Leslie Sheridan

Dream Recall

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Earlier this week I woke up and began journaling my dreams from that night. I wrote down three dreams. Then I got out of bed and started my morning routine and was getting ready to leave for work when I realized that I didn’t have any breakfast. Maybe I could pick up something on the way to work, I thought. But then I opened up my refrigerator and looked inside and “ping” I remembered another dream. A fourth dream.

I have been concerned about my overall health lately, specifically my thyroid. It runs in my family, but I don’t believe in prescription medicine for myself. I won’t even take an Advil or Motrin except in the case of a migraine. Over the last year I’ve researched natural and organic foods that can help reduce the size of the small thyroid goiter that I have.

Back to the refrigerator moment…

I instantly recalled another dream I had that night. In my dream I was told that the root of my thyroid was (and this may not be true for everyone) my immune system. My immunity needed to be boosted and that I should drink orange juice. The vitamin C would be beneficial. In my dream I felt that I should continue to take care of this naturally without medication.

The point of this story is not my health or my thyroid. My point is that you can recall dreams when you wake up at two o’clock in the morning or upon waking at your regular time or even in the oddest of places. Usually it’s a word or phrase, a song or a place or thing, such as opening a refrigerator, that will trigger your dream recall.

The key to recalling your dreams is never doubt them and be consistent about writing them down. It’s a practice. The more you do it the better you will be at it. Dreams will seemingly begin to flow and your recall will become a habit. That’s not to say that you will remember all of your dreams. We can have many dreams in one night. Some will be forgotten, but the important ones, the dreams you are meant to get will be shown to you while you sleep.

Several people that I have met and talked to have told me that they dream but they don’t remember them, if they have any at all. Others share them with me or ask me to interpret their dream for them. We all dream every night. Whether we remember them or want to is a personal choice. I feel that recalling dreams is a helpful divination tool. The point of recalling and interpreting your dreams is to get the message that the universe has for you.

Next: Types of Dreams

What are dreams?

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Dreams are messages from the universe that we receive while we sleep. The dreams are specific to the individual who receives the dream. There are some occasions when a dream is meant for someone else. In that case the dreamer is the messenger ( in which the dreamer gets a message from someone’s loved one in the spirit world to give to a friend or family member, for example). There are also daydreams where we let our minds wander – like taking a mental vacation. And then there are the dreams for ourselves – where we want to be in our career or where we want to be in our lives in a week, a year, ten years or someday. But, the dreams I’m speaking of are the sometimes scary, sometimes weird or wonderful but mostly you-just-can’t-make-this-stuff- up type of dreams that we have every night when we go to sleep.

Dreams come to us at night while we sleep and are completely at rest. Our subconscious mind acts as the conduit through which information is communicated to our conscious mind. The information comes from as I said, the universe: angels, God ( the source), our spirit guides, our loved ones on the other side and others. The information being downloaded, if you will, come as images sometimes played out like a movie; sometimes just a few random symbols. Dreams occur during the R.E.M. cycle. If you’ve ever watched someone while they sleep and see their eyes moving from left to right under their eye lids, it appears as though they’re watching a movie or an event play out in front of them while they sleep.

Is there a reason why we dream? Yes, actually, there is a reason for everything, including our dreams. Sigmund Freud, the famed Viennese psychoanalyst, wrote that his own personal dream analysis convinced him of his wish fulfillment theory. These were dreams that were close to daydreams in that they were made up by the dreamer. He also believed that the dream released stress that the dreamer could not express during his or her waking hours and that they were a way for the individual to go over his or her events from the day.

Dr. Freud’s fellow psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, did not believe in the wish fulfillment theory. Rather, he believed that dreams came to the individual at night during sleep. He also believed dreams or messages come to us while we are awake in the form of ideas and daydreams. He did not believe that they could be made up. They just flowed from a greater source and into our subconscious while we slept.

I will be writing about nearly everything dream related: what they are, who dreams, when we dream, where our souls are when we dream and why we dream what we dream. We find the answers to our dreams within.

Next: Dream Recall

Dream No. 1

* Note: This is the first in a series of dreams and dream recall and interpretation.

