{"id":4976,"date":"2012-07-08T12:06:54","date_gmt":"2012-07-08T16:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4976"},"modified":"2012-07-08T19:26:38","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T23:26:38","slug":"riding-spirit-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/07\/riding-spirit-horses.html","title":{"rendered":"Riding spirit horses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Patsy Ramshaw, “White Mare”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Horses run through our dreams. We wake, hearts pounding, still feeling the thunder of the hoofbeats.<\/p>\n

Our dream horses are not the same, of course. Some are oppressed by dreams of a black horse that seems like a figure of death, or a red horse foreboding war and bloodshed, or a ghostly pale horse that brings the sense of sorrow and bereavement. Such dreams \u2013 and Fuseli\u2019s famous paining of nightmare \u2013 have encouraged the belief that the \u201cnightmare\u201d has to do with a mare, whereas in fact (the etymologists tell me) the \u201cmare\u201d part here is most likely derived from the Old Germanic\u00a0mer<\/em>, meaning something that crushes and oppresses.<\/p>\n

In dreams, the state of a horse is often a rather exact analog for the state of our bodies and our vital energy. When you dream of a starving horse, you want to ask: what part of myself needs to be nourished and fed? You dream of horses flayed and hung up under the roof beams (as did a dreamer in one of my workshops) and you need to ask: which parts of me have been flayed and violated in the course of my life, and how do I heal and bring those parts back to life?<\/p>\n

Such a dream also evokes the ancient rituals of horse sacrifice \u2013 common to many cultures \u2013 and might also require a search back across time into primal material from the realm of the ancestors, lost to ordinary consciousness, but alive in the deeps of the collective memory.<\/p>\n

In Greek mythology, horses are the gift of Poseidon, and come surging from the sea, their streaming manes visible in the whitecaps. Or they irrupt from the dark Underworld, from whence Hades charges on his black stallions to ravish Persephone with his unstoppable sexual energy and hurl her into a realm of savage initiation beneath the one she knows. Yet in Arcadia, Persephone\u2019s mother Demeter, the great goddess of Earth and grain and beer, was depicted with a horse\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

Go to the British Isles, and you find the white mare revered as the mount and form of the Goddess. She is Epona, and her prints still mark the land whichever way you ride, even if only by train or car or Shanks\u2019 pony. In ancient Ireland, a true king was required to mate with the white mare, as the living symbol of the sacred Earth. (It would take a manful king indeed to couple with a mare; I suspect a priestess was substituted.)<\/p>\n

We know the horse in certain living myths as healer and teacher, as vehicle for travel to higher realms, and as the source of creative inspiration. It is the hooves of Pegasus, rending the rock, that open the Hippocrene spring, beside the grove of the Muses, from which poets have drunk ever since. It is Chiron the centaur, the man-horse, who is the mentor of Asklepios, the man-god synonymous with healing, especially through dreams. In fairy tales (the Grimms\u2019 and others) it is often the horse that can find the way when humans are lost.<\/p>\n

I dreamed of rounding up a great herd of wild horses, and understood, waking in excitement and delight, that this was about bringing vital energy back where it belongs and helping to shape a model of understanding and practice of soul recovery for communities as well as individuals, The wild horse racing through our dreams may be the windhorse of spirit, or vital essence, that needs both to run free and to be harnessed to a life path and a human purpose.<\/p>\n

Of all the shaman terms I have heard, \u201cwindhorse\u201d is my favorite. It is native to at least three traditions of Central Asia, where the word \u201cshaman\u201d and the shaman\u2019s frame drum (often made with horse hide and commonly called the shaman\u2019s \u201chorse\u201d) originate. In Buryat (Mongolian) the word for \u201cwindhorse\u201d is\u00a0khiitori;<\/em>\u00a0in Old Turkic it is\u00a0R\u00fczgar Tayi;<\/em>\u00a0in Tibetan it is\u00a0rlung ta<\/em>\u00a0(pronounced\u00a0lung ta<\/em>).<\/p>\n

When you think about it, the horse is unlike any other animal. Stronger than man, it yet allows itself to be gentled and bridled and provided the main form of locomotion for all those centuries before the invention of the internal combustion engine. As in Plato\u2019s image of the charioteer of the soul, challenged to manage the rival energies of a horse that wants to go down<\/em>\u00a0on a rampage, wild and sexy and possibly violent, and the steady horse whose instinct is always to go\u00a0up<\/em>, to rise higher, we are challenged by our dream horses to recognize, release and temper the horse power within us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more on this theme, please read the chapter titled \u00a0“Windhorse” in my book Dreaming the Soul Back Home <\/em>(New World Library).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Horses run through our dreams. We wake, hearts pounding, still feeling the thunder of the hoofbeats. Our dream horses are not the same, of course. Some are oppressed by dreams of a black horse that seems like a figure of death, or a red horse foreboding war and bloodshed, or a ghostly pale horse that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,78,39,10,13,5,7,36,44],"tags":[1409,398,1404,1408,1410,1407,1405,1412,1406,1411],"class_list":["post-4976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-ancestral-traditions","category-animal-dreams","category-conscious-dreaming","category-dream-symbols","category-dreams","category-lucid-dreaming","category-myth","category-power-animals","tag-dream-horses","tag-epona","tag-horses","tag-nightmare","tag-pegasus","tag-poseidon","tag-spirit-horses","tag-vital-energy","tag-wild-horses","tag-windhorse"],"yoast_head":"\nRiding spirit horses - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/07\/riding-spirit-horses.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Riding spirit horses - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Horses run through our dreams. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4976"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4979,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4976\/revisions\/4979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}