I closed my eyes and was in a cave. I tried to sense its dimensions, in kinesthetic “glimpses” it was huge. Carlsbad Caverns huge. I followed a slant down, and down, to the left, narrowing, then opening into a cove and onto a beach at night. I stood, listening to the waves which I could only see as undulating darkness. But some visuals were flickering through. Of the stars, the night sky. The sand. I was barefoot. I called mentally for an animal friend to come and show me the way to the guide.
Moments later I sensed a small fuzzy animated something and follow it up the coast to the right. We soon came upon a campfire, and shanty lean to of driftwood and a man sitting cross legged in tattered clothing, a dirty golden beard and a mat of stringy hair the same color. I asked if he was my true guide. He said he was. But in other words, which sparkled but already slipped from my memory, writing about this almost a day later. I forgot to give him permission and ask him to let me feel how he feels toward me.
I asked him to show me where the sun was. He pointed to a place in the sky, which changed to day. And I asked the Sun if I could speak to it in human form. It came as a man of golden light. I asked him what he needed from me and my life in order to start to work with me and be my friend. He told me to work on my posture. I asked him what do you have to give me that I need from you? And he gave me a pipe. I took it without asking my guide if I should have. I think it is made of living dragonflies. I asked the Sun how to use it. And he communicated an understanding. I handed it back to him and asked him to put it in my body in a place where I should absorb or carry it. And now I have a dragonfly pipe along my left clavicle.
I thanked him I think. I hope. I thanked him again just now, in case. I said goodbyes to the Sun and the guide and made my way back the way I’d come. I opened my eyes, outside the cave, back in the quotidian world. I lifted my left hand and energy of the pipe formed itself there, pulled from particles in my clavicle, ready to go.
My rune draw today was gifu. Which clarified this journey further.
Everything has a price. If you ask for a gift and have offered nothing, then it can demand anything in return. It’s a blank check. The old runic sagas for this rune warn to be careful not to ask more than you are willing to pay. That’s why the first question, what is my side of the bargain? And the archetypes, like the ones in Tarot, want to awaken their energies in the self and express them in the world. Perhaps they share in our consciousness. But I suspect it is much much more. And since they work through lenses of our identity, our personal history, but are non-linear in time, they may ask strangely trivial, by our account, things from us. They know the places where the smallest of energy creates the greatest cascades of effect. The lever Archimedes claimed could move the world.