The oldest dream that I recall having was a nightmare. I wouldn’t realize it was in fact a pre-cognitive or prophetic dream until nearly a year later. After 30 plus years this dream is still vivid. In the dream I am supposed to be going to a record store (this was the about 1980 when there were still just records in record stores) with my best friend in high school, Spacey. I get to her house and knock on the door. When no one answers the door, I open it and call out her nickname, Spacey – after Ace Frehley (Space Ace) of KISS- but no one responds. I look in the living room, the kitchen and run down the hall to her bedroom. She isn’t anywhere. Curiously, no one else is home either. In the dream, I begin to feel my heart race. I can’t find her. I call her name again as I run back up the hallway toward the front door and I see her….hanging from a coat hook on the inside of the front door. There is blood everywhere. On her neck and running down her fully clothed body. In my dream I know she was dressed and ready to go out with me to the record store, but she didn’t quite make it out the front door.

Recall of this dream did not come until three months later while I was visiting my grandparents in Florida. It happened while I was sitting in my grandmother’s mustard yellow vinyl recliner reading a collection of rock and roll history from the 1950’s through the late 1970’s. It was relaxing – the first somewhat relaxing day I’d had in a few months. Grief over my friend’s loss had consumed me all day, every day. I replayed memories of us in school, talking on the phone after school and that horrible September day that I learned of her death.

On Thursday that week I wished Spacey a happy birthday. Three days later on a Sunday afternoon I called her house. When I asked to speak with her I heard gasping and crying from the first two family members who answered the phone and then the third person, her uncle, barked through the telephone, “Who is this?” I explained who I was and again asked to speak with her. He told me she had passed away the night before in a vehicle accident.

What’s interesting to me is that this was my first dream recall that I could recall at that time. I did not recall the dream the morning after I had it, nor did I recall it anytime prior to or just after the accident. I wasn’t ready for it, perhaps? Instead, I had a flash of that dream sitting in my grandmother’s recliner. In that flash, I knew I’d dreamt it before and was able to recall the entire dream. Perhaps I was relaxed enough to allow it to come into my consciousness, when I had stopped obsessing over my friend’s death. In other words, the information was already out there in the universe, but I was too busy to receive it.

What I’ve learned is that dreams grab our attention just after we have the dream – even if it wakes us up at 2:00 in the morning – or at a later time. The dream may be recalled upon waking; when a song on the radio triggers the dream recall; or sitting in a chair reading a book.

Abundance and the Hindu Goddess

The first time I saw him he was wearing a Ramones tee shirt, the short sleeved black shirt with the presidential – like seal bearing an eagle holding a branch of something in one claw and a baseball bat in the other and RAMONES in large, loud letters above the bands iconic logo. I feel a kinship with anyone who wears a tee shirt of my favorite rock band and so naturally I was intrigued by this man. He came in once a week to the bank where I worked. He was well over six feet tall, dark haired, nice eyes and smile. We always exchanged small talk, nothing heavy. The last time I saw him was the first time I met the woman on his arm. He introduced her as Lakshmi.

He told me his parents were Indian and that Lakshmi was the Hindu goddess of wealth and fortune. The tattooed stencil of Lakshmi that was on his upper arm was not yet colored in. Above the stenciled likeness of Lakshmi, near his shoulder, was a large white and yellow hued lotus tattoo. All I thought of at that moment was how much getting all that art tattooed on his arm must have hurt. As he left that day, he turned his head around toward me and smiled. As I look back on that day, I wonder if Lakshmi was smiling through him as if to say, “You’ll see me again soon.”

As I always say, the universe has ways of bringing us to our next assignment or chapter during our life here. Later that week, I picked up a book that I’d recently bought, “Archangels and Ascended Masters” by Doreen Virtue. I opened it up to the contents page and scanned over the chapters of archangels, gods & goddesses and deities. There she was on page 113. I read the chapter on Lakshmi with curiosity and intrigue. Clearly I was meant to learn more about the Hindu goddess. Suddenly she was everywhere to me. I found a lotus blossom candle holder and brought it home with me. I bought a beautiful pair of lotus blossom drop earrings that I wear nearly every day. I know it sounds corny, but I like to keep her close to me.

