Impeccability
Extract from Carlos Castaneda’s book: The second Ring of Power
Here is an account for the significance don Juan had taught me to include in the word impeccability. He and I once wandered in a very steep ravine when a big lump of stone came loose from the mountain wall and with a tremendous power rolled downwards to crash and land in the bottom of the ravine, fifteen or twenty yards away from where we were standing. It was a big rock and its fall impressive. Don Juan seized the moment to give me a dramatic lesson.

He said that the power that governs our destinies lies without us and that it has nothing to do with our acts of power. Sometimes this power makes us stop in the middle of the road, bend down and tie our shoelaces, which I had just done. And through stopping us, this power lets us have a precious moment. Had we continued our walk without interruption, the stone would without a doubt have crushed down on us.

But another day, in another ravine, the same from without coming power would force us to stop once again, bend down and tie our shoelaces and then another stone would have loosened right above us. Through stopping us, the power would then have us loose one precious moment. That time we would have saved ourselves if we had kept on going.

Don Juan said that considered I totally lacked control over the powers that governed my destiny my sole possibility to experience freedom was to tie my shoelaces in that ravine impeccably.

StarWorker
This story took place many years ago. My youngest son was four years old and had just started attending a new kindergarten. One afternoon when I was to pick him up to take him home the staff told me that Ulf had suffered a violent attack from another little boy that day. The attack had happened so fast that no one had had the time to prevent or interfere until Ulf already had received several vicious hits and kicks. The little one was in a state of complete decomposition, sobbing, snoring, and feverish.

When we got out to the car, I just couldn’t put him in his chair and drive home without doing something healing first. At that time I somehow was stuck with a fix idea that one couldn’t function as a healer to help your closest relations, for some odd reason. – ’The hell with that idea’ I thought, ’it’s after all what all shaman and magic schools teaches, that as long as one sticks to the law to do no harm, one sets one’s own rules and laws’. Instead of remaining in a feeling of despair and powerlessness regarding my baby’s hurt condition I took him in my arms and started to gently rock while humming a calming tune. This happened in November so the night sky above us were already covered with stars.  

Meanwhile I was humming and rocking I visualized that I pulled down the dark-blue star-filled night-sky and laid it as a mantel around the two of us. The small body relaxed in my arms and the boy fell in a deep sleep. After a short while spent in this deep dreaming state, Ulf opened his eyes, looked deeply into my eyes, and said: - ’Mama, you work with the stars, yes?’

The Doctor’s Hat
When I was halfway into the writing of my previous book, Jolanda’s book of Tarot and Magic, I realized that I was actually writing a thesis for a doctorate on the nature of being human. The immense extent of creating a tarot-card-deck and write a book about it dawned on me and the mere thought of the nearly impossible project that I so naively had given myself into made me sway. Had it not been for the illustrator Hans Arnold’s discipline I’d never have had the energy to finish the huge project.

But with Hans routine and experience of working as an illustrator in many book-projects we managed to get through with it. During the four years it took Hans and me to finish all 78 images in the tarot-card deck we became very close friends.
Every card we were working on we got to experience in a personal way. When we were working with 3 of swords, sorrow, for instance, we both experienced sorrow that week. When we were working with 3 of coins, to nurture, we felt that energy that week. So when we had finished the whole thing we had lived through each and every one of the 78 different energies/cards on a personal level. That way we got very close and our friendship has continued since.

Shortly after the book had been released I had a vision that since the book was my thesis for a doctorate in Magic, or, the Art of Dreaming, I also aspired on the title Doctor. The vision went on with me meeting an imaginary group of witches and shamans and by them I was handed a Doctors Hat. And it wasn’t an ordinary hat. No, as a Doctor in the Art of Dreaming of course it was a nightcap, in old fashioned Sandman style, with a gold tassel!

When I retreated from the vision I went to action and manufactured such a nightcap. I was lucky enough to find a cloth in white jersey with stars printed all over it in gold, black and red, really the perfect cloth.  And as the final touch I sew a fine golden tassel at the end of the nightcap.

Since then, if people say: - ‘Now you’re talking in your nightcap, Rosie’, I can without any tremble in my voice answer:
-‘Yes, that is exactly what I am doing!’

Dr Hurru Guru from the Star Nation People
In the world of magic, only the imagination puts up borders. Everything one can imagine also exists, in one or another dimension. This story begins with me watching the movie Stargate a couple of years ago. In the movie there is a scene when the Egyptian looking alien is hurt. To heal he crept into a magic healing sarcophagus decorated with hieroglyphs. A lid closed above him, and the healing immediately started.  After just a short while he climbed out again, completely healed. That scene gave nourishment to my imagination, so each time I after that felt hurt or harmed in any way, I conjured the image of myself creeping into such a sarcophagus, and being healed.

The other year, when I mentally stepped into a strong worry that my body was actively producing hostile organisms, and I just couldn’t pull myself out of it, I got the sense that I needed stronger medicine. An idea fell into my head that I could conjure a doctor from the Star Nation People, anyone who could hear me and my desperate cry for help. So I did.
–‘Hey, Sacred Star Nation People, is there a doctor out there that can handle my case?’
Before I even had the time to blink my eyes, with the speed of lightning, an odd figure turned up in my bedroom. It was a tiny chubby man dressed in an outfit suitable for a game of golf. He introduced himself as Dr. Hurru Guru.
–‘At my hospital, there are no diseases that can’t be cured,’ he said brightly, and waved his hand.  
–’ What can I do for you, milady?’.
I explained my worry, and showed him the area on my body where I experienced symptoms. Immediately he snapped his fingers, and down from the sky came an endless mass of microscopic small frogs dressed in nurse uniforms sewn in light-blue and white starched linen, complete with little classical nurse hats. All thousands of them streamed into me where they started to sing an alien beautiful song that echoed around inside every cell of my body. A whole lot of other stuff happened next that I at this point can’t describe really, but everything felt very wonderful. And it felt incredibly strengthening that there was nothing dr. Hurru Guru couldn’t cure. What happened next was that the strong worry that had locked me down vanished anyway, and with it all bodily symptoms of disease I’d thought I was developing.

