Nine
White Owl Goddess
While you roam the delta of dreams looking for the
- Ghost Deer’s quest courage, your Way Power in the spirit world
- seer wisdom of the animal souls exiled on the shore of the Ghost River
- oracle strength of the Dreaming Tortoise
- clarity from Sky Pony
- Shaman Salmon’s compassion
- mirroring mind from the Dancing Goat
- cunning of the Spirit Fox
- knowing of the Omen Bird
The White Owl Goddess is looking for you, and when she finds you, she will rip you into tiny fractal pieces and feed you to her young.
Where is the Ghost River
If you don’t soon find your way out of this treeless maze of tundra bogs, you will perish.
If you don’t soon find your way out of this treeless maze of tundra bogs, you will perish.
Among high cirrus streaks, the White Owl Goddess appears. Has she spied you?
Her wingspan eclipses the sun. Night wafts over you, and stars sieve time: light years and parsecs measure the nothing-dark between you and the furious freedom of the universe.
From this lonely feeling, you know she holds you in her raptor’s gaze.
From this lonely feeling, you know she holds you in her raptor’s gaze.
Run!
You dash across flinty tracts under the midnight shadow of the White Owl Goddess – and collide with a pincering blizzard! Dazzling darkness and burning cold seize you. You hurtle into the smoky gale, a deadweight in the white wind.
You will die!
Instead, you fly! The Goddess has snatched you with her talons and hauls you into the far blue above the sodden wool of the storm. You soar across the sunny surface of the day.
In that supernal moment at the violet zenith under the swimming moon, peace comes. And beauty weds you to the moment. The White Bird is your lover. She can eat your heart and feed your pieces to her young. You belong with her in this lucid moment above the tilting earth. And peace holds you.
Both dark and light, trance states open us to where colors originate: to that secret place that has been waiting since the origin of the universe for an eye. The vision that wrote this story began, as so many have, on the white field of the blank sheet, where all colors have come together. This is the loneliest place. Surely, this is why colors huddle so close together here. If you spend any time at all on the empty page, those colors will rise out of their white togetherness and unfold a map that shows the way back to where the eye began. The White Owl Goddess reminds me of this journey to the origin – and Shasta’s artwork captures the opulent brightness of this spirit-of-beginning perfectly. I am joy-astonished! Look at that animal gaze in full flight through the glare of the sun’s exile!
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