I wanted to learn more about Lakshmi, to understand why I kept seeing lotus blossoms, to find out why she is around me and what message she has for me. So, I went into research mode. The lotus blossom symbolizes spiritual awakening. During meditation, the seventh chakra, the crown chakra opens up like a lotus as well, when we have a clear channel to the divine. Lakshmi’s name in Sanskrit means observe, know, understand, goal, aim, objective, as well as auspicious opportunity or fortune. She is depicted as having four arms that represent the four goals of human life. They are dharma, artha, kāma and moksha. Respectively they mean pursuit of an ethical, moral life; pursuit of wealth; pursuit of love; pursuit of self-knowledge.

For me, Lakshmi represents abundance. An abundance of wealth, health, education and prosperity that will continue to be my goals in 2016. I prefer to have goals rather than resolutions for the incoming year. Goals seem so much more achievable than promises to myself that I can’t or won’t keep. Still, the four goals of human life should be achievable or at the very least something that we all want to aim for. I have much to be grateful for: family, work, opportunities to learn new things, and to the man in the Ramones tee shirt who brought Lakshmi to my awareness.

John Lennon

In the early morning of Tuesday, December 9, 1980, I awoke at 6:00 a.m. when my clock radio alarm went off. I lay in my bed for a few minutes more listening to the music, not really in a hurry to get up and get ready for school that cold, dark morning. After the song finished playing, Pete Clark, the deejay of the local rock radio station said, “Good morning. I’m sorry you have to wake up this way this morning.” He paused and then continued saying that John Lennon was shot and killed the night before. After that I didn’t hear anything.

I was numb with shock and then disbelief. Either way I was jolted out of bed, cold notwithstanding, and got ready for school. Nearly everyone in my senior class was stunned. It was pretty hard to accept. For most of us it was our first experience losing someone we knew, whether it was a celebrity, friend or family member. Personally, I didn’t know how to process this. No one ever really explained death or dying to me.

The first few days after John Lennon was murdered, rock radio stations in the New York area (and I’m pretty certain everywhere) played Beatles and Lennon’s songs and interviews; newspapers ran special editions; Beatle and John Lennon memorabilia were being sold in stores. (The internet was about ten years away.) Meanwhile, he and his wife, Yoko had been working on their new album together, “Double Fantasy” at the time of his death – his first album in five years. Ironically, it’s first single was titled, “Starting Over”.

What I recalled about John Lennon at that time was his music, his social activism (the bed-in), and to some extent his religious or rather spiritual beliefs. I did not realize until many years after his death the depth of his spirituality. He believed in re-incarnation, that God is a source and his spiritual and social beliefs were reflected in his songs. I wonder what he would say about the state of the world today.

In the book, “The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon” by Gary Tillery (2009, Quest books), Tillery writes that soon after writing “Nowhere Man” in 1966, John “would be down on his knees in a locked bathroom begging God for a sign.” Elizabeth Gilbert also got down on her knees in her bathroom and begged for God’s help, as she wrote in “Eat, Pray, Love”. I can relate to this and I’ll bet a lot of us can. When I’ve desperately needed an answer from God or the angels, that’s where I go. Why is that? I believe it’s because it’s the most private and therefore safest room in the house to communicate with God.

John Lennon would have been 75 years old this year; incredibly 35 years since he passed, 2 months after his 40th birthday.

“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.” ~ John Lennon

My Grandmother’s Eulogy

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Evangeline, my grandmother’s name, was born in 1922, to parents who were pastors. The English meaning of her name is “Good tidings the word”; the Greek meaning, ” Good news message”. The word Angel is also in her name. Angels are Gods messengers.

She was the visiting pastor at United Methodist church where my mom brought us nearly every Sunday. On that Sunday, the entire family was present and on time. She was present at the same church when my sisters and brother and I were baptized when I was about eleven or twelve. (During my dad’s and aunt’s upbringing she had travelled to different churches to preach. It was work in the early 1940’s for a single mom. But, her connection to the church and Jesus was also her lifeline.) Until then, I’d never seen my grandmother in that role. She was speaking passionately with a raised voice and raised arms. Soon enough I would learn just how passionate she was about her faith.