Nowadays I more or less regularly meditate that I visit his hospital, or that he comes home to me, firsthandly to receive preemptive care, on all levels, spiritual, physical, mental and emotional.  Hurru has introduced me to another doctor as well, Oro d’Oro, who’s an expert in handling and curing worry, which fits me perfectly, since worrying is my greatest problem, really. So now I have my own house doctors! Free choice of health-care in its fullest sense! And gratis!
(Only the future can tell if I also will need assistance from the common health care. To be on the safe side I don’t want to exclude any alternative coming scenarios.)

The Inner Jury
Nowadays TV is overflowing with various contests, talent-contests, cooking-contests, model-contests and so on. A common factor for all these contests is a jury panel mostly consistent of four people.

The other week, while watching an episode of Top-Model, it crossed my mind just how I myself stand in front of my inner jury several times per day. And the expectations I put on myself are not humble in any way.I expect from myself to be Top Mom, Top Family-provider, Top Mistress, Top Everything, as a matter of fact, no more, no less. Therefore, my inner jury reflects this in being ruthless, incredibly judgmental and devastatingly critical. Rarely, if ever, do I get approval for my daily achievements.

There and then I made the decision to do an inner search to identify each member of my current inner jury. That my mother was one of them was obvious. The rest of the identification I’ll leave untold right now, but I can guarantee that it was both interesting and enlightening. Then I got the idea that the personas now constituting my inner jury could be replaced. There was no law in existence that they were to remain members of my inner jury for life!

Monday night in the Tower. Three participants in the Moon-lodge, perfect, four women me included. After the break, when we always do some practice, I suggested that the four of us together would swop the members of our inner jury to more creative and loving ones. We’d do it as a group-project, where each of us was to suggest a new jury member. That way we created the opportunity to return to this practice on a later occasion, and be able to compare our experiences.

But before we started to invite our new members, we all had to do a personal inventory. Firstly, we’d had to take some time to find and talk to our present inner jury-members, and tell them that their services were no longer needed, that they were sacked, frankly spoken.

With this done, the time had come to introduce our new jury-members. The Talking Stick was passed around the circle. I got it first. The one I wanted in our inner jury was the Cat-Goddess Bast, in the form of a black, middle-aged Egyptian woman, to provide pleasure, intuitiveness and ancient wisdom. Then the Talking Stick was passed to Lina, who invited Sigurd, an elderly man, white-haired, wise, loving, and with a great sense of humor.
So Carina, who invited Pushing Polly, a real power-hag, who tolerated no excuses what so ever why not to get on with whatever one wanted to get on with. And last but not least, Linda, who invited Pippi Long-Stockings, to provide the jury with playfulness and anarchy.

Since then I’ve taken some time each day when I consciously make an inner journey to visit my new inner jury. To find out how I have performed my different tasks and challenges that day according to their judgements? It’s not an understatement to say that the way I’m received now is a completely new experience. It is fascinating how differently and much more lovingly and wisely designed the judgments and verdicts are, compared to the way they used to be before I made conscious this particular ongoing inner process.

And I must admit it is Pippi’s presence that has made the greatest impact. During our jury-sessions, she yawns, wriggles and writhes, showing everybody in a completely obvious way that she thinks that most subjects being discussed are really boring. It makes me giggle every time. Am I really that boring? Oh, blast! I got to stop to take everything so seriously. Get out and play, Rose! The time when I’m thru with this karma-adventure will most inevitably come sooner or later…..

The Butterfly Tree
I found this story in Lynn Andrews book the Jaguar Woman:
There are many trees and many myths and legends concerning them. Almost all peoples know of some kind of world tree. The tree is a way into life.

The Sisterhood of the Shields tells us of the first tree, also called Sky Tree of Man, or simply, the butterfly tree. This is the tree of all the ancestors. It is where first man and first woman came from. Tree Mother suckled them. The sisters say that upon the branches of this tree are billions and billions of leaves. Written upon these leaves is the destiny of each new person. So when a person is born, a leaf falls from the butterfly tree. The spirit light descends from one of these leaves and surrounds the egg at conception. It is a person’s destiny to realize that we are one with the sacred tree.

We are not just a leaf. We are light. And we are the light of Butterfly Tree. Everything is of Butterfly Tree, and all will return to it. All suffering is a result of a loss of knowledge of our origins. When we realize that we are the great tree, our state is happiness. All our illusions come about because of loss of remembering the central tree. But then it is not a tree at all. It is a way of explaining truth.

When we enter the void, it’s like no place we have ever been before. That’s a problem. Our language is inadequate to express the higher truths that we come back with. Some people see angels; some see warriors. Some call these beings gods and goddesses. Some call them spirits.

The human mind is unable to grasp these experiences. That doesn’t mean it is delusion. As a matter of fact, we are escaping our delusions. There are other ways of seeing. All of life is a trail that leads to the Great Tree or the Great Spirit. Everyone is on this path. Some are, for the moment, lost. Some are resting. Some realize the truth but can go no further.

Every once in a while a great teacher comes. Great teachers are the realized ones. They have climbed the Tree and have achieved freedom. They have solved the riddle of paradox and duality. They can speak only truth. But even they have difficulty in trying to explain things in a way others can understand. Some of them get mad and use supernatural powers all over the place, thinking that this may help. Others martyr themselves to show their great love and tolerance. Some of them don’t do anything at all and let everything go on as it is. They may be hidden in a cave or sacred mountain, or they may be your next-door neighbor.

The life of the caterpillar transforms into another life – the beautiful butterfly. It teaches us that all of life is transitory. The butterfly is enlightened! Butterflies are the ancestor spirits, and they have returned to the Butterfly Tree.

Where the butterflies cluster on a tree, this was one of the ancient sites where rituals and ceremonies were performed, places of celebration. Yes, the butterfly migrations are ancient spirits returning to the sites of once great cultures that have now vanished from the earth.

The Great Spirit gave the world a butterfly tree so that the people could learn from it and find joy in its beauty. The tree was filled with colors, and those colors formed rainbows that arched from one camp to another and from one universe o another. The people were united, because they saw the same colors. From this rainbow hung the stars, the moon, the sun, the seven sisters, and the movement of all the heavenly bodies. Remember to be happy the next time you see a butterfly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCnWZncHH2Y&feature=related

Dreampillow   
Workshop in the Art of Dreaming, Bråviken, Sweden, 14/8 – 18/8 -97 with Batty Thunder-Bear, his wife Rose Dragonfly Queen, Lil, Margareta, Michael H. and 16 other people.The third day is all about the making of a dream-pillow according to the rules and laws of an ancient shaman school.
Here I share the theoretical part of the ceremony that I wrote down in my diary:

The making of a Dream Pillow.
Plant a seed in the fifth dimension and it will come back in the third dimension. You need a good deal of energy to be able to remember your dream. And you’ll need a witness.

The dream-pillow consists of 3 bundles put together.
The ingredients in the first bundle: 1 bear-fetish, 1 owl-fetish, both carved out of wood. Those we will manufacture during the afternoon. Then there is: 1 turquoise, 1 coral, 1 crystal, 1 owl-feather. The bag is sewn in turquoise cloth, size 14 X 14 cm.
Second bundle: Protection bundle. 7 X 7 cm. Red cloth. Ingredients: 1 pinch of cedar, salvia, sweet-grass, lavender, banishing and cut away medicine, corn flour, pollen, black lightning.
The third bundle is the herb bundle. 17 X 17 cm. Rainbow-cloth.
The 6 herbs that shall fill the small pillow and make it fluffy are:  hops, lemongrass, peppermint, catnip, rosehip, and alder buckthorn. The herbs in the dream-pillow need to be changed every three years. (The other two bundles shall be sewn into this bundle. We will manufacture the 3 bags right after lunch.)

In the afternoon we are going to travel to the under-world and find the owl and the bear. We will do that by going to the meadow with the corn-flour. Ask the powers to assist me while holding the intent to find a piece of wood that carries the spirit of the bear and a piece of wood that carries the spirit of the owl. Spin thirteen rounds counter-clockwise. Walk towards the direction where I stopped spinning. Let the fibers lead. When one invokes the owl, one becomes the owl. When I have found my pieces of wood, I will sit down and firstly carve out the image of the owl from the owl piece. I will ask for guidance from the owl. Ask for a name. Then go through the same process with the bear. When done, give some corn-flour as thanks.

Go back to the circle now prepared by the teachers, Batty and Rose.  Sit down on my seat. I start with the herbs.
Take the rainbow bundle and go to the baskets filled with herbs that will be placed in the center of the circle. There will also be a fire burning there. Talk to the different herbs, one at the time. Talk to the herb and listen to it thru the fibers. Put a tiny bit of the herb into the fire. Ask the herb to release its spirit through the fire so it can come in its spirit-form into my heart. Now all 6 herbs are in the bag. Go back to my sitting place. Leave the bag open, since the other two bundles are going to be put within it as well, before it is sealed.

Go to the south basket with the small red bag for protection. Shoot my fibers into the fire. Pull the fire into my stomach. Take the ingredients one by one, put them in the bag, and seal it.
Then it’s time for the fetish-bundle. Take the turquoise bag, the wooden owl and the wooden bear, the turquoise, the coral, the crystal, and the owl-feather with me into the center of the circle. Connect to the fire. Talk to the different ingredients. Eat a tiny bit of the owl-feather. Seal the bag. Put all bags in the rainbow-bag. Talk to the different powers. Mumble Jumble. Now seal it. It is done!
When I get home, put the dream-pillow under my real pillow in my bed, and dream…zzzzz.
(The following night I dreamt I gave birth to the Hindu Elephant-God Ganesh.)

The Fairy Queen
In the shaman school we are taught that the little people, fairies, elves, gnomes, a.s.f. are the ancestors of the human family. They inhabited planet Earth long before the humans arrived here. This story is recycled from my book Jolanda’s book of Tarot and Magic, chapter 21, the Universe:
One evening in early may I was driving my car on my way to a four day workshop with my shaman teacher Batty ThunderBear. Midnight was approaching, and I was closing in on the place where the workshop was to be held. Then suddenly a bell started ringing in my chest, and a voice started to talk inside my head.
– ‘The fairies are having a party tonight, and you are invited. Soon you will come to the place where the party is held. ’
I consideratly slowed down my pace. As a coincidence I was wearing my fairy dress, made from exquisite white chiffon, woven as thinly as spiders web, the fine cloth all covered with purple and black roses. Coincidence, by the way, it was like the part of me that had decided what to wear that same morning had known what would happen in the evening…..
And now I wasn’t driving a car anymore, no, the car had transformed into a big silver horse, slowly trotting along.
After ashort while the car/horse stopped all together, so I climbed out and looked around. There were fields stretched out in all directions, all covered with a fine but heavy mist.  As I was standing there and deeply breathing in the fresh early summer air, the Fairy Queen herself materialized out of the mist, and came gliding towards me. Closely following behind her, fairy after fairy materialized, all dressed in the most fantastic colorful dresses one could ever imagine. The queen had now closed in on me, and I knew that somehow I had met her before. We serenely bowed to each other. -´Come,’ she said, ‘dance with us’. My heart somersaulted out of pure joy, yes, yes, I would love to dance with the fairies. And danced I did, I danced and danced with the fairies over the meadows until I was completely softened up and almost turned to mist myself.
Then I stopped, thanked the fairies, said goodbye to the queen, and went back to my silver horse. Soundlessly and gently in a still pace we glided the few remaining couple of hundred yards to the study center.
But how odd, it was all dark and quite, the whole place seemed abandoned. How peculiar, the workshop was supposed to begin in just a few hours, it should be crowded with people. Where was everybody?
Cautiously I stepped out of the car, and listened. Yes, I could hear a faint sound of voices, sounding like they came from the back of the house. For some unexplained reason I tiptoed as quietly as possible over the courtyard, and continued to nestle close to the wall of the house. The strong energy I felt made me stop just before the wall ended, and with utter care I peaked around the corner of the house. There I saw a veranda that was built on the backside of the house with a view over a small lake. There were 8 people sitting on the veranda around a table, amongst them was the teacher, the shaman Batty ThunderBear. He was sitting furthest away from me, on the short side of the table, facing me.
A wild idea flew into my mind, and made my heart pound wildly. Here I was presented with a superb opportunity to sneak up on my shaman teacher. I had the chance to surprise him, to put him out of balance, by materialize from nowhere. That would definitely be a performance worthy of a true witch. That exact moment two swans came flying, they were flying low, and the sound from their heavy wings flapping were filling the air, swosch, swosch. I immediately grasped the opportunity and the help they offered, and moved swiftly the remaining yards to the veranda. Every step I took was covered in a mighty swoshing from the wing flaps of the swans, swosch, I jumped, and swosch again, and the last powerful swosching landed me right behind Batty. No one present had as yet spotted me.
‘ Taadaa’, I shouted into Battys ear, and made a triumphant pirouette.  Batty jumped high up in the air, and sank back down on his chair heavily panting. He studied me for a while, regaining his breath, and then he said, to the other people present:
-‘look who’s here, the Fairy Queen herself! ‘
Words sweet as honey to me, and such a great confirmation that my experience dancing with the fairies had been as real as any other experience one can have. And, I had managed to sneak in on one of the most skilled sneakers…. I felt so proud of myself!
( The reason why the house had seemed so empty and abandoned was because I had arrived a day early, the workshop wouldn’t start until the day after! Sometimes one has to be confused to be able to keep one’s appointments with fairies.
From the confusion of the mind and the chaos of the heart magic is born….)

Rose Croak Crow
Snake-woman workshop with Donna Talking Leaves, autumn -90, day 3.
The evenings practice involved a swim to a star. Donna was busy giving us the instructions. Here it goes: We participants were once more to be sent out into the dark forest, on our own, to find a private spot. When we had found a proper place we felt had power we liked, we were to visualize that we were standing inside a big sack, reaching 30 inches above our heads. Then we were supposed to grab the upper edges of the sack and carefully pull it down all the way to the ground, and step out from it. After stepping out from the cocoon, which the sac symbolized, we were to look up to the starry night sky and find one star that were shining extra bright or in some other way drew our attention. Then the swim would begin. With powerful breaststrokes we were to swim up towards our special star, where eventually our energy would blend with the energy of the star. We could even experience a feeling of being sucked in by the star. Then stay for a while in the feeling of being immersed with the star, which would create an extraordinary healing effect.
We were also to grab the opportunity to ask for our personal star-name.
–’Every human has got a magic name,’ said Donna. ’If one is serious in ones ambition to work with magic it’s important to have a special name to use for magic purposes.’
The trick was to listen within. Any name that popped up in our head, the name of a flower, a rock, a goddess, a butterfly, any animal, a cloud, yes, there were no limits, could be our magic name.
When we found a name we liked we should let it roll around in our heads, let the vibrations from it create healing changes deep within, thus providing power and energy.
With that done, there was more to do. When we had properly arrived back in our physical bodies, it was time to write down the name we had received on a piece of paper cut like a star, about as big as a hand, then put the star-paper under our pillow, to further work with our magic identity in our dream. Donna filled in the last piece of information: - ’And just before going to sleep, take the star-paper, hold it in your hand, and ask out loud your magical self to guide you in the dream world. Then put it back under the pillow, and sacred dream come to me…..
Time to do! See you again in the morning, for breakfast.’

The evening was chilly and the velvety blue night sky was absolutely packed with stars. Alright, here we go, out into the dark and damp forest to find a good spot. I did my best to follow the instructions, stepped out of my cocoon, and started swimming towards a star that looked friendly. But I was really tired and just couldn’t find the energy necessary to perform the ceremony properly. A tiny dormouse showed up and curiously checked me out for a little while before it vanished back into the bushes, and that was about all that happened, really. So I had no name to write on my paper star.  It was with a slight feeling of disappointment that I crawled into my tent, but soon my tiredness took its toll and I fell asleep on top of my sleeping-bag with my clothes still on, and the paper-star still in my pocket.

That night I dreamt I was living in a big forest in a small hut, built with three doors, because that’s how my best friend, a tiny brown dormouse wanted it. Filled with friendliness, contentment and love the little dormouse was running around in the hut, playing with the three doorways, in and out and in again. Once in a while it sniffed on some magic power-objects lying in the middle of the room, obviously belonging to me. Among the objects I could distinguish a wooden staff, carved as a snake. A crow was sitting in the tree outside the hut, loudly croaking……

Welcome Dear Sun Ceremony
I got my own key to the tower on Blue-hill on December 22 1998, so three days later, in the morning the 25’th of December, I packed my drum and a thermos filled with steaming hot coffee, and took a brisk walk to the tower to do a ceremony to welcome the sun back to the northern hemisphere, my first ceremony in the tower ever! It was obviously not decorated at all, and dirty, no one had been in the tower for a long time, 10 years at least. And since it was in the middle of the winter and the tower has no heating facilities, it was dreadfully cold and raw.
I laid out a blanket and some cushions on the dusty floor, sat down, and started to drum. After some time of drumming, when the rhythmical beating on the drum had calmed down my pulse and heart rhythm, I was transferred, if not in time, so in space. Suddenly I found myself on the border that separates the north and south Korea, and don’t ask me how I knew that it was there I was. We were outdoors on a large field. Stars in the thousands shone on the night sky. Bonfires and torches were lit everywhere, and many women in the most fantastic outfits were gathered. By the same mysterious reason that I knew I was in Korea, I knew that all these women were shamans and witches. A huge gong, two maybe three meters in diameter made of some gold-shimmering metal hanging on a scaffold made of two gigantic lions sculptured in the same metal as the gong, maybe bronze, stood on a platform specially built for it. Two women were standing on each side of the gong with matching drumsticks. They were dressed in ceremonial ancient costumes made out of bronze and leather that just about covered the essentials on their muscular bodies. On a given signal, just as the sun was about to show itself on the horizon, one of the women hit the gong with her full force, the powerful yet muffled sound seemed to spread wide across land and ocean.  Then the other woman hit the gong with all her force and her strike seemed to echo the first, and sort of pushed the sound to spread even wider out into the universe. The two women continued taking turns to strike the gong, and all of us present witnessed the sun rise this sacred Christmas morning. I felt greatly honored to not only experience but also celebrate this ancient ceremony together with all these powerful medicine-women.
Filled with a feeling of awe and wonder that this old tradition was so well preserved in a country so exotic to me as Korea, and the fact that there were so many strong witches there, I returned to my ordinary reality, at the moment the old water tower in the Hagalunds-park, Solna, Sweden. I drank the still hot coffee and ate the saffron bun I had brought, and gave thanks to all the powers assisting me on my dream ceremony journey. I also gave thanks for the beautiful visual experience I had had, and then I strolled home through a glistering snowy landscape. The winter sun followed me all the way, kissing my cheeks abundantly with its pale yellow beams.

Grandmother Greta
My grandmother Greta never made it a secret that she could see ghosts. The last couple of years she was alive, she said that she never felt alone. Her dead husband was a frequent guest, as was her beloved mother and father.
One of my favorite stories of all the stories she told me was this one:
young Greta and her aunt Momma was very close. One night Momma had called and asked her niece to come over for some grooming, which they occasionally spent time together doing. My grandmother swiftly went over to Mommas house and helped Momma to shave her moustache, cut and file her nails, comb and braid her hair, and finally putting on her most stylish nightgown. Next morning the housemaid found Momma dead in her bed. She had peacefully left this earth in her sleep. My grandmother said she’d probably known that that would happen, that she would die that night, and therefore had seen to look as clean, pretty and neat as possible.
That’s the way I myself would like to pass over, and still to this day it’s my wish.
As a dead person my grandmother is still a fantastic friend. She is a happy and friendly ghost to be in contact with, playful and always very calm and loving.
Just before she died, I asked her what she regretted the most with her life. She answered without hesitation that it was that she had worried so much. All her worries had turned out to be a total waste of time and energy. She had worried about becoming blind, and when she did become blind it wasn’t as dreadful as she had imagined. She saw other things instead, and above all she could see into the world of spirits. She had worried that she couldn’t remain in her home to the very end, but she had been able to stay in her flat until just two month before she passed away, 84 years old. And a lot of other stuff she’d been worrying about, all totally unnecessary, as it had turned out.
The other year, when I was desperately worried over money that never seemed to come in at the same rate as it was going out, my grandmother paid me a visit in a dream and told me that I didn’t have to worry so much, it would be taken care of!
That dream was, and still is, very helpful, so I will grasp this opportunity to say an official:
‘Thank you grandmother Greta, for all the help and healing you continuously provide, even from the other side!
Thank you!

The Witches want Blood!
For many years my seer colleague Madame Oili and I have been a yearly feature on the Swedish school of advanced management for business leaders, AMP. The school included five weeks of internship spread across the year.
The participants, groups of 20 – 30 chief executives were interned one week at the time at a small but fashionable castle about one hour drive from Stockholm. We were normally brought in during the third or fourth week, when the participants had had the time to get to know each other more in depths, and had gained a feeling of safety in the group.
Oili and I contributed with an original practical excursion of a subject called Mind Expansion.
During the evening all participants had the opportunity to have a 30 minutes session with either Oili or me.
Oili sat in one end of the room and had red clothing and a red tablecloth, and I sat in the other end of the room and wore blue clothing and a blue tablecloth. And all evening we worked like crazy, handed out prophecy after prophecy.
Even though the activity was voluntary, everybody wanted a sitting with either of us.
Around midnight our work was done and then we were treated with a posh three course dinner and with the food a bottle of exclusive red wine. Through the years we also got to know the staff, and every time we arrived to the castle the staff gave us a royal treatment.

I think it was our ninth or tenth year of participation that Oili and I arrived early afternoon in Oilis car at the castle.
We practically stormed into the reception area, loaded with adrenalin for our upcoming marathon.  The staff were standing in the reception, three of them familiar to us, but the fourth was not, she must be a new recruit.
Oili, full of energy as she was, wanted to play around a little, so she flipped her arms out and exclaimed on the top of her lungs:
-‘ the witches want blood!’
Everyone started laughing, knowing that Oili meant red wine, except for the new one, who stiffened up and turned all pale.
Her face showed all kinds of emotions and thoughts running through her.
Oili became instantly aware of the woman’s precarious reaction,  gave her a friendly push in the chest and said: ‘I was just kidding!’ The woman breathed out hard, and started to laugh.
–‘What were you thinking so intensely?’ I couldn't help but ask. ‘Well,’ she said, and then she told us, that she and her husband actually bread dogs for hunting purposes, and so they actually kept blood from different animals, deer, hare, fox, badger, in a big freezer in the cellar. The blood was of course used to train the dogs. Therefore she had seen herself rushing home to get some blood for the witches, meanwhile she had been thinking of which of the blood-types we would prefer……
Talk about being service-minded!

The Stronger the Resistance…
From a snake-woman workshop with Donna Talking Leaves autumn -89:
‘Donna said that the stronger the resistance you feel before you perform a ceremony, the stronger the magic will be.
And the stronger the medicine-woman/seer is, the stronger the resistance will be. As an example, Donna told us about one of the mightiest sorceresses she’d met, who was completely paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair, that’s how strong her resistance was.’
It’s sacred law’, Donna continued, ‘that the good always conquers the bad, with the addition that the good have to be mobilized. That is, the sorceress has to invoke her helpers to come to her aid, and when she does that, all the help she needs will be provided, in that particular situation.’

These words have been echoing in my head many times since then.
Numerous times when I have been heading out for some ceremony or another, I’ve felt this tremendous inner resistance. Inside my head I’ve been hearing all the mental ideas on why I can skip going out, and stay home instead, where it’s warm and comfortable. And each time of these times the thought: ’the stronger the resistance, the stronger the magic’, has popped up in my head, and from that I’ve been able to pull myself together, pack the picnic-basket with coffee and sandwich, and drag myself down to the car. Meanwhile all of this dragging there has been a part of me deep inside that has been convinced that the ceremony ahead of me would have to be super magic because of the resistance.
And indeed, so it has been each time, worth the extra effort. Always so healing to come out into the woods lit up by the moon and the stars, lighting a fire, squatting down so close to the earth. That’s what I call medicine for the soul, right there!

This inner resistance also comes into play when I’m writing. It’s been so severe that even when I was to write the very last chapter of my book I had to drag myself to my computer, astounded at how strongly I still felt the same gigantic resistance, even though surely I had to know by now that no matter how great the resistance, I would still write. Yes, as a matter of fact, even on this very day, I’ve been struggling to write this humble text. Gosh, how strong I must be then, if it’s true that strength is calculated upon how strong the resistance is!

Donna Talking Leaves brought the afternoon to a close by asking the following question: ‘could you imagine waking up tomorrow morning and it was peace in the world? By the time when you wholeheartedly can go to bed with that feeling, you’re going to wake up the next morning, and it’s going to be world peace. Does it sound simple? Believe me, it’s not. We so called civilized people have so much negative bullshit programmed into our thought-processes, that it will take us a long time to clean it all out. It’s an environmental destruction/disaster going on inside our heads. The sooner each and every individual takes his/her responsibility to clean up his/her own act, the sooner we’ll reach the goal, which is now and forever, world peace.  

Star Goddess Astarte speaks:
I – am the beauty of the green Earth, the white moon amongst the Stars, the mystery of the Water.
I – call your soul to arise and come to me. I – am the soul of Nature who gives life to the Universe.
From me all things are Born, to me they must Return.
Adore me from a heart filled with Joy. Everything you do that comes from Love and Pleasure are Rituals to my Honor.
Allow such virtues as Beauty and Power, Strength and Compassion, Respect and Reverence, Laughter and Humbleness,
to reside within you. And you who wants to get to know me should know, that your searching and your longing is futile,
unless you understand this: if you don’t find what you are looking for inside yourself, you will never find it outside yourself.
For behold: I have been with you in All Times, and I will be with you when you reach the Goal of your Dreams.

SnakeWoman Initiation
A night some time ago I dreamt I was in a snake women temple, and two of my closest women friends were there with me. Somehow I knew that I was preparing to go through an initiation ritual which consisted of being bitten by a snake and live through the poisoning, to come out the other end , as a snake priestess, immune to the poison from the temple-snakes. One of my friends had the assignment to guide me through the poisoning, and keep me alive by serving me different herb cocktails based on ancient recipes that had the knowledge to keep me safe at different critical moments in my ongoing journey between life and death.
My other friend gave her silent and discreet support.
It was very obvious that I was far from the first person embarking on this deadly journey, and not the last either. The precision of the very long and enduring ritual, and how skilled my friend was at knowing every little single detail of the complicated procedure, impressed me greatly. The snake poison was despite everything else also very hallucinogenic. In my dream I managed to take myself through high fever, cramps, shivers, I travelled to thousands of worlds, including the kingdom of death, and both my friends were there with me every step of the way.  And before I left the dream I had the time to recover, and to experience how my newly achieved immunity to the snake poison gave me a new and intimate relationship with the snakes living in the temple.
I woke up with a deep and serene feeling of partaking of ancient and sublime mysteries.
Gaia, Gaia! Fill me, devour me!
Gaia, Gaia! I am filled, I am devoured!
I am One with You Now, Gaia!

All the very rich people
In the name of the sacred law that the earth mother has got resources enough to feed all her children, as long as no one takes more than he or she needs, and always gives something back.
Once upon a time when I was sitting on a bus on my way to Old Town in Stockholm, I slipped into a state of trance. The radio in the bus was on and suddenly it sort of crackled, first once, and then again. A man cleared his voice, then he spoke and this is what he said: -’ we interrupt the normal show here, for an important announcement.‘
The crackling sound made me sit strait in my seat to be able to hear clearly. It sounded both very important and really strange.
I got an odd feeling that I was listening an old recording from the time of the Second World War.
The man continued:
-‘I am very proud to announce that it’s now going to be World Peace. All the very rich people have had secret meetings for several years, and they have decided the time has come to share their wealth with every human being living on planet Earth. They have already started to build schools and food stores that will supply free food on different places around the globe, and lot’s more is going to be done now and in the future. This way there will be no crime, violence or greed amongst the humans anymore. From now on all children and their families will have all they need to be healthy and happy. Thanks for listening.’

Then came the crackling sound again, a couple of times, and so the ordinary radio-voice was back, and it was 104, 3 all over again…......I shook my shoulders and hands a couple of times. What a fantastic experience!
Imagine if it was true, what the man had said! World Peace! The very rich people deciding to share their wealth with everybody! The most beautiful thought!
About then it was time for me to get off the bus, I’d reached my destination.
Somehow it felt like the world had changed around me. All the people I met that day seemed so friendly and happy. The entire day sensed like Christmas.

By nightfall I came to the conclusion that in spite of the good feeling I’d had all day, the magical announcement hadn’t actually been for real. But I’m going to keep this announcement in my heart, as a future possibility. And somehow I’m certain it still happened even if the happening took place in a parallel dimension. And I look forward to that day when all the very rich people get the urge to share their wealth with everybody. Imagine what a beautiful world we all will live in when that happens…….

Sun Bear’s Vision
I saw in a vision long ago, that for the sake of the Earth Mother and all of our evolution as human beings, we must return to a better and truer understanding of the earth and of all of our relations with her.

I saw that we would have to put aside the petty fears that divides us and learn to live as true brothers and sisters in a loving way. We would have to find others who shared our heart’s direction, whatever their racial background, and join with them into groups that always remembered that our purpose was to be instruments of the Great Spirit’s will an helpers to our Earth Mother.
Such groups will greatly affect the cleansing of the earth that is now occurring.

Ours lives have to blend with all the things around and within us.
We have come to a point where we truly feel the oneness, the unity, that connects us to all of  the universe,
and that we have to reflect that unity in all aspects of our lives.

We all share the same Earth Mother, regardless of race or country of origin, so let us learn the ways of love, peace and harmony, and seek the good paths in live.

It is good to have spoken. Sun Bear

A story from the Navajo people
An old Navajo-man travelled far to get to the food-store.
Since there wasn’t much traffic at the station, the owner liked to chat when he got a customer. So they were talking while the Navajo-man carried his merchandise to the counter and they were talking while the trader put the items in paper-bags.
When the Navajo-man paid, the owner were still packing stuff in bags, and talking, packing and talking.
Eventually the Navajo-man did the long journey home and when he unpacked the bags he found the money he’d given the owner in one of the bags.
Early next morning when the owner were about to open the store, he found that the Navajo-man was waiting outside.
When he handed over the money, the shop-owner said:
-’Thank you Chief. I really do appreciate this. But I’m curious. Why did you come back with the money?’
The Navajo pointed at his chest, and said:
- ’In here, I’ve got two little men. One is good, but the other is really bad. He is an evil little man.
The bad one said: he won’t miss them. The good one said: they don’t belong to you. They discussed all night.
Tonight I want to get some sleep.’

The Thunder God Thor
One day last summer a good friend, Jens, called, and told me he sold his motorbike and bought a boat instead. He invited me for a boat-ride in the archipelago. One week later I, my oldest son Oscar and his friend the workingman Klas, a rapper who puts love in front of violence, headed for a day’s outing on the sea.
It was a real nice summer day. Without any hassle we arrived to the meeting place a couple of miles north of Stockholm. The boat was a fine motorboat, with indoor place to sleep for two people and a kitchenette.
We took straight of right out into the infinity of the ocean.
After some appropriate time, and distance from land, Jens, who were in his right element, grown up as he was close to the sea and with boats, offered coffee and beer, and I had brought homemade sandwiches and sweet cakes. As we were sitting there munching, bobbing softly on the caressing waves, the sun beaming on the sky, we started to talk about our fears. Oscar was the cockiest and claimed to be scared of absolutely nothing in the entire universe. On second thought, he changed his mind. If anything, he feared the power of thunder. And if he could think of any god or goddess he’d believe in, it would be the thunder god, Thor.
–‘Thor,’ he suddenly shouted out on the top of his lungs, ‘Thor.’ We all laughed hard at his outburst, and then continued talking about this and that.
Maybe five minutes passed, maybe a couple of more minutes, before we saw the first strike of lightning flash the horizon.
And just like that, the previously blue sky was not blue any more. Big grey rainclouds had gathered without us noticing it.
We hardly had time to put on the rooftop before the storm came bursting, rain furiously showering down.
Thunder and lightning was striking all around the small boat as if it was the apocalypse. Could one feel any tinier, sitting in a nutshell of a boat completely exposed to the powers of  mother nature in the middle of a wild and hostile ocean?
It sure seemed like Thor had heard Oscar, and now had come to challenge us.
We were all quite taken by the seriousness of the situation, to say the least.

