Auntie and the Fairy Mound

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” 
~ W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems

Another post that links in to my Kimberley Story…

Like most stories, mine is not a linear one. It would be so much easier if I could look back over the time since my birth and see the orderly steps and logical progression of the mystery that is my life.

But that’s how it is with spiritual and psychic unfolding. I might hold a puzzle piece for years without knowing where it fits, and then suddenly one day it all starts to fall into place.

On Saturday night, the night of the big thunder storm when we lost power and ended up losing all our telecommunications, I dreamed of Auntie, the old Aboriginal woman who was my spiritual and psychic mentor, for the first time in a long time. She has come to me almost every night since.

Let me tell you about those dreams…

On the first night she took me flying. We left her country, the wild and remote Kimberley, and flew north until we reached the land she calls my ‘Old Grandmother Country’.

I was wearing a big warm coat, lined with the softest fleece. On my hat was a red woollen beanie and on my feet were bright red socks. It bothered me, those red socks. How could I land anywhere or walk around without shoes?

We stopped just above a large old tree with rags and ribbons tied to its branches. I reached down and tied a scrap of fabric too, and offered up a prayer. It was as if I knew what I was doing, and the landscape was familiar – like I was returning to a childhood haunt.

I don’t remember the dream’s ending, but I woke on Sunday morning feeling bright and clear and resoundingly peaceful.

In the next night’s dreaming, Auntie came to visit me again and we flew from my farm to her country with the Black Cockatoos. Then up we went, back to that cold, old place we’d visited the night before. This time we alighted not far from the rag tree, and drank from a deep clear pool of water.

“Good water, dis,” Auntie said to me. “Real sweet.”

I knew that pool. At the time I couldn’t say why. But I knew it as well as if it were in my own backyard.

The next few nights Auntie took me to many locations that have been significant for me since my birth. City-scapes, wilderness, places I used to live.

“Stop lookin’ with your eyes,” the old woman chided me, her warm hand pressed firmly into mine. “Feel dis place here,” she put her other hand over my heart.

Oh… When she did that, warmth flooded my body and my ears felt as if they had filled with blood. Not unpleasant, but still a strange sensation.

Now I could hear whispers. I could see myself, and other people that I knew. I could feel and see the energy and the wisdom of each situation – insights that had never been apparent when I was living those moments. I could hear the earth itself.

It has given me much to think about.

The night before last, Auntie took me flying one more time. Back to ‘Old Grandmother Country’ we went, me with my warm coat and red beanie pulled down snug over my ears. Auntie was still wearing her old cotton dress, barefoot and with naked arms. But she didn’t seem cold at all.

This time we passed the rag tree and the beautiful pool and stopped above a fairy mound. In a heartbeat I was standing on the ground beside it, my ankles sunk into deep green grass.

“There’s a door,” I heard Auntie say.

I looked, and just to one side of me was a low doorway made of stone.

“Go on,” the old woman encouraged me. “Go inside. They’re waiting for you!”

I didn’t feel nervous. I didn’t feel scared. My heart swelled with longing.

I didn’t even wave Auntie goodbye.

Ducking my head I stepped over the carved stone threshold and entered the mound.

To be continued…