Over the years that I visited her house, I noticed books and papers piled up on her kitchen counter; bookshelves packed with books in various rooms of her house; music albums or cassettes neatly placed in their racks, the bead and and pictures of Jesus or Bible quotes written or painted on paper and framed or carved in wood over archways and rooms in her house. The common denominator: they were all about religion. Specifically, Christianity, Jesus and the Bible.

As a child and then adolescent, I dutifully went to the methodist church with my family on Sundays. I recall that we started going to another church, Wesleyan, that seemed, at first to work for me. It was around this time that I was ….. looking for something else. It’s not that I was rebelling against religion, rather I was looking for something that held meaning for me. I didn’t know what that something was, but somewhere I learned that most answers could be found in church or by talking to God. Maybe I learned it from my grandmother. I found a church to go to, but I did not find myself.

Throughout high school and into my early twenties, I was a devout follower of rock and roll. I accumulated rock paraphernalia: albums, ticket stubs, tee shirts and magazines. Unfortunately, what I learned from my grandmother was that you have to love God and church 100 percent. It’s all or nothing. If I wanted to find God and belong to church, I could not continue to worship my rock and roll idols. I could not give up my Ramones tee shirt, the ticket stub from a Mink DeVille concert that I saw with my friend Jody or my collection of Hit Parade and Rolling Stones magazines. Could I?

The yearning to find that….something else became stronger around 1991. What I found was a book that was not the answer for me, but it did lead me to my first teacher who handed me his copy of Shirley Maclaine’s “Out on a Limb”. Many years earlier I had seen a People magazine article of her promoting her new book and I found the concept of reincarnation scary. At the time, reincarnation was synonymous with Shirley Maclaine. I believe that, over time, her celebrity helped to bring new age practices into the mainstream.This book was the something else I was looking for. As soon as I started reading, I could not put it down. Most of what she wrote resonated with me. The part about re-incarnation would take a little more time for me to grasp. That would be the book after “Out on a Limb”, when my friend told me about Edgar Cayce. With both of these books read from cover to cover, I was off and running on my spiritual journey. And, I got so excited about what I was learning, that I could not wait to share it with everyone. This is where I begin to sound like my grandmother. This was my A-ha moment. This was our connection – although we both came at it from different sides.

At that time, I knew I had found exactly what I had been looking for. I started to share my new discovery, but I knew it would not make other people comfortable: family, friends and co-workers. I tried anyway…and well, the obvious responses happened. Use your imagination. I knew my grandmother would have thought it was the rock and roll or not going to church that got to me. I never did share this with my grandmother, although I did try to tell her once, but she did not understand what I was talking about. Out of fear or respect , or both, I changed the subject.

Anyway, after reading “Out On A Limb”, the Universe opened up for me. This is how I now know when I am on the right path. Some might call it synchronicity. Others may say it is fate or destiny. Well…it’s both. It is meant to be.

So, I started reading everything I could to learn more about everything esoteric and paranormal. I did my research. I wanted to know and understand what else was out there and I knew that there was more than just the Bible and the three core religions: Catholicism, Judaism and Protestant.

I would pick up any book by Shirley Maclaine, process it and decide where to go from there. Then, Sylvia Browne and Doreen Virtue. Then various books with a spiritual message. Collections of Angel figurines and ornaments, butterflies and dragonflies in any form came next – they’re in almost every room in my house. The new age music that calms me and brings me peace. Recently, I looked down on the floor next to my bed and over at the book shelf. Nearly every book on the shelves are spiritual in nature, except for a few biographies and my Ramones CD’s.

A thought came to me: I had become my grandmother.

When I talked with her last year, I began talking with her about the Bible and her favorite person in the Bible she told me was Jesus. His pictures adorned her home. She looked up at me as if she had just realized I was talking about something she knew. A certain look came over her as if I was speaking a foreign language that she had recognized. I showed her my gardens because I knew she loved flowers. When I saw her in the nursing home over the summer, I’d brought an oversized “Hello Kitty” coloring book with me because I knew she loved coloring. As she colored Hello Kitty with only a blue crayon, I just watched her and recalled it was just like I remembered her views on religion. Talking about Jesus, praying to him and reading or being read to about him. She loved Jesus.

