Spirit Tapestries

Every year since 1992, upon returning home from India, I'd take an herbal parasite cleanse. However in 2005, I couldn’t rid myself of the symptoms, which in India they call “loose motion,” and in Mexico, “Montezuma’s revenge.” Whosoever’s revenge it was, was relentless. No relief was in site. And so I begrudgingly downed the harsh Mebendezole, and when that didn’t do the trick, the terrible Flagil, both meds known to trash everything in the digestive system along with the parasites.

My symptoms persisted. But I’m one of those people who will seek advice from a medical doctor only as a last resort. I’d taken my last resort and wasn’t about to proceed into the recommended battery of tests.

One morning I awoke with one of those marvelous “aha’s.” An inner voice said, “Call your friend Winter and ask her to give you a reading.” Winter Robinson is a gifted medical clairvoyant and psychic. In addition to having given thousands of medical readings, she has taught workshops for developing intuition to medical students at Brown University, and other venues. She is author of “Intuitions: Seeing with the Heart.” In the past, Winter and I have traded skills, my astrology for her psychic readings, and now I sought her out.

I first met Winter over the phone, for a psychic reading in 1983. I had opened a yoga and meditation center in Tucson, Arizona, and was feeling befuddled when I realized I was blocking my success in favor of my love of poverty. Yes. Love of poverty. In this case I was a Hindu nun, not Catholic, but the sentiments were similar—that the way to God was to pass through the “eye of the needle” without camel or treasures of the rich.

During our phone appointment, Winter, in her soothing voice with slight Virginia drawl, said, “I see you standing by a lake… the water is cloudy.” On she went to reveal all that she’d seen in the more clear parts of the lake, with the essential message being, that I would remove my foggy shroud and flourish.

Though it took a bit of doing, I did flourish. My center grew in numbers of students as well as in location, to four acres of land in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills. As one of my many workshops and class offerings, I flew Winter out to the desert to teach a weekend workshop on developing intuition. Attendance was high and her visits turned into a successful annual event.

During her extended stays for a few days after the workshops, we’d make forays into the desert, with magic wanderings that felt a bit like stories out of Carlos Castenda’s books. One time the desert spirits lead us in circles of confusion, amidst endless sand, alive with prickly pear cactus, jumping chollas, and creosote bushes. I had no idea where we were.

When we came upon a couple of deformed giant Saguaro cactuses, arms gnarled and curving downwards instead of up, flanking iron gates to a desert mansion, I said, “We gotta get out of here.” Still not knowing which way to head, we picked up our pace anyway. “Look! There’s a raven on top of that saguaro cactus skeleton. Let’s go that way.” The raven is Winter’s bird and so I figured it was our guide. As the sun sank over the hills, we spotted home in the distance, and were heading up the drive when a great horned owl swooped, making its entry into the night.

On another occasion when Winter visited, a group of us drove to Sedona, Arizona, to meditate at the sacred vortexes—Bell Rock, Boynton Canyon, Cathedral Rock. One evening in our rented cabin, sitting by the fire, Winter was telling me about the man she was interested in, a doctor (of course). And then she told of the fun she’d had with another fellow she and her friends had gone skiing with. But he was just a fun friend, she thought. His name was Michael. I’d brought Tarot cards along. “Hey, Winter, let’s do a relationship spread for you.”

“Oh, Savitri. There’s nobody serious in my life right now.”

“Ah, come on. It’s a new spread I just learned.” I began shuffling the cards. “Just decide on one of those guys, the doc or Michael.”

She looked past me, fire light reflected in her eyes. “Oh…then…Michael.”

I laid out the cards. My hands started trembling as the Lovers card and the Emperor and Empress, and other certain signs, appeared. Winter was so besotted with the doctor, I wasn’t sure I should tell her what I saw. But it’s hard to keep secrets from a psychic.

“This is a very important relationship,” I said, keeping my eyes on the cards.”…you’re going to marry this man.”

“No, I’m not, Savitri. It’s just Michael!”

Well…Winter’s been married to Michael now, for over twenty years.

Going back to the story of me and my parasite dilemma. Winter is a remote viewer, and so I didn’t have to be present for her reading. As I listened to her recording, I was astonished and relieved to learn what the problem was. Gluten intolerance, bordering on Celiac Disease, which meant the villi of my intestines were practically non-existent, and therefore the loose motion, along with quite a few other symptoms.

