Earthdreamers

Earthdreamers germinated in a sporadic series of conversations, dances, actions and ceremonies involving various members of the initial collective. Most visibly, a group of ecstatic dancers blockaded Faslane nuclear military base in 2007, and a Golden Throng took to the streets of London’s Square Mile during the G20 protests and Climate Camp in 2009.

Then the vision of a more consolidated possibility – and the appearance of the name ‘Earthdreamers’ – came to one of us last autumn, who takes up the story:

“I was participating in a shamanic burial ceremony in Devon, which involved spending a night in the grave – resting inside the earth, in dialogue with Death, the one they call ‘the great advisor’. During the course of this intense and transformative experience, I asked for a new medicine name. (medicine names are shamanic names which act as a reflection and expression of a person’s essential energy and presence, or medicine. They are usually received in initiations or other ceremonies with a sacred intent)

For many months I had been feeling despondent and disempowered in relation to the state of the world situation. So part of my intention for this burial ceremony was to ask Death, and the earth in which I lay, for energy and guidance in germinating a new phase of personal engagement in politics and ecological action. A few hours into the burial, the words Earth Dreamer came into my consciousness, and I felt a strong resonance with their sound, their meaning and the images they evoked. This seemed to be what I was hoping for… However, as I began to get excited about ‘my’ new medicine name, I became aware of the 26 other people in the group I was with (all dancers) who were also buried in the earth nearby. I meditated on us all lying in our graves, and it seemed to me that we were in earth ‘dreaming pods’, connecting and listening to the planetary mother, re-sourcing our essential nature. And I felt our strength as dancers, how the dance was core to my, and I presumed our, ability to be connected with the earth, its dreaming and its web of interconnected life. The more I stayed with this feeling, the more I started to feel like the Earth was saying, or rather booming, to me “it’s not your name! It’s for all of you, all the dancers working for the Earth and her children in these times of change and challenge…”

And so as Death whispered reminders of my limited time and vast blessings here on this planet, my feeling grew that Earthdreamers is a collective medicine name. As such, it is available to any who should choose to carry it and use dance, conscious movement or forms of shamanic practice as the dreaming ground and action toolkit for environmental, social and political engagement. I am an Earthdreamer; we are all Earthdreamers – and it’s time to awaken into our dreaming.

So I offer this experience, and the invitation within it to carry and use this medicine name, to become Earthdreamers, and to move into the vibrant webs of movement, action and consciousness in service of the living planet”