Spirit Tapestries

My story about buying a new tapestry loom left off with me about to follow, however relunctantly, the I Ching oracle's advice.

It had said that "It furthers one to cross the great water." But first, because of a "changing line," I was to take an unknown number of small steps before the making the great purchase. The I Ching message had stated: "The Taming of the Power of the Small has success. Dense clouds, no rain from our western region," which, according to the commentary, meant that "the time has not come for sweeping measures."

When I ask an oracle, I feel it is important to listen. So I held back from my impulsive desire to rush ahead and order the loom now. I began to take small steps.

First, placed more classified ads, in both local and Maine-wide papers, to sell my old loom. I was sure I'd get a call right away. But no loom buyer has come forward as yet. I promised myself not to worry.

Then, I cleaned out my meditation/loom room and I pondered the photo of the Fireside tapestry loom I'd pinned on the wall where it would stand, a little bit every day when I went in there to meditate.

A further step was to actually begin weaving on my little loom, to start creating table runners for the little crafts shop I'd been accepted into, in Southwest Harbor. As I wove stripes in varying shades of lavender, making sure my edges were nice and straight, I got pretty bored. So I decided to put a dragon in the center, a golden dragon on a dark purple circle, with fire colors surrounding the purple. Now I'm having fun.

Then my new acupuncturist asked if I'd like to trade sessions with her for my "Noah's Ark" tapestry. A big little step. I gave the weaving a bath and took it to her office. Tears welled up in her eyes as I unrolled the piece for her to see.

My acupuncturist said that as soon as I started talking about the tapestry loom, my pulses balanced. That felt like a step.

After a few of these little steps, I thought I'd order the loom on my birthday. But my birthday arrived and I did not feel like ordering it. In fact over the couple of weeks since I was so full of desire for that loom, I wasn't sure I needed it or wanted it. I had become neutral about it.

Then on the morning of the New Moon in Aquarius, just a degree away from my Sun, I began to see what I would weave on that loom if I had it. And I began to realize that it didn't matter to me if I received any commissions or sold my works. I simply wanted to create my mytholical beings, my pictures of dreams and legends. Creating is part of my purpose in life.

Over the phone, I told my new friend from my Jung Red Book group about my sentiment in the above paragraph. She got all excited. "I have to read you the quote for the day," she said, and I could hear her running across the room in her house. "It's from The Bhagavad Gita," she said. "It says to abandon all desire for the fruits of your actions!" We laughed. Yes. Of course. I knew that, but have never been very successful following the advice.

I ordered the loom on that New Moon day. A new-found energy, Grace from the Mother, began to flood my being.


"Content with what comes to him without effort, free from the pairs of opposites and envy, even-minded in success and failure, though acting, he is not bound...is ever content, depending on nothing, unattached to the fruits of his labor."
--The Bhagavad Gita

My last weaving, "Montana Dolphin" came off the loom in September of this year. While weaving on a floor loom, you have to bend over the weaving, and so it stresses the back. In life's later years, the aching back syndrome often increases in small increments. For me, it has reached the stage of extreme discomfort while weaving.

I began to wonder if I'd want to weave again on this horizonal loom. I have my small loom, I told myself. I can weave placemats and table runners for the little crafts shop I got accepted into. But it's been over four months since I had that understanding, and I've not created anything on my little loom.

Since I've not received any new commissions, I've realized that the world must somehow know that my back would not be happy about weaving another large tapestry. (The world somehow does seem to know these things).

Before I got back into weaving four years ago, after a fifteen-year absence, I used to meditate in my loom room. A few weeks ago I made my way back into a tiny space between my loom and my altar, and there I meditate, quite happily.

Then I decided why not sell that huge loom and let the room return to the nice meditation space it was, for doing yoga and even for inviting visiting friends to sleep on a futon in there.

But when I told my dear friend in Seattle, who has been a fan of my weaving career since 1969, of my plans, she said, "Wouldn't that be like cutting off an arm, to sell your loom!" Well, no, not really.

