyond and within, rooted in Earth and Cosmos. As you read, you might consider your own eyes, and whose eyes you are seeing these words, or ears you are hearing these words, or heart, or breath, or thoughts; what risks you have already taken, or not. Imagine the following as a kind of collage format or dreaming scenes or paintings rather than linear structure (infact, read this whole Museletter like that). Please share any of your experiences/glimpses for further tracking below towards creating new languages/ways of seeing/being beyond what is currently ‘norm’. ...

One: The Alcove Eye

The Alcove Canyon Eye, Colorado, USA. wrf

Canyon Of The Ancients, Colorado – (11 June, 2017) Pi’A (Pi here as in Mystery; PI can at times be Planetary Intelligence or Imagination, as well as ‘eye’) offers a night ceremony praying for and listening to/seeing Earth, in a cave looking out towards Sleeping Ute Mountain, sacred to the Weeminuche Ute and descendants Ute Mountain Ute tribe. The Mountain is known as the shape of a Ute Chief with arms folded. It is said he will rise when the white man leaves. We first met this mountain with a local man who said before turning a bend in the road to view: “Here is the most beautiful woman you’ll ever see.” So far, he’s right. This is one of the places where the land and we are married; we did at one time consider applying for a Green Card for such a marriage and to challenge dayworld understandings;) Here are some excerpts written in 2017:

“The Alcove curves and slopes like the shape of an eye, an eye of the world; an eye of Earth looking out. The back of the eye has a downward straight stripped strip of wet white, yellow and black moulds and mosses. There is a particular damp smell that slightly hits and catches at the back of my throat. In the middle of the eye is a small flattish ‘platform’ kind of space where l lay down my bag…

… I feel ready for what the night offers, whatever it is l surrender to prayer, praise, gratitude, darkness; to imagining a great presence stirring beside me…. Someone else has left a small offering here; an animal thigh bone, old horseshoe and curving seed case. …

… I stand in the middle of this place, imagining my place in this eye of the Earth; a pupil; and a pupil of this Earth surrounded by the ground’s fine, white, chalky sand here and the curving canyon eye-lip. I look out to the left where there are a number of smooth canyon curving walls and holes carved by wind and rain over eons. There is a sense of deep time remembered here. As the sun begins to set and cloud puffs turn pink l look out toward Ute Mountain to see cars with lights on travelling along the road across this canvas. It strikes me how small humans’ lives are experienced now in relation to the vastness of the physicality and Mystery of Earth; and yet how most human’s lives in Western Culture are experienced as so centrally big in relation; a kind of ‘inside-out/upside down’ perspective of what is ‘reality’. …

… I am surprised at how comfortable l feel here up here in this ‘Eye’. Dusk arrives. I pray and rattle; l recite Rilke, You Darkness, …keeping focus and offerings. I look out as darkness falls. The canyon rocks below look like they have become a floor of opening and closing mouths. I wonder about the open mouths…is there a sound coming that l can’t hear from them? Perhaps song…a cry… perhaps a sign of hunger or thirst? It’s Earth in Ceremony with Moon, planets in Ceremony. I find my mouth wide open in awe too, joining in. Bats begin to fly around the space and out into the night; crickets croak the night in and sing a dark echo.

It is not too long before the moon rises. It is just a few days after she has reached her zenith point and still in mercurial fullness. I look to my right and the dark space here is beginning to light from the moon. I notice the grace and slow motion of the moon’s white light kiss the back of the eye moving across. Before too long, l find myself surprised, looking out of this eye of the Earth to an eye of the Cosmos as the moon is the one becoming the Cosmic pupil. Who is witnessing and who is seeing who here, l wonder in astonishment. l feel a great presence stirring beside me…. In the moon’s light l see black bats become darting white flying creatures…”

Here there is a deeper way of seeing and being through the veils between the worlds; with an alive Earth, an alive moon, an alive cosmos, an alive Holy Ceremony stirring in the night when human eyes are closed, mouths open, in night’s dreaming.

We were sitting with a significant dying woman the other day, feeling in awe of the miracle of life and death, that any of us are here at all. Her mouth wide open as she breathes slowly. The way her mouth stayed open was just like the mouths of Earth that night in the Alcove Eye as if witnessing her being in Ceremony with/as Earth, as the land that night in 2017, co-breathing.

Two: Images of many creatures eyes

When exploring Ii/eye of PI’A further, we created a collage from National Geographic Magazines – seeing with the vision/eyes of many in shapeshifting imagination story of Earth eyes. As creatures become extinct, like now, our own eyes and humans become less seeing, we become distorted eyes even more. Some of these creatures are, almost literally, all eyes!

Eyes Collage. wrf 6 Feb, 21

Three: Beauty Eyes of Old Woman, Ros, on Cromwell Harbour Wall, Dunbar.