I started this story a little over a year ago when I first learned that she had the signs of dementia. She passed away nearly a week after falling in the nursing home where she lived for the last seven months, eight years almost to the day that her husband passed. I believe she didn’t want to live anymore. She wanted to go “home” to see him. And to see Jesus.

The Art of Letting Go

My daughter, my first born, leaves for college this month, two states and three hours away from home. She’s ready. I’m ready, I think. I say “think” because I’ve had eighteen years to prepare for this milestone. But when I think about it, I get anxious.

I recall watching the school bus going by our house when she was two months old and thinking to myself, “She is not going a noisy, germ-infested school bus.” Five year later: new shoes on and a Veggie Tales back pack loaded with her lunch and school supplies, we headed for the bus stop. I had the video camera ready as the school bus drove up to record this milestone, as I had so many others since she was born. We barely said our goodbyes, when the school bus door opened and she eagerly bounded up the steps to take her place in the front seat. Her little brother and I watched as the school bus drove out of sight. I had prepared myself to go directly to the grocery store so that I would not have to go back inside the house, but alas, I forgot my pocketbook in the first- day- of –school excitement.

After I wiped away my tears, my son and I went to the grocery store… and then the mall. I celebrated my first born child’s first day of school by shopping. The second child was easier, not as emotional the second time around.
And so it would go…moving up from elementary school to middle school…moving up from middle school to high school…graduating high school …and all the many other achievements in-between.

I’ve been learning to let go for the last eighteen years: Watching her grow from an infant to a curious toddler to a free spirited girl and to the young woman she is now; when she learned to walk and no longer needed me to carry her, learning to ride a bike, and finally gaining her independence when she obtained her driver’s license and could drive herself to school, her friends’ houses and to the mall; the first sleepover with friends (and all the subsequent sleepovers) and when she traveled to France and Spain with her school mates.

It’s hard to let go – to let her be…herself. I want to hold on to her longer – to be the little girl who looked at me with a Cheshire cat smile when she was up to something (and she still does). Or in the morning when I’d wake up and find her sleeping on the floor next to me with her pillow and blanket – a safer place to sleep when a nightmare would wake her up. On the other hand, I know I have to let go and allow her to be the lovely young woman she is. It’s time for her next adventure.

This is her journey. She chose her path. She chose me as her mom for this life’s journey. She is mine to borrow. But her life is her own. It always has been. We were brought together to love and learn lessons. I feel that in this life, she is teaching me to let go.

But, I’ll be calling all archangels and angels to watch over her as I drive home the day I drop her off at college. Maybe I’ll drive to the mall first…then go home.

THE FOUR SEASONS

After the long, bitter cold, seemingly never-ending winter we had this year, I promised that I would never again complain about the oppressively hot weather that would come the following summer. And, then it seemed that the cold weather long jumped from the record – breaking harsh northeast winter – over a briefly cool, rainy, leaf-budding and flower-blooming spring – to an early – not quite ready for it – summer. The (almost) summer of my discontent had begun.

I thought with the constantly accumulating snow that fell this winter there would still be snow on the ground in June. But now, with less than two weeks of spring left, I am somewhat excitedly waiting for the summer solstice to arrive. The change of seasons is so beautiful that I don’t think I could ever give up living in the beautiful northeast.

So, when spring arrived this year, I was one of the happiest people around, like a child when school lets out for summer recess. No more shovelling, no more winter coats, hats, scarves, boots or gloves. Winter is done, gone, good-bye. Spring arrived with some rain, sunshine, daffodils, birds and bees. It’s a sign that Persephone, the cherished daughter of Demeter, the Earth Mother, has once again returned from the Underworld and Hades. It’s also time to clean up the gardens, plant new flowers, fill up the Hummingbird feeder, and sitting under a tree in my favorite park with a good book.

I don’t really dislike winter and summer. There is something about all the seasons that I enjoy. My favorite part of spring has to be the increasing sunny days and working in the garden; summertime, and the living is easy – shorts and flip-flops and being at the ocean – although I would visit the ocean anytime of the year; fall – who doesn’t love the fall – I love everything about it; winter is quiet and pretty when it snows, walking on the roads – before they are plowed – everything looks perfect. Photography, being one of my favorite hobbies, insures that my camera is aimed at all four seasons.