But then I got to thinking about it. I got to thinking about the ways creativity keeps the juices of life flowing.

I was remembering the tapestry loom I'd bought when I was in Denmark, and how much I loved that loom for so many years. Tapestry looms stand upright, so that you sit up straight on a chair that supports the back, and face the verticle weaving (as opposed to sitting on a bench leaning over the horizonal floor loom). Because of their verticle construction, tapestry looms also take up a lot less space.

I knew exactly what I wanted. The loom had to have 2 treadles and 2 harnesses. I searched Google with that specification. Nothing. Only the flimsy tapestry looms that hobbiests use came up on my search.

Then the next day, I entered simply, "Tapestry Looms." (Simplicity is an amazing concept!) I hit the jack pot. I found what I would call the Rolls Royce of tapestry looms. Made by Fireside Looms. Costing about six times the price I would get for my floor loom which served me but was never a great loom.

I threw an I Ching, a Chinese oracle system based on Taoism. It told me, "It furthers one to cross the great water." But I also received a "changing line," which advised, "The taming power of the small," which means to take small steps, that it is not yet time to take the big step. Not bad advice for one whose best qualities do not include patience.

From the I Ching I realized I needed to wait to receive "support of nature," meaning the successful sale of my loom which I've now advertised for sale, and perhaps one or two other indications that would show a synchronicity, a support for my venture. Meanwhile I've pinned a photo of the Cantilever Fireside Loom on the wall where it would stand.

In the meantime, while I wait, I'm inspired to get started weaving on the small loom; something inside of me has opened my heart again around my creative nature.


"The wind drives across heaven:
The image of The Taming Power of the Small.
Thus the superior man
Refines the outward aspect of his nature."
--I Ching, or Book of Changes

Most people seem to want a white Christmas. Dreaming of it, Bing Crosby can be heard in every store. Here in Maine, I've been enjoying the warmish extended fall, and so was not really caring about a white Christmas. But we got one. And I came to believe that when so many people want something, it can come true.

On the first day we got snow, a few days before Christmas, it was a gentle few hours of classical beauty, huge flakes melting as soon as they touched the ground. That's my kind of snow.

Then came a regular cold winter snow, blanketing the trees, a magical sight, but with all turning icy overnight.

On Christmas Eve, with ice grippers latched to my shoes, I braved the 15 degree temperatures, to go to a service. Our fundamentalist church is known for a joyous celebration. Some churches here, for some reason, make it a bit of a somber occasion. I prefer joyous, or at least with the tons of the pomp and circumstance that I had been used to in larger churches, in other parts of the world.

My auto mechanic, a rosy cheeked and shiny-headed fellow, is in the choir of this fundamentalist church. Maybe it was my imagination, but after the choir members found their places, I thought he spotted me in my red wool coat among the hundred or so people and, with beaming smile, gave me a finger-fluttering wave. I finger-fluttered back! He's the only grown man I've ever seen wave from the choir loft. He did the same a couple of years ago when I went there on Christmas Eve, wearing the same red coat.

The choir did not use harmony in their songs, as might be expected. Some members even sang slightly off-key. But never mind--they sang loudly and with exuberant joy, with congregation joining in for the known carols. All to the accompaniment of either a jazzy piano or of a seven-piece guitar-strumming band, including electric base.

At the end, after we sang "Silent Night," with the lights dimmed, the choir lined up in the aisles to light our candles. To a gentle piano-playing, the choir and congregation joined with a hymn I did not know. When they sang the refrain... "He is here"... my eyes stung with unexpected tears; I felt a palpable presence of the holy one they had invited into the sanctuary.

Sychronistically, one of my librarian friends was sitting in front of me. We hugged warmly and then filed out into the icy cold night.


"Star of wonder, star of might, star with royal beauty bright..."

