Chapter 7

Fred

The huge woman appears

Fred was a man traveling alone. On the top camping deck of the ferry from Bari to Patras, he set up his sleeping area with great care. He put his sleeping mat on the ground carefully feeling for wind, for sun, for moisture. He sniffed as he found his place, he walked around in small circles with his hand out and his palm facing down feeling for energy. He half closed his eyes and scanned the deck and finally , like a dog turning and sitting he settled down. He had not looked around him at people, at the other campsites, at the bar or the swimming pool or the sea beyond. He was not looking at physical details, he was looking at energy. After he put down his sleeping pad, he opened his backpack and took out several small plastic animals and carefully placed them outside the pad. He put a small eagle on one corner, a bear on another, a lion on the third corner and a turtle on the last. He looked at the four animals and smiled half to himself half to them and sat in a meditation lotus pose in the center. He was tall, thin, had a beard and long hair. He looked like many other young travelers on the deck but he also looked completely different. He radiated a seriousness of purpose, a ancient agelessness and wisdom that was not usual on this tourist filled deck.

Fred’s work  was photographing animals. He wandered all over the earth taking photos of wild animals that no one else could take because no other photographer could feel the animals and had the patience to wait. Fred was also deeply religious and meditated every day and he was studying shamanism. This was natural since shamanism  was about animal spirits and speaking and listening to them. As he traveled, he found he was passionately interested in how indigenous peoples who were one with animals changed their beliefs to believe in gods. The transition from animism to gods and goddesses was a mystery to him that he could not unravel. For him, the world as he knew it  was still about animals and animal power and that’s all. Even as he sat in meditation on his prayer rug/sleeping mat he saw a vision that dominated his life  over and over again. He did not remember anymore where he first saw it, maybe in Canada photographing eagles, or maybe where a Native American  woman had done a sweat with him introducing him to animal spirits , but it was certainly in the center of his young life. In his meditation he would see a huge spinning wheel in the sky. From his travels in Montana and Calgary he knew this was a medicine wheel, an ancient power circle. And he saw it form from nothing , from empty space as it were as if it was a crystal being born. Then.. he saw a being, huge, formless and expanding and contracting with each breath. The being then split into two, the two beings slowly separated into a woman and a man, then kissed and made love. Then after passionate lovemaking his four animals appeared. Umm. Nowhere in his shamanic studies did he read about this story of one like it. He read about medicine wheels worldwide, about sacred circles, about creation myths but never this story of a man and woman making love inside and around  one.

Why was he going to Greece this summer? He asked himself that on the mat, in meditation, in his sacred space he had created to travel to Greece. Greece was not a place he had been interested in, he did not know much about it’s history or mythology yet he found himself on this ferry heading to the unknown. As far as he knew there were not many wild animals in Greece, they had all been killed long ago, and there in fact was not even much wilderness. His girlfriend was back in Providence. She did not come on the trip. She had a job that she could not leave and even though it was summer she stayed home to work. His relationship with her had become  difficult. She constantly was anxious and she worked all the time but he still loved her and stayed with her.  One day,  vacation loomed in front of him like a temptress so he did a meditation and small ceremony. He made a prayer to his animals  to tell him where to go on holiday to make meaning in his life. He got an idea in the meditation. He spun his old  globe from his childhood, closed his eyes and put his finger down. He opened his eyes and his finger was on Greece. He did not like that at all, but as someone studying shamanism he knew trust was important and he kind of decided to trust the meditation and go to Greece.

Now,  he looked around him. Only now was he orienting himself to where he actually was in physical space. He saw he was on a large ferry on the sea. He saw the people camping, now he saw a bar, the swimming pool in the distance, the railings of the deck, and the sea stretching away from him like infinite bowl. And he saw a young woman in a white dress fast asleep on a mat  across the deck  from his. She attracted his attention immediately. Everyone else on the deck was dressed in informal camping clothes. She was in a white gown. But this was not the reason he was staring at her now. She was radiating light. Umm. He could almost not even look at her she was so bright. And beyond that she was covered with beings, as she breathed, almost imperceptibly, she turned into different beings, into animals like the ones in his medicine wheel and then into women. He had never seen anything like this or imagined it could exist and now he was spell bound. He could not take his eyes off of her yet at the same time could not look at her so, he did what he knew, he did both at once. And as he drifted to non space and non time, between looking at her and not looking at her, he saw something astounding. She had turned into a huge beautiful woman whose power was undeniable and pure and then,…this huge woman turned back and forth into a wolf.