I’ve always been drawn to the dead—perhaps more than the living—from the time I was wee young. They used to scare me terribly, and even as a child, I recognized that they were spirits of the dead, which people around me did not perceive. I often woke in the night to find them standing at the foot of my bed, or when I was upset and hiding my tears under the covers, feeling the bed sag under the weight of someone who had come to comfort me. Only when I lifted the covers the single visible evidence of my visitor was an indentation in the mattress beside me. In spite of the comfort, those experiences terrified me.
The visits continued, and eventually the fear abated, only to give way to a different sort of interference. I learned very quickly to keep my experiences with the dead to myself. No one believed the things I saw. Sleep deprivation became the norm, as when I was most relaxed, the death experiences they brought were more vivid. It made my life easier to just close them out, shrink them to mere shadows at the corner of my eye—or so I thought.
Even when I began to formally study shamanism, there was distance between myself and the realm of death. I no longer shut them out, or attempted to quell my ability in anyway. Intuitively drawn to psychopomp work, I refined my means of releasing them, communicating with them. I learned that with my owl guide, I could see the souls of all things, quick and dead, and with my female guide, I could find the love of Spirit in any experience. Yet, I wouldn’t give myself over to the ecstasy in death. I couldn’t let myself feel that those who came to me for release actually had lived--that in death, they were living still.
Turning to my spirit guides to help me release the block and learn to flow into my role with facilitating death, they led me to the Hill of Tara, in Ireland. I felt very familiar with the tomb, though as I attempted to explore it, a herd of horses, red mustangs trampled me.
I lay on the ground in my own point of death, wondering what I should do, realizing that although I was no longer attached to my body, my existence wasn’t over. I knew there was something I was supposed to do, but I didn’t know what it was.
I found myself drifting to my upper world, but it was different from its usual freely moving clouds and open blue space. There small golden clusters of people in ethereal cubicles, working, walking around with beverages, pointing at schematics on drafting tables, deciding what they would do in death, laughing, talking, making plans.
As I studied them, I realized that each cluster was unique and pertained to a different possibility in death.
I saw that I could live again on Earth.
I could guide someone else on Earth or another place.
I could be a maker of soulbodies, those who purify us before we are reborn.
I could help create another growth planet, like Earth.
As I thought about all of the possibilities available to me, to all of us, I found myself on the ground at Tara again. One of my guides picked me up and carried me to the crest of the tomb mound. She wrapped me in bandages, then removed them. When the wraps were gone, I was no longer bloody or wounded, and I plainly saw crystals and gems all through my etheric body.
She thoroughly inspected my body. When she reached my back, I glanced over my shoulder to find that my upper back and neck were a shimmering silver hollow, as if something was missing from the area.
My guide began breaking the vertebrae, ribs and cartilage there, pulling out bits and pieces and tossing them on the ground. As she worked, she told me I no longer needed those parts, that she needed to clear the space so that my wings could grow back healthy and strong. I knew she was referring to the wings I learned a few years ago belong to the sorceress owl that I become in my medicine circle, who “carries the dead to Spirit on her wings.” As my guide continued to pull out the bones, I understood that somehow, even though I could see the dead, and interact with them, assist them, I had repressed my nature to carry the dead to Spirit--be it from night terrors as a child, the psychological baggage of experiencing something others could not even believe existed… Perhaps that repression occurred in an experience before this life. Regardless, my guide was making room in my life for my role with death, in my body for death’s wings.
In past dismemberments, my guides healed the wounds immediately after. But this time was different. My guide left my back open, telling me, “You must be the one to heal this. Guides and others will help if you ask, but you must be the one to remember to fill it with light and check the progress. They are your wings.”
I felt a great responsibility from her words. She had given me the understanding of the distance I felt in working with death, even a means of correcting it by clearing space for my much needed wings. Yet she was entrusting me with the spiritual obligation to myself and my shamanic work to heal the space and allow the wings.
I asked if there was more that I needed to see and my guide smiled, a truly rare thing, and said, “I’m proud of you for taking this journey.”
I don’t know if she meant this journey to the death realm, or the journey of my life, itself. I just know that now, when I release the dead, I can have their experiences and feel well in them. Now, I do carry them to light with my wings, flying myself back among the living. I understand the life that comes after.
Perhaps she meant both journeys. Perhaps she meant, there is no difference.
Bio: S. Kelley Harrell is a writer and shamanic practitioner living in Cary, NC. She is available for private journeying sessions, Reiki treatments, and workshops. Her upcoming book Gift of the Dreamtime: Awakening to the Divinity of Trauma will be available this winter. Contact Kelley at 919/ 414.7710, or kelley@soulintentarts.com. Visit her website: Soul Intent Arts.