My series of synchronicities, which C.G. Jung defines as meaningful coincidences, began last evening with the police. On the eve of the Full Moon in Gemini Eclipse. I was heading home from my first meeting with a Jungian book discussion group, not the Red Book, but another group reading books related to Jung or by Jungians, but not by Jung himself (as the Red Book is). The chosen book for the evening was the I Ching, a Chinese oracle based on Confucianism and Taoism.

Interestingly I was the only one in the group who knew how to throw an I Ching Hexagram. Though rusty in my memory of it (I used to use it in the 60's and have been reviving the practice), I taught them how. Otherwise they were going to simply have an intellectual discussion about Jung's forward to our translation of the I Ching.

The book the group had been reading at their previous meeting was The Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self by Jean Shinoda Bolen. In a Mercury retrograde assisted synchronicity (Mercury is retrograde right now), I mistakenly read the Bolen book for a third time, to get ready for our evening discussion. I was up on synchronicities and their meaning and I had my copy with me.

Bolen has a whole chapter on I Ching as synchronicity, and how it operates like magic, with "no logical explanation why it works." I became a kind of a synchronicity for this Jung group so they could have a more hands-on experience. More intuitive rather than intellectual, which is a lot of what synchronicity is all about. So we threw an I Ching for a woman who had a burning question.

Now to finish the police story and go into the next group of synchronicities--all of them happening before, during, and after a powerful Gemini Full Moon. (For Gemini the more dupicates the better).

So heading home, now night time, after the Jung book group meeting, I happened to notice a policeman at the cross street. I braked. He went after someone else and stopped right in front of me with lights blaring. I thought maybe I was going to get a ticket, too, but he waved me on.

I'd not figured out the synchronicity until this morning, when I was meditating, during the Full Moon Eclipse, and I had an inner vision of police stopping me. I then understood that I was supposed to "stop" getting myself involved with other people's business without being asked. A bad habit I've trying to break and have recently been "tested" on how how well (or not well) I've been doing.

Now the next synchronicity, same Full Moon in Gemini time-frame. But I have to back up a week, to the evening meditation class I'd given at our local library. With Mercury still retrograde, I'd forgotten to ask everyone to write their e-mail addresses in case I would give another class. As I was leaving, the librarian asked me if I'd like to give regular classes because the participants looked so very happy afterwards. So I scheduled once a month classes. But I had no way of notifying the students.

Today, same Full Moon Gemini eclipse, I went for a walk on Wonderland Trail, down to the ocean. It was gray and cold, and with lovely rolling waves. Not a soul around. On my way back to the parking area, I noticed another car had pulled up. Two cars in the lot now--mine and theirs. As I approached, I wondered if this was going to be a synchronicity. Keep in mind we were bundled up, wearing winter hats and they with dark glasses.

For this synchronicity to work, there had to be another meaningful coincidence in place for me to connect with these people. So because of a small unsightly pile of trash at the trail head, I said to the couple that I wished I had a trash bag so I could pick up the garbage. They happened to have one. And so there we were all involved with the trash when the man noticed I looked familiar. Suddenly he recognized me under my rainbow-colored wool hat.

These two had been in my meditation class! They were very excited when I told them there would be more classes.


"Although words cannot express fully or adequately describe the essence of something experienced intuitively, such as the eternal Tao, or the reality of God, because it has a quality of revelation, words can transmit the idea [to some degree]." --Jean Shinoda Bolen

I didn't want to go to the discussion group about Jung's Red Book because these days I shy away from intellectual mental exercises. I prefer to share from my feelings and experiences, life stories. When I'd protested, the person who'd suggested the group to me said, "Well, you might meet some new friends." True, I wouldn't mind meeting some new friends, especially a few other therapists, now that I've opened a private counseling practice after many years of not. (I hadn't been able to keep my practice up because of extended travel to India over many years.)

Three women and one man showed up on a Sunday afternoon, each carrying under their arms an enormous Red Book. It is by far the largest book I've ever seen, bigger than any art book I've owned. Price: $125 on Amazon. I was familiar with it because I'd had it out on interlibrary loan for a few weeks.