We took a break from writing, wandering on our usual saunter around East Beach, then the old stone wall harbour, round to Victoria Harbour and back. We met another older woman with a beautiful, colourful shaggy dog at the old cobb. We began chatting, commenting on the beauty of the colours this day, colours that we had not seen before ~ such is the ever-moving light here where colour too is in animate dance. She notes how she is never at home in herself, a wanderer. She then describes when a friend came over from America and was deeply moved by the slow time taken with sea and sand, birds, vibrant colours of life noting how she usually rushes through. She doesn’t usually LOOK. How grateful she was to take the time to see. The woman I’m speaking with now also hadn’t truly seen herself, maybe until this moment where now she is seeing her own way of seeing the world and feeling in her body her enormous love of and for the world, coming home to her place as Earth being Primary and in/of it. Moving towards full experiencing ourselves AS Earth in a way that there is no return. We might say, it takes only a matter of seconds to see more deeply through conjunctiva towards conjunctio. We might also note how far images are part of the language of soul deep intimacy

As one of William Stafford’s poems goes:

When l met my Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

The sea with new colours for us that day from the old harbour stone walls: 18, Jan 25. wrf.

You might wonder about your eyes and “your own way of looking at things”, so needed in the world right now... What ways of seeing are bringing you more alive?

Four ~ A Glimpse of Etymology and Myth

Here are a few of the many musings and myths in different cultures and times of/from this thread of the sea our wander then took us, of eyes and seer … Let yourself wander too, see where you are led …

… as you likely know, water is associated with the pull of the moon, the liminal, transitional, the place of sensory threshold {perhaps like conjunctiva/conjunctio moist membrane}, the liminal watery moon associated with soul. Perhaps if this soulcrafting work was tended and supported deeply and more widely, there would be no need to send rockets to the moon. We are already for many years in deep conversation and ceremony with the moon/the moon with us.

Did you know that one of the sources of the word for sea is Greek? Thálassa, is the divine female personification in Greek mythology. She, daughter of Ether and Homera. She, Creatress of the sea giving birth to all sea life. She, creating a big wave, perhaps like a Tsunami, covering the Earth until she collides with another wave created by Pontus. She, then wed to Pontus, gives birth to all sea life. She, primordial mother of Aphrodite, hair of seaweed, arms of octopus. She, peaceful and serene, malicious and unmerciful.

In Celtic Mythology She, the sea, is Cliodhna, Goddess of the Otherworld, passion, love and deep beauty; daughter of Lir, God of the sea (different from the Children of Lir). She is also fairy queen of the sea, Queen of the Banshees, Tuatha Dé Danann, ruler as queen over the sheoques. We’ve heard it said from the wind that every ninth wave, higher and longer than others, contains her magic. We’ve also heard it said that in the Otherworld she has three bright coloured birds who eat apples from a mystic tree; that hearing her song is nectar healing. She sometimes takes the form of a seabird. Maybe it was Her wave we counted in 1991 on a WestCoast cobb during a storm before running along to experience being inside that wave. We were astonishingly surprised to experience a depth of silence never heard before or since that we nearly forgot to run back out before watching that very wave slam back into the stone wall.

In Norse, Njord is God of Sea, the Viking Goddess of the Water/Sea is Rán.

Here are a few of the many myths in different cultures and times of/from the eye/multiple eyes:

… as you likely know, embodying multiple unseen/inner/outer/seen eyes isn’t new. The ancients knew, narrating in the level of the mythic beyond surface sight. There are a number of myths speaking of/with multiple eyes. Here’s a few:

Dalikamata is a Visayan Goddess with a thousand eyes to see past, present and future. In the dark, she sees the harm being enacted in the world. It is said her tears form the dew in the dawn and are used for healing.

Shatakshi Devi, essence of beauty, The Goddess with Innumerable Eyes. She has a thousand eyes shedding salt water tears of divine mercy bringing nourishment to Earth after Vidas depletion.

In the Jewish, Christian and Islam stories, Seraphim are described as ‘many eyes’ with their omnipresence, their ‘all seeing’ beauty and praise.

The Greek God Argus/Argos (not the shopping store!) Panoptes, is an ‘all seeing’ giant with 100 eyes, in some accounts 1,000, all over his body.

Mokumokuren, meaning ‘many eyes’ is a Japanese spirit who could/can embody transformed genders and lives in haunted houses.

We’ve heard it said by some that myths are, in fact, a way of ‘humanising/personalising’ the more than human world within a human-centric culture lens. In some ways, this may also be so, to be noted in our current alchemising. Yet is there also something of that golden thread that intertwines animately like Celtic Knotwork between human and more-than-human world?

Five ~ Venus

We took another break from writing, going to The National Gallery, Scotland in Edinburgh finding ourselves lingering with Titian’s painting from around 1525, 600 years ago. Venus Rising from the Sea. Sea … Earth as Primary … She comes out of the water. Venus rising from the sea, wringing her long hair… but what is she looking at, what and who does she see? Beauty? The horror that also came with The Renaissance in the shift to rational scientific thought/mind domination needing the destruction and redefining of women’s bodies, intuition, wisdom, language, roles through ‘witch hunts’ and more, the seers, also beginning then (again?)? And now? What might she see today as we swing back and forth in a surface dayworld described earlier? What might we see today through her eyes? Do the cracks in this painting over the centuries become like a veil over sacred eyes, the holy?

