Vulture Dream
I seem to be breaking my habit as of late of no talking about my dreams. I have always had quite vivid dreams and I have a rather keen memory of them, I even remember one I had when I was as young as five. A lot of people say they are simply pregnancy dreams, and I know a lot of them are about my pregnancy but they are just as vivid as before. Maybe it is the pregnancy that is making me want to share them though! Still, I am coming to like outside perspectives on my dreams. I do not know why I am so nervous about sharing my dreams, maybe because I do not know anyone who dreams as vividly as I do, or maybe it is because they all just feel so personal.
So anyhow, I had this dream last night:
I am walking among ancient overgrown ruins, the sun dimly lights them. I can feel the sacredness of the place resonating deep in my bones and I walk in almost total silence. I find myself standing before a wall of rubble, in the middle of it is a stone doorway, the door has long rotted away. The wall and doorway is covered in soft moss with thousands of vivid tiny red flowers. I heard a hissing sound and look through the doorway, there is a huge vulture standing there. It spreads its wings and hissed again, I feel drawn forward, as if the vulture was beaconing me to enter.
I want to explain this bird as well as I can, if anyone recognizes it as a particular species I would love to know. Maybe it has some kind of indigenous significance. Of course maybe the bird is a creation of my dream mind too.
I am pretty sure it was a vulture as it had a bald pink/yellow head and neck. There was a ruffle of feathers at the base of its neck, initially all the feathers I could see were silky black. The black feathers made me notice its feet in particular as they were really light gray and quite contrasting to it’s feathers. It’s feet were not webbed and had long talons. When the bird spread its wings to beacon me forward there was a large white stripe on the underside of each of them, its wingspan was enormous, much wider then the door, I bet they were 9 or 10 feet from wingtip to wingtip (the dream may have over exaggerated this.) The bird had a bald skin “pouch” on its chest too. The only sounds it made in the dream was a kind of hissing sound, which was unnerving at first but became kind of comforting.
I reach the threshold of the door and the vulture turns and walk/hopped forward. Beyond it I see a pool of water. The water is an opaque green and seems to swirl around as if it has a mind of its now. I know that it is a bottomless sacred well. The vulture stops by the side of the water. I approach.
When I reach the edge of the pool I sit cross legged beside of it and instinctively run my fingers lightly over its surface. A gray mist rises from the water and takes the form of two women. They step from the mist to the ground beside me, the vulture bows with his wings half open and I rise to my feet. I feel a little surprised/frightened. One of the woman is old, not hunched and crippled, but ancient tall and proud. She is a wise crone. The other woman is a chimera, she has the body of a woman and head of a vulture with huge black eyes. She had a silky white feather ruffle at the base of her next and some down her arms. She was wearing a golden necklace with this symbol on it (sorry for it’s roughness, I made it quickly in Gimp.) The vulture stands beside the vulture woman and she rests her hand on it’s head.
The vulture woman reaches out and touches me between the eyes and the crone says something. I find myself in the desert, I am flying as a crow. I look down and see a dead woman, vultures are eating her body. The vulture from the ruins flies past me and lands near the body (he is much larger then the other carrion eaters) the other vultures scatter and maintain a respectful distance while he eats. The vulture eats the body’s heart and womb and takes flight, I follow him as he returns to the ruins. It is now night.
The vulture throws up a dimly glowing orb at the feet of the vulture woman and returns to her side. The vulture woman picks up the orb reverently and gives it to the crone. The crone looks at me and begins to speak something along the lines of:
“I am the bearer of the flames, I give light to their darkness. I guide them as they go to the source and return. I am the keeper of this Mystery, this process that the Infinite cannot touch.”
As she speaks the orb rises into the sky and becomes one with the light of the moon and starlight, the moon is wanning. As she continues to speak the moon passes from wanning, to new, to waxing. As the moon waxes a new brightly shining orb returns from the sky, it is as bright as a star. As the moon reaches full the orb comes to rest in the crone’s hands.
“We are all of the source, we are one and many, we are connected and the connection. I am one aspect of Creation, that of wilderness and woman. I am the tomb and womb, I am the midwife of life and death, I am healer and nurturer, as are you. The threshold is a sacred point of life.”
As this point she hands me the orb and I feel it enter my body. I know that my baby had just received it’s soul. I feel the vulture’s head under my hand and I look down, its is comforting.
And that was the dream. Woke up with a massive migraine, gotta love that.
In other news I think when I find the money I am going to buy a blank scrapbook so I can document my pregnancy. Maybe I will turn it into our newborn scrapbook too. I keep reading I should get an acid free one. I am hoping they say that on the packaging in Joanns…
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EDIT:
I am nearly certain the bird in the dream is a California Condor (Thank you so much for the id Atara!)
Neat little youtube video about them. I like the shot of the three sunning their wings.
The California Condor is an 11,000 year old species of vulture that currently only lives in the western coastal mountains of the United States. The California Condor are the only surviving member of it’s genus (Gymnogyps) and is critically endangered. This vulture has the largest wingspan of any bird found in North America (10 feet!) and is one of the heaviest. They are one of the world’s longest-living birds, with lifespans of up to 50 years. I found this picture of the size comparison between a condor and a 6-foot man:
Holy crap that’s big!
Condors were poaching and poisoned nearly to extinction, until the United States government capture of all the remaining wild condors in 1987 - only 22 birds! In 1991 they were reintroduced into the wild. As of November 2007 there are 302 individuals living, 155 of them in the wild. You know I didn’t use to be so fond of vultures but mu opinion is changing a bit, these guys are quite majestic. I wish I could fly at 15,000 feet for 150 miles for a day…
Condors were considered sacred to some Native American tribes and capable of providing communication with the supernatural world. The Chumash tribe believes that if the condors become completely extinct, so will the tribe. Some people also believe that the Thunderbird is actually the condor.
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EDIT #2:
I looked into it and found this site. Apparently the symbol is called a Shen Ring, it was “a stylized loop of rope with each end visible” and commonly seen as a symbol of eternity.
Not only that but it was carried by the Egyptian goddess Nekhbet, a vulture goddess who was the patron of Upper Egypt as well as the guardian of mothers and children.
November 30th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
http://www.vultures.homestead.com/index.html
Some seemed to fit your description some? I asked on my LJ, since I know like four birders, and a few who are connected to vultures, so they might be able to more positively ID it, or have better resources than I do.
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November 30th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
The more I look at it, the more the California Condor seems to fit? It has the white and the spot on it’s chest too.
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November 30th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
That looks almost exactly like it, thank you so much! Wow, my dream size estimate wasn’t even that far off, they are huge!
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November 30th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Mut, Isis, and Hathor are all also related to the vulture. Mut in specific spikes my interest in regards to your dream and the crone, and Hathor as well, though she’s not as strongly associated with the vulture as Mut is. Egyptian mythology is so fascinating, though it gets confusing sometimes as the upper and lower kingdoms exchange power, and the brief period of monotheism that happened.
This whole thing is fascinating, to be perfectly honest. Such a vivid, amazing dream! How Egypt spoke to you from so far away is fantastic.
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November 30th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I’m not a bird person so I’m glad someone else came up with an id of the bird in your dreams. However, the symbol reminded me something related
to the Egyptian symbols I want to say (without looking anything up)
connected with RA although having said that, with the birds in the dream,
Sumerian wouldn’t be ruled out. Just a thought.
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December 1st, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Wow, that is an epic dream! So amazing the way everything about you and the condor and Nekhbet and the soul and everything all came together. I’m so glad you shared this with us. ♥
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