-‘If I’m about to die right now, I might as well die like a warrior’, I thought. So I straightened my back, and proposed to the guys that we’d do a ‘Phoebe’. (From the TV-show Friends. ) That meant holding each other’s hands, looking into each other’s eyes, and telling each other how much we appreciated each other’s presence in our lives, which in this particular now might sooner than we’d imagined come to the end.
‘And maybe it's not so bad to die from being struck by lightning, at least it would be a quick death, hopefully. Besides, the four of us would die together, and therefore we could be of assistance to each other as ghosts,' I said.
 –’ Ooh, mother, don’t talk like that’, Oscar said. ‘Instead, let’s not think about death at all.’
Since both Jens and Klas agreed with him, in the spirit of democracy, we changed the subject and started to talk about the future instead, about life and dreams. As sudden as the storm clouds had appeared, as sudden they disappeared. The sky was once again clear-blue, the sun was shining like nothing had happened, and the sea was as calm and friendly as ever.
Slowly we navigated homewards, dazed but happy.
This little outing was sure to be remembered forever by us who participated in it!
Thank you, Thor, for the experience of facing death as a warrior!

The six commandments of the Thunder-God extracted from the novel:
’The Son of the Thunder God’ by Arto Paasilinna:
1. Remember to fear the power of thunder.
2. Protect all life.
3. Be kind to the little ones.
4. Respect the elderly.
5. Be human.
6. Don’t give up!

The GrandMothers and I
One night just before I was going to sleep, I spoke to the grandmothers and invited them into my dream.
-‘ Hey, sacred grandmothers, come and dance with me in my dream tonight. And I command myself to remember my dream when I wake up.’
- And you can believe it or not, but that night I dreamed that I was in an old community centre somewhere in the countryside. I could see a flowering garden through the big well cleaned windows surrounding the big light room I was standing in. The room was filled with elderly women in various ages, from something like 70 to around 113 impressive years of age. There were like 25 – 30 women all together. The camera hanging around my neck gave me the understanding that I was in this house as a professional photographer, and my job was to take a group picture of all the assembled ladies. This seemingly simple assignment proved to be easier said than done.

The ‘ ladies ‘ were acting like five year old children, swarming around, playing hide and seek, doing all kinds of pranks. Just as I was ready to take the picture someone made a funny face or just moved out from focus. After a while chasing around trying to get the playful but annoying women in line, my frustration was building up to a state of frenzy. Besides, I started to get steaming hot, and so, just like that, I gave up. –‘Okey, I give up,’ I said, suddenly feeling completely exhausted from trying to be the organizing grown up, and put the camera down on the table next to me.

What happened next was that one of the elderly women soundlessly sneaked up on me. Ancient and fragile like a tiny bird she carefully put her face close to mine, so close I could feel her amazingly soft cheek against my cheek, the impression was accompanied by a strong smell of powder that’s been kept in a box for ages. And then she whispered right into my ear: -’ The three sons of yours are mighty fine boys, you should know!’

And there I woke up with a glowing warm feeling in my heart and the scent of ancient powder hovering around in the air. Grandmothers voice echoed in my head: ’Three mighty fine boys….’
Thank you Grandmothers, for dancing with me in my dream!

She who dances with the Devil Easter is the peak season for the witch in media. An exciting time, a bit naughty, someone might be flying her broomstick to participate in orgies with the devil….. A couple of years ago, when I was a relatively new tenant in the tower, a journalist from an evening paper telephoned me, a paper I had had bad experience with before, so I said no thanks to participate in an interview. The journalist asked me why. ‘Because you’re just going to go for the old mumbo jumbo and headline the interview with: She who dances with the devil’, I said. –‘Oh, no’, the journalist assured me. –‘We want to do a serious interview.’ Somehow he talked me into doing the interview in spite of my inner knowing that it was a bad thing to do. And guess what they used as headline? Of course: ‘Rosie dances with the devil’.

What can I say?
Bad things happen when one doesn’t listen to one’s inner knowing……

British psychic challenge

One afternoon a fellow student from the shaman education and I sat together watching TV.
We were watching a show that was interesting for both of us.
People who claimed to be psychic were put in different challenges to prove their psychic abilities.
The current challenge was to find a kid hidden somewhere on a huge field. One of the women, rather corpulent, put her big tummy out in front, and started to run. She ran across the field and straight on to the hidden guy.

My friend exclaimed: -‘Look, she’s using her fibers, and she’s not a bit aware of it!’

And then we realized, that what we in the collective human consciousness call using our gut-feeling, is really that human using her /his fibers to read their surroundings, and nobody is aware of it…….

My first encounter with a ghost
A couple of years ago I visited Iceland with my three sons. We travelled all around the country visiting various sacred places, and spent each night in different hostels. And it was in one of those family-hotels I had my first encounter with a ghost.
This particular house was a dark-blue wooden house, and contained four floors. My room was in the third floor.
In the middle of the night a strange impulse woke me up, and when I opened my eyes I saw a man standing at the foot of my bed staring at me. As I stared back, he disappeared, just like that, poof. I went back to sleep. During breakfast I told my hosts about the nightly visit in my room . They wanted me to tell every tiny detail, so I described the man as I remembered him. When I said that he was in his seventies, weather-torn dressed in blue with a sailors hat, my hostess ran off and came back with a framed photo of the grandfather of the family. It was the same man I had seen that very night in my bedroom!
The family told me that it wasn’t the first time their grandfather had been seen as a ghost, so no one was really surprised that I’d seen him.

It took some years until I had my next encounter with a ghost. That meeting led me and my small family to move into a house bordering one of Stockholm’s largest grave-yards. As a strange ‘coincidence’, both my mother’s mother and my father’s mother, portrayed on the photos on the top of this page, are buried in this very cemetery.
And had I not moved to that house, I’d probably never found the Tower! That same cemetery is located in the southeast direction of the Tower, which according to the shaman-school is the direction of the ancestor spirits.
So I say, thank you, spirits, for guiding me to the Tower!