The man was someone I knew well, a delightful surprise. I'd been his part-time secretary at a church on the island, when I needed to support myself as a writer. He'd already started his studies to become a Jungian Analyist while I was there, and then he left the church. I'd not seen him for two years

Anyway, so there we all were, sitting around a huge wooden conference table, in an old house (now counseling offices), everyone with their books and me without. I was fascinated that a bunch of therapists didn't seem interested to know a little bit about the "new" person, though perhaps they sensed I might prefer anonymity in the beginning. I did. They bantered about for about an hour trying to figure out how they wanted to approach the group. Finally, maybe because I'd said I was not interested in talking for two hours about two sentences of text (which is what they'd done the first time they'd tried to start the group), someone asked the minister to read aloud.

The Red Book was released for publication by Jung's family about three or four years ago. It is very personal as well as esoteric. In it you will find Jung's exquisite art work--paintings and mandalas--and his beautiful calligraphy. All about his night dreams and waking visions, his doubts, his bouts with madness in the middle of the night, his wrestling with Christian doctrine, his talks with his guide, his talks with "the depths." He says that all of his life work came out of this Red Book, all incapsulated there (he wrote 21 volumes of work about his psychological theories, philosophy, and analytical approach).

The minister's deep baritone voice lulled us deeply into Jung's own voice. What little any of us said in comment, was expressed from deep within.

When we disbaned, suddenly we began to share and the others discovered what I did, all in a nutshell, all very animated and excited, everyone talking all at once. One woman decided I was a Jungian Astrologer and she made an appointment with me. Maybe I am. I do use myth and archetype when I read charts, and I have become acquainted with Jung over the years, more profoundly of late.

It was nice to meet new friends.


"I want to go down cleansed into your depths with white garments and not rush in like some thief, seizing whatever I can and fleeing breathlessly. Let me persist in divine astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders. Let me lay my head on a stone before your door, so that I am prepared to receive your light."
--C.G. Jung, from The Red Book

Right after a friend and I saw two dolphins heading out to sea from Somes Sound, my computer crashed. I don't think the dolphins portended a computer breakdown, but rather to me they indicated hearts overflowing.

My friend and I had been sitting on the little strip of crushed shell and sand beach below the meadow, sharing about our lives. She heard the sound of the dolphins before she spotted them. We both jumped up and yelped. I wanted to dive in.

Once I got over the excitement, I listened to the sound of them as they swam, the intake of moist breath and the burst of outgoing breath through their blow holes, similar to the sound of my own breath through a snorkle.

Then the dolphins dove and didn't surface any time soon.

If I were to find meaning in the dolphins, perhaps they let me know that you don't have to get too upset over losing data on your computer. Nor do you have to fret about paying quite a bit to have an expert put your less-than-a-year-old computer back on the road. And then start over from nearly ground zero. There are more important things in life.

Meanwhile I used the library computers to keep up with e-mail, and when my computer was all bandaged up, I went there to connect with WiFi in order to download a couple of my programs.

WiFi sends me into a place of dizzy and all-around non-compos-mentis. I knew how to clear out the WiFi form my system (in Europe they often call it "Why Fry.") And so after the five hours or so of the library whirl, I walked down the fire road to Valley Cove inlet on the Sound. I was surrounded by forest behind me and to the left, high cliffs carved by ice.

The tide was high, way up, hardly any room to sit. But I climbed down anyway and found a sitting stone. Then I lay down, and somehow found myself with bent knees leaning against one boulder, back flat on another, and head on a "pillow" rock, feeling very much as though I was in the arms of the Mother.

I rested there for quite a while, listening to the water lapping, making hollow, rhythmic sounds against the rocks and boulders, almost like bells.


"I am the place of abode, the beginning, the friend and the refuge: I am the breaking-apart, and the storehouse of life's dissolution: I lie under the seen, of all creatures the seed that is changeless."
--The Bhagavad Gita

Today I had some difficulty knowing certain obvious matters, like where or what am I? I've had this happen before, and today when it came over me, I did what I usually do which is to go out for a little walk in nature. For some reason it's difficult to find the answer at home.