It took some doing to sleuth out everything besides wheat bread that contains gluten—herbal and vitamin supplements, soy (because of being grown in fields that contain wheat), anything with natural flavors, and the list goes on. Once I understood, through another friend, how to stay clear of gluten, my symptoms disappeared.

Recently I needed a reading from Winter again, for different reasons. When she saw photos of my weavings on my new website, Spirit Tapestries, and read of my return to fiber art, she wanted a tapestry as trade. “Deer at Pond” is that tapestry. The images and concepts in it reflect Winter’s gifts and her astrological archetypes, and, of course, Michael also appears in the picture.


(Winter's website is listed under "Quick Links" at the bottom of the right hand column.)

Catching the edge of a storm at sea a few days ago, I sat a log at the end of Wonderland Trail about five yards from the farthest reach of the high tide. Waves thrashed and boomed. Rocks tumbled and cracked like loose bowling balls. At the end of the little beach, breakers pummeled granite outcroppings, splashing rockets of water skyward. Sun burned through fog for a while, casting silver light onto the island-studded horizon.

Suddenly, a brown head emerged close to shore, during a lull that was by no means calm. A seal! It dove under swells, undulating along like a dolphin, playing. Paying no heed to the raging waters, it was on its way, I supposed, to the next fish.

I longed to dive with that seal. I love to swim in waves and knew the ocean water would soothe my osteoarthritis pain. But not in the North Atlantic, not a sea for splashing and fun, not without hypothermia setting in pretty fast. Anyway, the task I’d set for myself was to look inside and not seek healing from external sources. And this little seal, in his own environment, seemed to express the kind of joy you find when you’re just you and going about your business, not judging, not worrying about the next big wave.

To that end, I’ve been studying Stephen Levine’s "A Year to Live," following the way of it intuitively, not step-by-step.

This morning I read Levine's suggestions for how to be with emotional and physical pain.

Breathe into it. Open a space around it. Let it be soft. Don’t judge it. Stay with it. Pay attention to how it really feels, not your reaction to it and how you think it feels.

After reading, I take off for my daily foray to the sea. At Seawall I sit on a picnic bench at the edge of the pines, out of the wind, just above the flat rocks with gentle waves washing over them. It’s several days after the seal, sky overcast, temperature forty-two degrees, tide coming in. Under my yellow rain jacket, I’ve got on plenty of layers.

After contemplating the sea for a while, watching gulls soar and eiders bob and dive, I close my eyes to meditate.

Now a sharp pain attacks my knee.

Stay with it, I tell myself. Hold on. Let it be soft.

Then my hip starts acting up. I want to move in the worst way.

Give it space, I coach myself. Hold on. Stay soft.

After a while the pain goes away. But I’m restless. Time to stop. I’ve been here long enough. It’s cold. Nothing’s happening.

Stay with it, I say. Sit into it.

The sound and feel of waves enters my body, from down up, through me, raising an energy that feels too strong, electrical.

Hold on. It’s okay.

I sit with this feeling of waves washing though me for quite a while, falling into peace with all sensations.

Presently, as I meditate, I see a body rolling with the tide, bobbing back and forth in the shallows of the flat rocks.

Is it mine?

Might be.

Is it dead?

I’m not sure.

But now my urge to get up and out of here is so strong I can hardly bear it.

Open the space. Make it soft.

Okay. I’m soft. I’m watching.

If that’s me, then there I am, most probably dead, bobbing about. But look— now I see several bodies washing in and out, bumping into each other.

Is this a scene from a war?

I think so.

Yes, it is. I don’t know what war it is, maybe World War I.

Then I rise up somehow and float above the fifteen or twenty bodies, witnessing them.

I watch this gentle bobbing and tumbling of bodies for some time.

And then I find myself assisting them, the souls of them, to rise up and into a light. One by one they reach an arm up and then seem to be pulled by some force to rise and disappear into a brilliance that shines through gray clouds.

When it is over my guru Amma appears, wearing her white sari. She sits beside me on the bench. We’re quiet, listening to the gulls and the waves lapping, watching the rising tide edge into crevices and pools. And then at some point Amma fades away.

I stand, bow to the sea, and then search for a place to pee in the woods. My boots go soft on moist leaves. All the snow has melted, warm enough for pines to release their scent.

I’ll write about this ocean experience when I get home, so I won’t forget. It’s the kind of thing that could just slip away, unaccounted for.