Getting through the hardest parts of the winter and the summer – if one does not enjoy the extreme cold or heat – can be challenging. I recalled something one of my yoga teachers taught me. Some of the yoga positions are hard, but, like life, you breathe through it – inhale and exhale – and then you are back in the moment.

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THE GIFT

Writing is not what I aspired to. In English and History classes in high school, I dreaded writing and barely got past the first paragraph. College papers, when they were required, were the bare minimum. My papers resembled lists and I repeated myself in those essays or reports. I did not enjoy writing. It may have been explained in English class, but I did not really know how to construct an essay, a story or a report. So, I could never have imagined then that I would become a published author.

It is said that to write well, you need to read to understand how sentences are structured and how to put a story together. Growing up, I loved reading books. I read classics like, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” ; Guy de Maupassant’s tragic short story, “The Necklace” twice, and every book by Tracy Chevalier. I would read biographies on almost anyone and I still do, for school and for enjoyment. I read magazines from cover to cover, the New York Times and watched television news programs. This is how I learned how to deliver and write a story. I saw writing as a way to obtain information or for entertainment, never as an art form.

And then, in late 2008 I had a life change. After twenty years working in the accounting department for a media company that included a newspaper and a magazine, I was laid off. During the first year of unemployment when I had related the story of my spiritual journey to someone, it was suggested to me that I had a lot to tell, and that I should write books. I thought to myself “Never. That is not something I would remotely be interested in doing.” I did not like writing….I could not write. On reflection I wondered if that was because I did not think I had a story to tell.

Well, I did not think about that exchange again, until two years later when I took classes at a community college and found myself looking at the college’s club bulletin board. There were clubs and organizations for nearly everything and everyone. I found myself looking straight at a notice for the college newspaper. I was led to it. I felt it was a sign, so I humored my spirit guides, even though I still did not believe I could write anything. So, I attended the first meeting and I got a positive feeling. Something inside of me changed. Shortly after that, I wrote my first brief on an event at the college. A simple paragraph. I could not write any more than that. Still, I kept at it. There must be a reason why I joined the college newspaper.

My next assignment was to be an article on plagiarism. The publisher said there had been increased issues with students copying papers and cheating on tests due to the availability of cell phones. I took my time with it and really got into investigating and interviewing people for the piece. I really enjoyed what I was doing and the writing came easily: I wrote over 900 words. The editor told me the writing was good and nothing needed to be edited. I remember thinking: what happened in that one month from the first piece that was a basic paragraph of information that I scraped together to this 900 plus word story? I never took a writing class. I was never a journalist. So, how did this transition happen? Where did this sudden burst of writing come from?

I don’t know how else to explain it other than it was meant to be. Destiny. The universe led me to it. Specifically, on a soul level, it was planned before my current incarnation. We all have “blueprints” of what our human experiences will entail. The who, what, when, where and how of our souls journey. Who our parents will be, what lessons our souls want to learn, where we will live, who we will marry, how many children we will have, and when our souls current mission will end. I believe my spirit guides and guardian angels, who were with my soul during the planning stages for this incarnation, gave me gentle reminders about events that were pre-planned and guided me through the implementation of those plans. They led me to that bulletin board and subsequently helped with the writing of my book, “Sweet Dreams”. While the characters in the short story are composites of people I knew in this life-time, and are now on the other side, I am very certain one of them also assisted with her part of the story.

Everyone has a story to tell whether it’s happy, tragic or inspiring. Writing is only a part of mine. Although it did not come naturally to me until a few years ago, I really enjoy it now. For me, writing is a gift that I share with everyone. It is not mine to keep. I am grateful for this gift. Who knows where it will take me or for how long. Everyday, I look for something to write about; or an idea will “pop” into my head – divine intervention. Be grateful for your gifts whatever they are.

Happy Christmas and Best Wishes for all great things in 2015.