Today, as has been my habit over the last week or so, I drove to the end of Fernald Point and parked in the three-car parking spot. Walked by way of the elegant deserted home that sits just above Somes Sound fjord. I think I love it in this spot--in this dry meadow--because of the sound of crickets. You don't really hear crickets in the woods, not in the same lonely way.

I took the wide pathway leading through a wall of bushes, some with tiny orange berries, each nested in pixy-like leaves. Across the wooden plank over a tiny creek, then onto the deer path along the edge of the meadow and just above the Sound. Today was a very low tide.

Down on the beach I strolled under the gray wooden pier that I've never seen anyone use, except maybe once. Then down to the edge of the water, and the short distance to the boulders that block the way for someone like me. In younger days I'd have danced across them easily.

A gull was perched on a craggy sentinal rock, separate from the smaller more rounded boulders. He bent forward as if to fly off and then stopped himself. I stopped, too, and listened to the waters of the receding tide gurgling through the pebbles. Then the gull took off.

Returning under the pier and around the bend, away from the wind, I sat where I'd been daily, where the beach meets the meadow. My heel prints still there in the mosaic of broken mussel shells, smooth and sun-bleached to a pale lavender-blue.

All the while I was looking for where I was, or what, and found myself there five thousand years ago, in the moist rocks revealed by receding tide. Some smooth and small, some rough-edged and large with seaweed hair casually combed to one side.

Up from the water's edge, each tide level had left its mark on the coarse sand, several delicate lines of crushed white shells piled neatly, forming striations of time. In the Grand Canyon these lines would have represented millions years. But I had not found myself in such extremes at the moment, though sometimes I enjoy feeling smaller than infinitely small, in the vastness of it all.


"Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out."
--Rumi

No one wanted to believe we could get a nor'easter this early, not in late October. Not yet. I'd heard snow was predicted for Friday, but nothing about a raging storm. I woke to a bright, crisp and sunny day.

I took advantage and walked to the end of Wonderland trail with my jacket unzipped, no need for a wool scarf. The tide was higher than I'd ever seen it here, nearly up to the top of the soft and wide pink granite slab we call a beach. I sat on one of the boulders of which there are many--all shapes and sizes. Gentle waves sloshing into crevases. Ducks fishing. No sign of a storm.

Then on Friday, folks in my apartment building were saying they'd been told there was going to be a Nor'easter on Saturday. "A nor'easter?" "Not possible!" "I don't believe it!" And Saturday was another sunny day. I strolled down to the shore at Somes Sound fjord, by way of the meadow at the end of Fernald Point road. Hardly a breeze as I walked through the trail lined with hedges that opens out onto the meadow, crickets chirping.

Again the tide was unusually high, leaving only a scratch of rough-sand and crushed-shell beach. I leaned up against a rock, stretched out my legs on the sand, and waited for the tide to touch my toes. A couple of motor boats sped by, causing considerable waves. When the water crept in, nearly touching my feet, I went on my way.

Saturday, in the middle of the night, I believe it was, the wind began to howl. I heard the rain. You have to tie stuff down or hide it in a corner during a Nor'easter. So I got up, opened my balcony door to a blast of wind and rain, stood on a chair and took down my bird feeder. The chickadees wouldn't be out in this raging wind.

And then the snow came during mid-morning hours. I could hear the snow plows and wondered why. The snow was not even sticking to the grass, but obviously it must have been on the roads or maybe they just wanted to get out there and have some fun, first plow of the season.

Eventually we had a tad of winter wonderland, lightly powdered trees and grass, but it melted fast. By mid-afternoon the wind calmed. I hung my feeder up again. Chickadees were happy, hungry enough to pound open their seeds using the edge of a clay pot, instead of flying back to a tree to open them.

Today it's sunny and calm. Hardly a leaf left on most trees.