Suddenly a loud sizzling, sounding like exposed high wires, pierced the calm desert air. My dog Delilah, a fun-loving Old English Sheep Dog mix, started barking and wouldn’t stop. I’d been reading my friend Yarrow’s tarot cards. She was the tarot reader, but insisted I let her know what was going on between her and her Yaqui chief husband. She’d giggled when I said I didn't know how to read the cards. In her breathy, little girl’s voice she’d said, “Why, any woman can read the cards, and especially you.”

We were sitting cross-legged on a rug in my yoga and meditation center in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills in Arizona. I’d been examining the Shaman of Wands card in the Motherpeace deck, using a relationship spread, when that loud buzzing started up. Yarrow leapt up and out onto the adobe brick porch. I tore out after her. In the flower bed next to the sliding glass doors was an enormous rattle snake, coiled to strike, rattling its tail.

I grabbed Delilah’s collar and held her back. “Hold on, girl, hold on.”

Yarrow bent over and started talking to the snake. “Grandfather. Please don’t hurt my friend’s dog.” She spoke low and soft, a mumble of words. “Settle down, Grandfather; go back into the desert sand. Go back into hiding among your relatives, the giant saguaros and the barrel cactus. Wait there for the small beings, the rabbits and the mice, the ones who are ready for you to take them.”

Delilah was shaking and so was I. Hoping for some sign, I gazed over at the saguaro cactus, with its leathery, accordion-like skin, towering above my adobe house, its arms reaching to the sky. The rattler uncoiled and slithered away. Yarrow stared at me with a vacant look, her usually tanned face white, her brown hair limp. “Angelo doesn’t want you to read the cards for me.”

“What?!” I said, as I looked around for my husky. “Where’s Shaman? Come here, boy.” I ran the perimeter of the ocotillo fence that surrounded the swimming pool, and no Shaman. “The gate’s open. How did the gate get opened! I raced out and called some more.

“Oh, please don’t hurt my friend’s husky,” said Yarrow, as she followed me out the gate.

My stomach was doing deep sea dives. “What are you talking about?!”

“Angelo…his totem, besides deer, is rattlesnake. Don’t you remember? His hat band is a rattlesnake skin.”

I hadn’t remembered that, but I had remembered visiting their home amidst creosote bushes and prickly pears, near the Tucson Mountains. I’d been sitting, cooled by the overhead fan, on a faded bedspread, where Yarrow and I had been talking. We’d just returned from a walk through the graveyard. She’d gone out to get something in another room. Angelo appeared at the doorway, pausing ever-so-briefly, in the posture of a deer, his eyes wide and doe-like, looking straight at me. No…into me.

Now I reminded Yarrow of that scene. She smiled. “Yeah…he liked you. He doesn’t show himself to just anyone.”

And I’m thinking, when am I going to get it that medicine people can be dangerous. “Come on. Let’s go find Shaman.”

You’d think, after Yarrow had talked that rattlesnake into leaving my back porch, she’d be able to find my dog, but instead she dragged along behind me like a child who’d lost its rag doll.

We zigzagged over the hard-packed sand, around the cholla cactus and the Palo Verde trees, calling for Shaman. I was very careful where I stepped. We slid down a shallow ravine into the deep sand of an arroyo, and scramble up the other side, heading in the direction of Mount Lemon that rose high above the hills. At the top of a knoll, in front of the Hacienda del Sol Guest Ranch, there was my husky, poking around the flowers lining an adobe wall.

That night I dreamed of the Native American deer dance, woke up feeling uneasy. Shaman, Delilah, and I went for our morning walk along the arroyo across Hacienda del Sol Road. About three hours later, when Shaman had not followed me home as he usually did, I called the humane society in hopes that someone might have found him and turned him in.

“Yes,” the guy said, “We have your do…” But then he was silent. “Ma’am. Someone brought your dog in. He’s dead. A car ran over him.” He paused. “I’m sorry…do you want to come and pick him up?”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pick him up. I’d saved him just one year ago from a pet shop, to the tune of $400. I’d paid $20 for Delilah. When I happened upon him in that pet store, Shaman had grown too big for his cage, and was circling, chasing his back foot. And I fell in love with that yellow-eyed, red Siberian Husky. For the first several months I had him, his eyes didn’t see, didn’t look at you with recognition. He didn’t understand human touch. He didn’t understand that you don’t mess in your own bed. Then, bit by bit, his eyes had brightened, got that far-seeking, mysterious look of his breed. He had begun to lean into me when I hugged him, sinking my fingers into the down of his fur.

