Meeting the Dragons

About a year ago, I entered a sacred process. In an altered state breathwork ceremony, led by my beloved sister Sterling Rose, I was visited by dragons.

Yes, giant soaring violet dragons, who brought stories of an ancient Norse lineage, a dragon lineage, my lineage. They sang to me promises of culture, of tradition, and of belonging. I understood every whisper of their language, and their medicine of ice and fire shot through my veins. I was mesmerized by their violet flames and thrown around by their howling winds. I even saw through the eyes of one, as she soared over dark, choppy waters, her wings sending gusts of wind behind her with each downward pump.

And I wanted more. My whole heart yearned for more.

Tell me your songs and your creation stories. Share with me your medicines and herbal remedies. Teach me your rituals and ceremonies. Let me in. Let me all the way in.

I hadn’t realized how desperately I longed for lineage, to feel connected to something ancient, not just in my practices and my prayers, but in my bones and my blood. The dragons spoke to the wound deep within me, deeper than anything that I’d ever been able to touch. They spoke to the part of me that missed so tenderly and painfully the grandmother that I never got to meet, and her grandmother, and her grandmother’s grandmother. They spoke to my hands, who wished to harvest herbs whose names I do not know, to make medicine I have never tasted. They spoke to my ears, who ached for the sound of lullabies in an ancient tongue that I never got to hear. And they spoke to my heart, who craved the sense of belonging and self-recognition that comes from Origin.

I’ve walked a beautiful path, and I will continue stepping with humility and grace towards the light of love. Many teachers of living, unbroken lineage have generously walked with me, guiding me along the way, gently bringing me back to right relationship. Their care and compassion have been immeasurable gifts. 

And now, I see. 

I have been searching for myself in the lineage of others. I’ve been looking under their stones for the voices of my own ancestors, tracing my story back through Gods and Deities that my ancestors knew by different names. I’ve been praying to them in languages they don’t recognize.

And that’s okay. It’s beautiful, even. 

I am blessed to sit with wise, indigenous keepers of the mystery. It is a great honor to be allowed to carry their medicine and share their sacred ceremonies, with humble respect and an eternal willingness to learn and do better. And, there is something even truer.

Something deep deep beyond deep within me, that all of this is pointing to. 

The dragons allured me with their offers of a lineage that was irrefutably mine. But, since their sudden arrival into my life, I’ve learned of a place where questions of mine or yours can’t even be formed. A place so primordial that lineage stops existing. Or perhaps it never existed.

I found this place through a sacred and ancient tree, which grows from the damp cracks and crevasses in the lava rock, once cooled and hardened after Pele’s bleed of creation, on the island of Hawaiʻi. 

Ōhiʻa Lehua. Ōhiʻa Sophia.

Through diet and ceremony, this dragon tree of creation brought me to the primordial womb. To the pause before the sound. To the nothing that is, before the light of creation penetrates the darkness. To the Mother. To Sophia.

And in that silence, I found myself, and the One True Dragon. My prayers were answered. I was home.

There was a period of disorientation after I emerged from the womb. Who was I, now, here, without the unquenchable thirst for lineage, without the insatiable hunger to gather others’ wisdom like artifacts, hoping that eventually they would lead me back to myself? Who was I without self-doubt, without the unconscious need for spiritual credentials? Who was I without the wound?

I come to you, here, now, with all of it. With all that I carry, the rainbow of traditions and teachings, the cauldron of medicine, and the violet flame of the dragons. With the living pieces I’ve been able to gather from my Norse and Frisian lineages. And with the river of creation that flows to me and through me, directly, from the sacred center, the Mother Divine.

Nothing is missing, and all of it belongs. I am, and have always been, home.

I’d like to leave you with a phrase that dear friend, dragon sister, mother and mystic Jane Mayer said to me from across the circle, in ceremony; words that I come back to again and again, and which fill me equally with awe and peace.

Lineage is a beautiful path to the Mother. But it is not the Mother.

And what’s beautiful, what I’ve recently learned from the dragons over the past year, is that the Mother is always there. She is the place that we all have in common, and there are innumerable, gorgeous paths that lead to her.