"The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star."
--Rumi

I've been pondering about reading signs and then understanding or knowing how to act accordingly. An instinctual or intuitive life, rather than mental or "figured out" or calculated. If you meet a synchronicity, what does it mean or how does it affect your immediate life.

As I mused about this, I remembered one time when I was camping in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona for a few days of spiritual retreat, a quest. I was by myself, with the season moving into winter. It was cold, but that was not why I left.

At about 3:00 in the morning I was awakened by a whippoorwill close by, calling out a very insistent, whip-or-will, whip-or-will, over and again. The full Moon cast an eerie shadow on my tent. I was properly frightened and knew the bird's call portended danger. Human danger, not animal.

And so I packed up at first light and left. I had no interest in hanging around to see if my reading of the sign was correct.

Then, on another occasion, while camping with a friend on the Chama River in New Mexico, near Christ In The Desert Benedictine Monastery, I was awakened at about 3:00 AM by the sweet melody of a lone bird. Since it was too early for birds to be awake, I knew it was a sign that I was to get up.

Under a full Moon, I walked the mile or so to the monastery, and as I climbed the stairs to the chapel, I heard the muffled but strong sound of male voices chanting. I opened the door to go in, but something in me said, "No." And so I sat on the stairs to take it all in--the Gregorian chanting, the Moon's reflection shimmering on the river, the illumined red cliffs rising above the water's edge.

Looking back on these two events, I realized that animal signs are easier for me to read than human signs. I don't know why. Maybe the complexities of emotion, the hidden, the contradictions. All mixed in with my own complexities.

This morning I was reading in one of Barbara Ann Brennan's books about Free Will as it relates to Divine Will:

"Our confusion about will comes when we do not understand that our free will choice of any moment is always challenged to serve our internal divine will. The degree to which we freely choose our divine will within is the exact degree to which we express and act according to our true self.

"This will is based on power-from-within rather power-against or-over another. It is based on self-responsibility rather than on blame. It is based on freedom for all, rather than control of others. In divine will, there is no place for blame or the illusion of something outside us to fight against."

Then Brennan suggests a little exercise, first aligning yourself with God's will and then asking a question about something you need to know.

When you feel strongly connected to your inner divine self, you then begin automatic writing. No judging, just write. Then don't look at what you wrote for 4 hours. I was quite amazed at the simplicity and wisdom of my answer. Quite a few gems in two small paragraphs. One felt particularly fresh and new: "Express your passion without accepting another person's shame."

My inner bird had spoken.


"...the mother tells her child, 'When you're walking through the graveyard at night and you see a boogeyman, run at it, and it will go away.'

"'But what,' replies the child, 'if the boogeyman's mother has told it to do the same thing? Boogeymen have mothers too!'"
--Rumi

The other day I'd written that the fall leaves are gone. Well, they're not. Though outside my window they are brown rather than blazing. On the carriage road around Eagle Lake where I went biking today, it was a different picture. A few trees here and there were flaming red, amidst the rust and tattered yellows and greens. The leaves crackled and rustled under my bike tires as I rode along. I love the smell of fall and the crisp feel in the air, the wind blowing my hair.

As I rode under the forest canopy, I heard sounds I thought might be coyotes. But when I stopped to listen, I knew it was loons. More than one. Letting out long strings of eerie calls, echoing one another across the lake. Over and again. Too many trees between the lake and me made it impossible for me to see the birds, but there was no mistaking their call.

Perhaps because I'm about to attend one of Wagner's operas from his "Ring" cycle, the loons reminded me of the suffering of gods and mortals. Hearts in pain. Love's betrayals. Most of the male characters in the four "Ring" operas make decisions to choose power over love, naturally leading to forsaken promises.

In "Die Walkure" there is a touching scene between Wotan and his eldest daughter, the Walkure Brunhilde. Her mother, Wotan's lover, is the Earth Goddess. While Brunhilde kneels at Wotan's side, he confesses his inner-most secrets, his darkest mistakes.