Now I couldn’t bear to see him dead. I’d trusted him to run happy and free while we walked through the desert. I wanted to remember him that way. People had warned me that huskies run away. But he was never more than five minutes behind me.

After a few days of non-stop tears, I called my friend Berneice Falling Leaves, an elder, to seek advice.

“Your dog took a hit for you,” she said.

That night a couple of friends and I went out into the desert, lit a fire, and did a little ceremony for my dog, under clear desert sky, stars sprinkling down out of the August Perseids. A great horned owl swooped, settled in a saguaro, and hooted. I went ahead and did what Berneice said to do. I imagined Shaman standing there, looking at me with those eyes, like he knew everything there was to know. Then I called out to him, “Run, Shaman, Run!”

"TIMOTHY'S HAWK"

My sister’s son Timothy killed himself, violently, at age forty-five, three years ago. The bereavement counselor at hospice where I’m a volunteer here in Maine, agreed with the California coroner and the police, that it was not advisable for the family to see the body. Ordinarily it is affirming and healing to view the loved one, as a step towards closure. But not Tim.

Now, three years later, seemingly unrelated to Tim, my sister and I, through e-mail, reached an agreement about a tapestry she wanted me to create for her, including price, size, and free-flowing abstract design. Brilliant colors of lilac, magenta, burnt orange, amethyst, red, gold, in loosely spun bulky wools.

Minutes after our e-mail, I headed to the grocery store. On a branch of a leafy green maple, above my car I spotted a hawk. Just to be sure it wasn’t just a branch looking like a hawk, I edged to the side of it. The hawk’s brown eye followed me. Auspicious, I decided. A good beginning for my sister’s weaving.

When I returned from the store, hawk gone from tree, I lay on my carpet to relax. I thought how I’d seen Ospreys, Peregrine Falcons, Eagles, but never, in the seven years I’d lived on Mount Desert Island, had I seen a hawk. Crows started raising a ruckus outside. Suspecting the hawk, I jumped up to have a look.

Just below my balcony, on the lawn, there it stood. Crows, about ten of them, were settled and silent now, in sentinel positions on various trees, one on top of a dead pine. Hawk looked up at me with its brown eye. Then it took a few limping-style steps. Crows scattered, cawing. Hawk stood still. Crows returned to their posts. Then, hawk flew low to the ground and into the forest, with crows scolding, in zigzag flight, racing after.

I wrote my sister the story, asked if I could put a hawk in her weaving, asked if the hawk meant anything to her. She wrote that her son Tim had had a fascination for birds of prey, and most particularly hawks. “Yes,” she said, “put the hawk in. The weaving needs a subject. It’ll be Tim’s gift to me.” It was a Red-shouldered Hawk, about the size of a crow, not the larger Red-tailed, as I’d thought. And so Timothy’s Hawk was begun.

One or two days into the weaving, I began to have nightmares, every night, waking up with a start, sucking in air, someone or something chasing me. I rarely have nightmares. After sharing with a friend, I connected the dreams to Tim. At that point I realized, that while I wove, I was to visualize Tim’s release from pain and suffering, and from the the ways he might be stuck on the other side.

According to the Tibetans, the images encountered in the after-death Bardos, can be infinitely more terrifying than those encountered in life.

Later my sister told me Tim had been plagued with chase dreams, from childhood into adult, sometimes waking him, screaming in the night. Meanwhile, during the weaving of Tim’s hawk, my sister was having her own experiences and recollections, including a dream of deep grief.

For days I wove and watched Tim’s hawk, under my fingers, rising out of a fire and soaring into color and light. During this time I had a numinous dream:

I am standing on a cliff above a Caribbean-blue ocean. I want to swim but someone tells me it’s dangerous. I see why. Not far out from the cliff is a huge, being-like mass of tangled seaweed that floats several feet above the water, rising and falling as if flexing muscles.

Soon, in the way of dreams, I find myself at the bottom of the cliff, diving into the ocean and swimming along the narrow passage between the cliff and the seaweed being, towards a white sandy beach. I feel awe but no danger as I swim with abandon, in the center of the turquoise waterway.

I awake feeling elevated.