Binaakwe-giizis ("Falling Leaves Moon"), October 31, 2024
Boozhoo!
What do bears and spiders have in common?
They are both intrinsically interwoven with our capability to dream.
As I have pointed out in past blog posts, in Anishinaabe culture, both of our relatives, the bear and the spider, are directly and indirectly associated with dreams. Traditionally, Anishinaabeg people believe the physical and dreamed world are one; our ancestors even believed that the dream world was more real than the world that our senses can perceive.
The Anishinaabeg have always been a dream-conscious People. In the old days of pre-contact, children were not taught the subjects of reading, writing, arithmetic, science, and religion; instead, they went to school in stories and dreams. The power of dreams and life-guiding visions and sacred stories has always been evident in ordinary waking experiences as well as in the daily actions of the Anishinaabe, whether they were chiefs, medicine women and men, members of the Medicine Lodges, hunters, warriors, or just ordinary persons from all different walks of life. A good health and success in life and the ability to help others were not deemed achievable without dreams and the help and the cooperation and the blessings of the ancestors and of the aadizookaanag, the powerful Spirit Grandfathers who were also the protagonists of the sacred stories. Dreams and sacred stories – which were, usually in a ritual fashion, told by Elders in the winter evenings – have always been causally interconnected; the same Grandfathers who played a role in the sacred stories would, in the form of personal guardian spirits ('helpers'), appear in dreams at night – or in the daytime –, to those who sought a life-guiding vision in remote places. Even today, vision-seeking or 'sky dreaming' are considered to be the primary means by which a healer (or an artist) can enter into direct social interaction with the world of the ancestors and the spirits/grandfathers.
Since the persons or entities that appear during sleep or vision quests present themselves in spirit, the essential self so to speak, bawaajiganan, or inaabandamowin (dreams received in sleep) and makadekewinan (visions) are considered to have a higher degree of debwewin (truth) than things or persons or phenomena seen with the waking eye. These bawaaganag or dream visitors, as they are generally called, often appear in animal form – such as an eagle, a bear, a spider, or any other animal species. The dream visitors are regarded as patrons, spiritual helpers if you will, interacting with the dreamer, personally providing them with special blessings enabling them to exercise exceptional powers of various kinds. To be more precise, they bestow upon the dreamer or vision seeker control over some area of human experience that is of assistance to them in the daily round of life. Examples that spring to mind are the healing of ailments, or predicting the future, or encouraging the young to develop individuality and self-growth, or exercising good leadership, or being a good parent, or keeping family and community amply supplied with food and materials, or making beautiful or powerful works of art – or whatever special social skill is needed to help keeping intact the framework and well-being of Anishinaabe society.
Perhaps the most prominent bawaagan is makwa, the bear. Ever since the days of old, the Anishinaabeg Peoples have dreamed of Makwa the bear as offering to give medicines for the healing of man. To this day, Makwa is considered by mashkikikwewag and mashkikiwininiwag (female and male herb specialists) as ogimaa (leader) of all animals. When a person dreams of Makwa they know they are chosen by the bear to be expert in the use of medicine made from plants and berries for curing illness. And then there is spider! Called asabikeshi, the spider is associated with dreams – especially of young children – through a sacred instrument called asabikeshiinhyan, or ‘dream catcher.’ Spider symbolizes the sacred web of life and all cycles that exist in nature, of which we, as human beings, are an inseparable part of.
At one time, long ago, the Anishinaabeg lived on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, it happened that in the stories of these people, after a great solar eclipse, Asibikaashi (Spider Woman) spun her web across the sky and helped bring Grandfather Sun back. She decided to catch the sun each morning at dawn, which thus became her early morning ritual. Next, since she had a special love for oshkabinoojiinhyag (newborn babies), she decided to spin tiny webs at night, thus protecting the dreams of the sleeping children. Each morning Asibikaashi wove her special wiigiwaam for Grandfather Giizis before he poured his magic rays over the land, and each night she spun webs in front of the infants' cradleboards to keep bad dreams at bay. But then, one day, the Anishinaabeg decided to fulfill a prophecy, and large groups of emigrants dispersed to the four corners of Turtle Island (North America). As a result, many oshkabinoojiinhyag saw first daylight in a vast territory, in regions far apart! Asibikaashi had a difficult time making her journey to all the cradle boards, so the mothers, sisters, and grandmothers took up the practice of weaving the magical webs because Asibikaashi was unable to do so. To do this, willow hoops and sinew or cordage made from plants were being used. The circular shape of these dream catchers representeded how the Sun travels each day across the sky. The dream catchers filtered out all the maanaazaabandamowinan (bad dreams) and allowed only good thoughts to enter the oshkabinoojiinhn's mind. A small hole in the center of the dream catcher enabled the minwaabandamowinan (good dreams) to come through. The thought behind this was that with the first rays of sunlight, the bad dreams perish.
So, it is no secret that Anishinaabeg have dreams that go further than ordinary sleep dreams. But what about the visitors that appear in these kinds of dreams? Are the bear and the spider, or the eagle and the fish, capable of dreaming?
The answer depends on whom you ask. Most people in Western society will shrug their shoulders and say, “No, of course not. Only humans and dogs and cats can.” A Western neuro-scientist may tell you that both bears and spiders may experience something like REM sleep, which means they are possibly capable of dreaming. An Anishinaabe, however, when asked this question, will tell you something along the lines of, “Sure they can. Heck, bears and eagles can dream. Spiders, too. Even trees and plants and mountains have dreams! The dream world is a world that has no borders or boundaries. Dreamers and those that visit dreams are deeply interconnected. It is never a one-way street. Who says the minds of bears and eagles that visit humans in their sleep, don’t get visited by humans as well? Some of us actually do! If the physical and dreamed world are one, it literally means there is a constant dream-interaction between all living beings that inhabit the Universe. How can a spider that weaves its web to protect our children’s dreams and health not be capable of dreaming itself? When we dream or have a vision, our dreams and visions are inseparably interlinked with all of the Universe, of which we all, humans, animals, plants, and spirits are a part of.”
And then there is Melbourne, Australia-based author Kate Forster who once wrote:
"I think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. That there isn't their life and our life. Nor your life and my life. That it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes."
Nahaaw. Weweni onjida gibizindaw noongom. Well, thank you for listening today. Giga-waabamin wayiiba, I hope to see you again soon!
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