To heal his past, Wotan yearns for one of his offspring to be a hero who is free of the gods' influence and design; such a free soul would be able to accomplish what the gods cannot. He believes his son Siegmund, is that being. (Siegmund's mother, another of Wotan's lovers, was a mortal, but died in a fire when Siegmund was a toddler. Disguised as "Wolf," Wotan raised his "Wolf Cub" for a while, and then abandoned him to a life of sorrow and loss.)

Meanwhile, while Wotan and Brunhilde are talking, Siegmund, now a strong warrior, is breathlessly escaping a bunch of men who are persuing him. Having lost his sword while in battle with these men, Siegmund slips into the home of Sieglinde, the abused wife of an evil man.

When the evil husband returns home, it turns out he and several other men have been the ones chasing Siegmund. The husband allows Siegmund to spend the night, since it would be only hospitable. But he warns him that he'd better find himself a sword, as in the morning they will battle to the death.

Sieglinde drops sleeping-potion herbs into her husband's night drink. Sieglinde shows Siegmund a sword in a tree. He recognizes it as the weapon promised to him by his father if Siegmund ever would find himself in dire need. He pulls the sword from the tree.

Not realizing they are twins, separated when their house burned, Sieglinde and Siegmund fall in love, slowly, tentatively at first. Then, in one of the most sensual and exhalted love scenes, accompanied by Wagner's music of rapture and joy, they escape out into a full moon night to consumate their love.

Returning to the scene with Wotan confessing his life's woes to Brunhilde, he asks his daughter to make sure Siegmund wins in his battle against Sieglinde's husband. Brunhilde is thrilled at the prospect.

But Wotan's wife, the childless Fricka, gets word of all that has taken place in one night's time. She demands that Wotan arrange for Siegmund to die. Her reasons are too powerful for Wotan to reject. He is bound by his own contracts. He must support the marriage contract of Sieglinde and her abusive husband.

Wotan reverses his decision and commands Brunhilde to assure Sieglinde's husband the victory over Siegmund, but not to take him to Valhalla. Brunhilde leaves, confused and dejected.

Brunhilde comes upon Siegmund and Sieglinde in each other's arms. She tells Siegmund why she is here. She lets him know that he will go to Valhalla and enjoy all the ameneties and all of the glories of the heroes there. But when Siegmund finds out that Sieglinde cannot come along, he refuses to go. He decides to kill Sieglinde and himself. He will not go on without her love.

Brunhilde is deeply moved. She has never experienced a person who choses love over power or fame. She has lived as a carefree, adolescent Valkure, having fun transporting fallen warriors to the halls of Valhalla where they are to spend an eternity of glory and honor. She has served mead to her father there. She has known only happiness and pleasure in her life as a virgin warrior.

In a stunning moment of character transformation and a sudden sober maturity, she makes a decision to go against Wotan's command. She knows what her father really wants. And she wants to help these two lovers.

However, in the midst of the battle between Siegmund and Sieglinde's evil husband, when Brunhilde is about to secure Siegmund's victory, Wotan shows up and breaks Siegmund's sword.

Brunhilde escapes her father's wrath, taking Sieglinde with her. She tells Sieglinde that she is with child, and helps her find her way so that the child can be born in safety.

Then Brunhilde awaits her destiny. Even though she has acted as a free person, the very quality her father longs for in one of his offspring, and even though he loves her more than anyone or any thing, he punishes her for going against his command. He banishes Brunhilde from Valhalla forever, never to see the hall again or her father.

With his arms around her, stroking her hair, he bids her farewell, caresses her eyes, putting her to sleep on the mountain top surrounded by a ring of fire. Only a hero who can cross the fire will be able to awaken her.


And now here I am, on the carriage road in Maine, today, riding along Eagle Lake, pondering the emotional power of this Wagnerian opera, the passionate music, the extremes in emotions and actions of its characters. The inner searching. The character defects, nearly impossible to control. A concentrated allegory of all of life. With its message of giving up power for love as the healer of all sorrow and strife.


"You'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

Gamble everything for love,
if you're a true human being.

If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach
into majesty."
--Rumi