Sweet Dreams

A PAGAN WOMAN

Last summer my past came back to haunt me. It may have been either a past life memory or it was a re-awakening. But from that moment on there was no going back. Back, that is, in terms of where I was before that moment at the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Back in the early 1990’s, I had visited the Salem Witch Museum where they have stage sets – thirteen in all – depicting the events leading up to and including the nineteen innocent people who were hung because they were believed to be witches. So, last summer, my family and I were vacationing in the area and stopped in for a visit. My daughter had just studied Arthur Miller’s play, “The Crucible”, in school that year and learned how the story was based partly on the Salem Witch Trials, and she wanted to find out more about this tragic event. There is also something newer at the museum since I was last there in the ‘90’s, and that is an exhibit called, “Witches: Evolving Perceptions”. It was here that I came face to face with my past. Literally.

The first scene of this exhibit shows a mannequin that is dressed up as a Pagan woman. The tour guide pressed the button for the audio and a disembodied voice told us how she was an ancient Celtic woman, that she and other Pagan women were actually midwives, they used herbs and were respected healers in their community. Then the tour guide moves on and everyone follows her except me. I cannot take my eyes off the the ancient Celtic woman mannequin’s face. It was as if I was staring into my past and my past self was looking at my future self. A real “Back to the Future” moment.

The transition from Pagan woman to Witch, was no doubt brought on by fear – and fear is at the root of everything. According to the Salem Witch Museum’s website, salemwitchmuseum.com on the “Witches: Evolving Perceptions” exhibit, “…the strong Celtic woman, diminished and demonized by the church fathers in the middle ages. She speaks of her role as the troublemaker in society on whom all evil things are blamed.” The remainder of the exhibit shows how Witches were Hollywood -ized; other witch hunts in history such as the McCarthy hearings on Communism and what became known as the Red Scare, and the persecution of the gay community at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The museum uses this formula for a witch hunt: Fear + Trigger = Scapegoat. And finally, the exhibit ends with two more figures, a man and a woman, practitioners of Wicca, or witchcraft. “…descendants of the Celtic midwife, looking to the earth mother for healing and spirituality.”

Back in my hotel room, I thought over the exhibit and could not shake off the hold this Pagan midwife had over me. The transition to evil wrongdoer, to Hollywood’s Wicked Witch of the West was unfair. I felt the Pagan woman or Celtic midwife was seriously maligned. As always, when I feel this strongly about something, I become passionate to the point of obsession and wanted to educate myself and understand not what was done to the Pagan woman, but rather who she really was and my connection to her.

At the outset, I explored what Paganism is. Before modern Europe, before Judaism and Christianity, there was Paganism, a religion that worshipped nature. Now, I want to say that I do not now believe in organized religion. However, I was brought up Christian. I learned from that period in my life that Pagans were heathens, ungodly, basically Satan worshippers. Naturally, as a young child I was taught to fear them. There’s that word “fear” again. Hmmm.

I took out books from the library, read articles on the Internet, and educated myself. According to the website paganfederation.org, the definition of a Pagan is : “… a follower of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion.” Pagans respect nature; a religion that “pervades the whole of everyday life…Pagans usually believe that the divine world will answer a genuine request for information….healers are common throughout Pagan societies…Pagans pursue their own vision of the Divine as a direct and personal experience.” Paganism, they say, “is the ancestral religion of the whole of humanity.”

All religions descended from Paganism, so why do Pagans and Paganism get such a bad rap? As I read this, I thought to myself I love nature, I believe that the universe, God force, or divine helps me when I put the intention out into the universe. I’m a Pagan. Maybe we are all pagans – we just don’t remember our divinity.

Statues that we see or use in gardens and in our homes originated with Pagans. Wedding rings and the wedding service, funeral services, and the holidays that come at the winter solstice and vernal equinox – Yule ( pronounced U-elle) which is commonly known as Christmas (Remember the Yule log burning on a TV channel at Christmas? That’s a pagan ritual.) and Ostara (or Easter) are all traditions that come from the Pagans. All of these traditions originated with the Celtic Pagans and have been passed down through the centuries.

In October, Samhain (pronounced Sow-inn) is the Pagan New Year. It is at this time that the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is the thinnest . While the veil is thin, we will be able to connect to our loved ones who have crossed over. We can, of course, hear our loved ones and angels anytime, but the frequencies may make it easier to hear them at this time. Listen and watch for their messages.