Titian, Venus Rising From The Sea, face detail. 1525. wrf.

Six ~ Eyes

The sea has eyes. They can be seen when the veils are everso thin. What if everything has eyes, even if we don’t see them all. Imagine …

Sea Eyes. wrf.

Seven – Aurora Borealis

It’s May, 2024 and the Aurora Borealis is visible through a camera lens but not the naked eye. Friends are astonished, it’s a revelation of eyes and lenses where the invisible suddenly becomes seen through a different lens, like having new eyes; conjunctiva and conjunctio.

Through the camera lens only; Aurora Borealis, May 2025. wrf

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Our photography has been part of training/apprenticing to/with seer as beauty-making. To witness what we pass without noticing, taking time. Also, as a record of what/who is disappearing … becoming unseen, disappearing from sight, all.

~ Brain ~

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. Terry Tempest Williams

We have shown a possible pilgrimage of alchemy and transformation of humans beyond currently known, both personally and culturally, as part of Earth’s current transformations within an animate cosmos. We described something of the process involved in levels of transformations from old stories to new ones informed by seeing and bringing home parts, opening to soul-seer with Earth’s dream/imaginal conversations. We have specifically focused on the seer, 20 eyes and more; a glimpse of different ways of seeing through multiple levels of limited awareness and personalities. We expanded into wholeness, enabling diving for gifts Earthborn in service of a greater story where Earth is Primary, humans are Secondary as part of; a story that relates to transformation beyond human knowing. “My Lord, we know what we are now, but not what we may become.”

We looked from other eyes and conjunctiva to what may be happening in relation to Trump’s re-election not only as a story of protective parts, but also as part of a bigger Earth story of which he too is part as well as we: old cells attacking new cells in the cocoon and how this might inform responses towards cultivating different awareness and conversations. Regardless, i.e. perhaps important to not get ‘caught’ overly identified only, with specific agendas or we stay swinging one way to the other without transformation completing. The world is bigger than the USA and the whole global system is part of the transformation happening. This is not to ‘justify’ or condone what’s happening around the world, rather to wonder from another depth that is not human-centric. What sacrifices are needed in order that the full transformation can occur, and more quickly, as part of an alchemical process as seen through conjunctio … the heat’s being turned up. We sense it is important to continue the work of whichever element each human finds ourselves in. We may not know what any of us may become, but perhaps important to be the essence we are, live further into the essence, the nectar we are in the alchemy shifting into ancient-new form.

We have looked through the meta and mesa worlds of conjunctiva and conjunctio in ways such as shifting consciousness and reinventing ancient-new human as contribution to alchemy through Ceremony like The Alcove Eye story; through the deep imagination of the many eyes collage; the way this work enters the dayworld community such as a wander on Cromwell Harbour walls one day and ‘your own way of seeing’, of the way the seer lives at the edges of communities; of etymology and threads of myths of sea and eyes across time and different lands of human cultures; of a particular moment in art and cultural history/evolution; of a literal and revelatory new lens of seeing like the Aurora Borealis. Seeing a depth, breadth and height of human and more-than-human life, 20 eyes and more. Seer, normal and a gift that offers food from a deeper root and fountain of wisdom. Seer, arousing and stirring, becoming tangible and embodied from the depths again being more widely seen and known. What ways will you be seeing, showing up in essence?

What if such work was placed, valued at the centre of cultures again, with eyes for wending into the liminal pull of moon and star, fur and stone, leaf and bird, mountain and river, body of human, weaving intimacy between? Imagine … Not only work in particular programmes, important as they are, is called for, it’s the day-to-day discipline and practice, to be able to strengthen unused muscles for a new normal with commitment needed. The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer is deeply needed and being called forth in these transformation times. May we carry, bring forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations in the ways called forth. It is so.

With this Museletter in mind Abbey Of Soul is bringing in different levels and changes in subscription/‘dragonfly pools’ (see poem Dragonfly Wings) of transformation to focus more deeply in making manifest what has been seen and spoken in this Museletter a place for the seer. To provide a place and space for the world described here further. The information will follow.

She’s looking at me as we both sit at the kitchen table. After a while we ask what she’s looking at, what she’s seeing. She says:

“You have 20 eyes”.

~ Blood ~

~~~~~

Extinguish my eyes, l’ll go on seeing you.

Seal my ears, l’ll go on hearing you,

Without a mouth l can swear your name.

Break off my arms, l’ll take hold of you

With my heart as with a hand.

Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.

And if you consume my brain with fire,

I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood

Rilke’s Book of Hours; Love Poems to God. II,7

Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Wendy/PI’A, Cromwell Harbour on a cold approach to Imbolc

“I love how you stretch and expand my perspective, how you invite me to consider it all in ways that I would never have done. It's like you hand me a periscope each time we meet. You challenge me, at times it feels uncomfortable, but you offer such a held container to be with that challenge and to expand as a result. A true elder.” BS

Earthsong blessings to you, your kith and kin this Imbolc season of returning light and greening of the world in the Northern Hemisphere.

Wendy/PI’A

~ Living intimately as animate Earth Ceremony. wrf

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …