"Each [animal] has a unique voice, a voice you cannot find in a guidebook or a compilation of symbols. How the beast appears, what it brings, what emotions it evokes, what healing link it fashions: this is the story" (Russack, 2002, p. 9).

I have just such a story. It involves owls, hawks, cats, and their persistent communications with me during the last five weeks. Their attempts to reach out to me opened a door into a new world. The crux of this story is a dream entitled "Wedding Night." It came to me on June 27. I knew it was important, but I did not actually work with it until July 18. On that evening, as I worked this dream with the help of my classmates, something cracked inside me. During the time that has passed since I shared that dream in class, many interesting synchronicities have occurred, embedding the dream and its characters deeper into my awareness. I have gone through an incredible transformation, and, as a result, I now understand the undeniable importance of harboring an awareness of the aliveness of the inner and outer worlds.

The Opening Dream: Wedding Night

It is the night I am getting married. I am in a suburb in a beautiful hilly nature area. I go into a house and I'm supposed to be getting ready. A hawk flies in the room -- I am down in the basement. At first it is elusive, but eventually it gets close enough to let me pet it. I see it has a cat head. A head almost like Jack (my cat). The orange of the cat's head matches the bird's red-orange body. The animal bites me-like one of Jack's "love bites." I have to pry its teeth off my arm. I think my right arm. I go outside and see an enormous orange full moon (like a harvest moon). The hawk flies around and swoops down and bites me again and again. I have to pry off its teeth.

After working on this dream with my classmates, several themes became apparent. The first was union with the Divine. In my dream, I was going to my wedding, and this signified to me a spiritual union. However, before this union could occur, I had to enter the basement and face the shadow. At the moment I entered the basement, the hawk flew in and got my attention.

To me, hawks symbolize gaining a broader view and connecting with spirit. In addition, Ted Andrews (2001) writes that hawks, especially red-tailed hawks, signal kundalini energy (p. 154), an energy tied to creativity. The hawk in my dream was red, the same color as the chakra where the kundalini energy lies. It is interesting to note that since the beginning of the year, at least one, and possibly two, red-shouldered hawks have been living in a tree about 50 yards from my house. Andrews comments that, "this bird becomes a totem in your life only after the kundalini has been activated" (p. 154). The birds are attempting to gain my attention in waking and in dreaming to tell me my creativity is ready to emerge.

The hawk in my dream was special because it had the head of a cat. Cats, to me, represent mystery, magic, stealth, relaxation, and love. I have almost always had a cat as a pet from the time I was a newborn, and they are incredibly special to me. Perhaps the dream gave the hawk a cat's head in order to make it more familiar and less threatening to me; indeed, the cat gave me a "love bite" to get my attention. According to James Hillman (1997), the inclusion of a cat that looks like my pet cat Jack is important: "Not only are pets part of the larger family, but they are intimate familiar observers of your unconscious presentation in everyday household life. They were the first psychoanalysts" (p. 16). Jack knows exactly what I need: a little bite to encourage me to wake up.

Additionally, the cat head was likely chosen for other characteristics linked to cats. They can see well in the dark, helping me to investigate the shadow. Jessica Dawn Palmer (2001) writes that, "cat-magic was invoked by the Druidic priests and priestesses to enable them to walk between the physical and spirit worlds" (p. 69). This chimera is a representation of what I must do in my life in order to access my creativity: search through the shadow, communicate with spirit, get a broader view while remaining grounded, and to seek both dark and light, earth and air.

The fact that the cat bit me on the right arm is hugely significant. I am right-handed. This is the hand I use to paint, draw, and write, to click the shutter on my camera, to work the mouse for my computer. It is my dominant hand, and it is also connected to my left brain, my logical brain. The animal was clearly sending me a message about my creativity, and to reconnect with it, to stop relying so much on my left brain and to break free of my old habits. The fact that it drew blood, it was pointed out in class, meant that it was also attempting to connect me with my ancestry. Many of the people in my family on my father's side are artists: my grandfather created jewelry and intarsia mosaics out of rock; my grandmother paints nature landscapes and creates country crafts; my aunt paints nature landscapes and does tole painting, which is painting on wood or household objects, a craft common to our Norwegian ancestors; my father is a photographer; and my brother creates art for video games. There is no denying that art is in my genes.

Seeing the harvest moon at the end of the dream meant to me that in order to bring about harvest, to bring about my creative dreams, and to bring about connection with the Divine, I must delve into the shadow and the unconscious and deal with the ways that my creativity was hijacked by ego. In order to truly bring my art to the world in a harmonious way, I need to approach my creativity from a spiritual place, instead of from ego.

Synchronistic Events

I sat with that overwhelming realization for a while and let it sink in. As I let the message of the dream permeate my consciousness, I began noticing synchronicities.

On July 28, I had the undeniable urge to go for a picnic in the foothills of Mt. Diablo. I packed a meal for myself and my husband and we set off at the end of the day for one of our favorite locations. It turned out to be windy and cold, and although I was sitting amongst the oak trees, I was grumpy. Why had I brought us here if the weather was so miserable? As we walked back to the car, my husband suddenly said, "What's that?" and pointed to a wooden bridge. I expected to see a deer since it was dusk. But instead, I saw a bird. I knew instantly it was an owl. I walked closer and saw a screech owl perched under the bridge. I took its picture and was able to get within a couple feet of it. It looked straight into my eyes and we observed each other for what felt like forever before it flew off, silently. Now I knew why I had been drawn there.

I realized later that in order to get closer to the owl, I had to step onto a bridge over a dry creek. I walked about halfway across the bridge to reach the owl, and when it left it flew right over the dry creek bed. I think one message the owl had for me is that I need to bridge the various parts of myself, link the connection between nature and creativity, as well as the connections between body and spirit, dark and light. The fact that the creek is dried up says that my creativity was not yet flowing, and the owl was drawing attention to this by flying over it as it left me. Indeed, Palmer (2001) writes, "When owl appears, it suggests the individual is being kept in the dark about something. Owl brings warning, along with the night sight to pierce the darkness that conceals" (p. 254). The other gift the owl gave me was the ability to see my lack of flow and to see through illusion.

When I got home, I read Andrews, (2001) who wrote that owls are considered "cats with wings" (p. 172). I nearly fell off the bed when I read that. Here was a real-life representation of my cat-hawk, a bird that combines the attributes of both animals: it hunts at night with powerful talons that come upon its prey silently. Its call sounds similar to that of a hawk. Andrews writes that owl's yellow eyes evoke "the light of the sun, alive in the dark of night" (p. 175), showing yet another connection between owl and the solar hawk. This also connected me to cat energy, for as I looked away from the book, I faced my cats intensely yellow eyes, which looked strikingly similar to the screech owl's eyes.

Owl is connected with the moon, as is the cat, which echoes the full moon in the dream. I saw the bird at dusk, the same time the events occurred in my dream, and the most powerful time of the owl as well mythologicially (Owls-Symbology and Mythology, 2008). It was an auspicious encounter.

The synchronicities continued. A few days later, on August 3, I pulled the hawk card from my Medicine Cards deck, another sign, especially because the interpretation in the book explains that hawks are messengers, telling us to look for synchronicities and signs (Sams and Carson, p. 45). The next day I had another dream that involved an orange cat greeting my husband and me in a field. On August 6 I heard an owl outside my classroom while in a clairvoyant training class. The next day I dreamed of a huge wall of intarsia in my grandparents' house. Intarsia is a type of artwork, practiced by my grandfather, in which one pieces together bits of polished stone to create an image. In the dream, I saw an albino eagle and two great horned owls in the artwork, among other animals. The next day, during an aura reading, the woman reading me saw owls and other animals in my fourth chakra. On August 8 I told the classmates that had worked my dream that I had decided to openly call myself an artist. I felt uplifted by this declaration and the next day created a piece of mixed media art that included my nature photography that I was quite proud of. The energy of these encounters with the Divine was finally being released in me, and I was allowing the energy of my heart to connect with my creativity.

But the synchronicities did not stop. On August 16 in another JFK class I did a dream re-entry with the intarsia dream in order to find my "original medicine," a term used by the instructor to describe our path in the world. I determined from the eagle and the owl that my original medicine is to communicate with nature. The next day, I entered the dream once again, and the animals specifically said that my method of communicating with nature will involve art, music, and a strong connection with spirit. On August 18, owls returned to my dream life in the form of silver pendants and earrings, (artistic creations) and on August 19, I had what seemed to be a concluding dream, which I called "Cat and Hawk."

The Closing Dream: Cat and Hawk

I am at a party at a house. The party is being thrown by Intuitive Way (where I go to clairvoyant training). I see David (the owner of Intuitive Way) and I chat with him in the living room. I look out the sliding glass door and see icicles hanging from the railing. I comment on how cold it got, but it doesn't compute because it's warm outside. Then I realize the icicles are fake. They have a light green streak running through them and they are made of plastic. I laugh at my mistake. I see my cat Jack outside sniffing around. He jumps on a table with a plant and starts squawking like a hawk. Then he stands on his back legs and puts his front legs up over his head as if he were a human. He calls out something like, "I want to go to the leader." It freaks me out. I see a hawk flying and I don't want Jack to get eaten, so I bring him inside.

In this dream, a celebration is taking place, which I took to mean celebration that I had accepted my desire to create spiritual art and had actually created my first new piece. I was talking with David, a teacher I respect at Intuitive Way, and who symbolizes clairvoyant knowledge to me. He is my connection to that world, and through my intuitive training I will be able to strengthen my connection with the Divine and therefore create powerful art.

Outside I see icicles, but they are fake and infused with green. This shows me something I think is frozen is actually pliable and alive. This is telling me that, although I thought my creativity was frozen, it is not; rather, it is infused with nature/life and now is the time to get going. All of this appears to be aligned with what has been happening in waking life. But then something interesting happens: I see my cat calling out to the hawk. He has been separated from a part of himself and now he wants to return; he is seeking the leader. The cat is calling out to be reunited with the hawk.

This is significant: now that I have chosen to awaken my creativity, which is connected with kundalini energy, and investigated some of the shadowy reasons why I have not been pursuing my creativity, the hawk, rather than the owl, is back on the scene. The cat, the symbol of femininity, stealth, love, and relaxation, wants to unite once again with the powerful solar, active energy of the sun, the kundalini energy, the hawk, in order to bring balance to my creativity.

Of course, the "me" in the dream is afraid of this powerful union, and is worried about the cat being devoured by the hawk, so she brings the cat back inside. I am definitely still a bit wary of my power and ability in this new realm, and although I allowed Jack to have his freedom on the deck for a time, I still need to bring the part of me that he represents to places of safety while I investigate this new area.

It was important for me to do the dream re-entry with the owls and the eagles, because they pointed me directly toward the action I need to take with my creativity. Barbara Tedlock (2005) writes that from a shamanic point of view, "dream clarification/completion is important -- it allows the energy to move through" (p. 128). This final dream was my psyche's way of showing me that the energy that had been moving through me has been resolved. In a shamanic sense, these dreams, and the communication with the animals, came to me in order to "restore balance and to heal relationship" (K. Johnson, personal communication, August 17, 2008), my relationship with my creativity and my spirit, as well as my relationship with the natural world.

Re-Imagining the Dream

As a final exercise, I took three images from the "Cat and Hawk" dream and wrote a story. It gave me chills when I went back to read what I had written:

It's a frigid night. I walk among the silent, snow-covered trees and my heart can barely contain the beauty. I see thick, sharp icicles hanging from the bottom of a lonely bench. My breath is visible from the cold and I feel my heart ache from witnessing the majesty and grace of the scene before me. Walking here alone I feel delicious freedom, a power I haven't often experienced. I no longer have the desperate messages in my head that repeat, "S-O-S," and "Save me," and "Look at me, I want to be noticed." I have a fire that burns hot and fierce within me and I understand that that is the reason the cold no longer affects me. I see the image of a hawk carved into the back of the bench, and I sit down. There is a cat standing in a doorway across the street, waiting to be let in for the evening. I take in the scene. I breathe the cold air. I know I am free.

Here I have the images of cold and heat juxtaposed: the outer cold and the inner fire. I am no longer affected by the cold, and, in fact, I find it overwhelmingly beautiful, because my inner fire keeps me warm. I can face the cold now with the strength of my inner fire blazing, keeping me in balance and able to appreciate both the yin and the yang. I am out walking in nature, taking in its beauty, and I recognize its sacredness: I am "witnessing the majesty and grace of the scene."

The combination of witnessing the grace of nature and feeling the balance within myself gives me a sense of freedom and power. Now I can move forward, allowing that creative fire, that kundalini energy to flow within me. I sit down on the bench of the hawk, resting within the hawk's keen sight and fiery energy. I witness the cat, waiting to be let back in to the house, waiting to reunite with the hawk energy within me. Allowing the mystery and magic of the cat energy is the final missing piece of this puzzle. Once I embrace the cat energy within, I will truly be at one with my creativity.

My experience with these archetypal energies over the last five weeks has been powerful and transformative. I believe the most alive way to live is to remain open to the archetypal energy constantly flowing around us, and, after my encounters with owl, cat, and hawk, I will strive to remain open to whatever energies knock on my door, knowing that they will lead me to a place of increased balance and wholeness.

Resources

Andrews, Ted. (2001). Animal-speak: The spiritual and magical powers of creatures great and small. St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications.

Hillman, James. (1997). Dream animals. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

Owls-Symbology and Mythology. (2008). http://www.thewhitegoddess.co.uk/articles/owls.asp?SID=Mythology. Accessed 11:23 a.m. August 13, 2008

Palmer, Jessica Dawn. (2001). Animal wisdom: The definitive guide to the myth, folklore, and medicine power of animals. London: Thorsons.

Russack, Neil. (2002). Animal guides: In life, myth, and dreams. Toronto: Inner City Books.

Sams, Jamie and Carson, David. (1999). Medicine cards. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Tedlock, Barbara. (2005). Woman in the shaman's body: Reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine. New York: Bantam.