A Vow to Never Live or Love Fully Again
The Binding of Past Life Relationships
Minerva’s Swan Lore Story:
‘It began with an invitation, Two of Wands… a card with two slender reeds, across from each other, a doorway Julia says. Step through this portal and find the innocence of a youth unmarred by disaster or fear, by any stopping of the flow of magic that knows no wrong. And as fate would have it, the next card was the Fool – the pure representative of that green seeking, the kind that makes you leap over any divide with the faith in god and life to hold you, to make you fly with only the rarest of possessions and the intention to begin. The next card was the High Priestess, another invitation, Julia says. To reclaim a new stage of sitting in your power, a deep magic that is only given to you in this lifetime, a power that you’ve possessed but have not fully believed in, and it’s waiting for you at the end of this journey. So we began.
With the beautiful wise grandmothers at my back, my front, my side, my feet, my head – supporting me to journey through the earth and space and time, we came to all this water. Water in the magical woods, water in the waterfall, water as it mixes with light to glisten in radiance and knowing and make us follow where we wouldn’t otherwise go. I stepped through the waterfall and knelt at a deep green pool, the bottom unknowable and the green like emerald, pure and crystal and true. And I looked at my reflection of another lifetime and saw the warrior – chestnut skin, jet hair, adorned with simple feathers, arms in thin bands of beads, muscles lean and raw, face square and silent. I went with him through time: to the outcrop near the cliff, the open space before the mouth of the canyon where he melted into the dirt, the air of the wind, the grass beneath him, the clouds above – this was where he first met his magic, as there was no separation between him and this world, or any other.
He knew with every cell and bone and breath that he and the water were the same, one kin, different angles and expressions of the same matter, energy, being. This is where he always came to remember. Still, as he grew older, swifter, stronger, like an animal, every space he conquered with his reverence and experience was this too, a seamless tapestry of himself and the universe. He was trained to be a warrior of the highest kind. Able to hunt anything, able to kill and dominate anything with his spirit before the body succumbed. He was of great value to his tribe, and while his words were few he won the respect of all members of his web, he gave to them with kindness and humility and received from them with honor and gratitude, the trust of one who knows he’s being moved by something larger and takes the role god has given him.
And he one day meets his reflection in the beautiful spirit of deer, the young medicine woman who stands across from him like the other half of a doorway, the twin soul of his existence – and together they tangle like vines, they are part and parcel of this breathing, heaving world, their love is the embodiment of unity with all things. He vows to never let her be hurt or damaged by any darkness, to protect her with every part of himself, and she vows to be the strongest of beating hearts and minds and bodies and healers to take him back in from his journeys, to cleanse him and make him new like birth, over and over again.
Then I am with him in later years and I know a part of him has died because I can see the black stain, like a spear of shadow, running throughout his body, cutting through his union. And he shows me from a distance, I see her at the end of several tents, an encampment, yellow grass, scorched by sun. She is hanging from her neck and her spirit has left this wild planet. A people with darkness tried to take her, and could see that her spirit was more powerful than what they knew, so they killed her. And there was nothing my warrior could do to stop it. And in the moment he knew she was dead, he vowed to never live fully without her, to never love fully, without her – to honor her death with the only sacrifice he knew how to make at that time. And so he did… all the other days he walked the earth, he continued to be a warrior of means, to contribute to his people, he was a bow maker of great skill and when people received his bows, from young to old, they were infused with the faith that they could hit any target at which they aimed with truth and clarity because of the purity of his art and passion and skill and gift. But I saw his hair turn silver, and still that spear of shadow was there, and while he held that vow close, it took the life from him, which he was glad of. What he did not know, and what I had the privilege to see, was that his love and original vow of protection to her had wrapped around her heart so fully that they were only able to destroy her body. She actually felt protected by him, and never cursed what happened. They did not for a second conquer her spirit, and as soon as her breath went skyward, they knew it. She became the medicine. And they gained nothing.
And Julia invites me now to release my warrior’s vow. To send the powerful light of forgiveness and understanding, the wisdom of perspective and the flight of aeons to his heart, to this spear, to this vow. You are forgiven, I said, and I hereby release you from this vow to not live or love fully. Be one again with the wind and the stars, be one with the Great Spirit that has always moved you and dissolve into the gleaming dawn of another way, be with your love, the deer medicine woman, your twin. And I saw his body and grief break into particles of light, until the form of his body was no more but the joy of his heart, and it filled my own, and I saw them together. The two reeds, the love of lifetimes, came together again as pure energy. And I vowed, with gratefulness, hope, and prayer, I vowed to live fully. To love fully. To feel the support of the Great Swan Mother with her black down and her enormous wings, to be in my magic and non-separation with all things and be the joy that my warriors became.
The day after this session, I could feel the free fall of having broken this vow. A strange and vague unsettling, a fear in my DNA that I could not name but knew was connected to this release and the letting down of barricades I’d built myself so long ago. The opening of another doorway. What is to follow? I have no sense. Only the dreams the Swan asked me to see when I made this new vow, the fierce love and community of magic and service, the joy and the bliss of being an element (sun, water…) in unity with my tribes, in ascension and evolution and healing. These dreams sit right next to the fear. All I know to do is to let them tangle, to return to that dirt where my warrior sat and feel my oneness with god, with all things, with every spirit, to be with the multiplicity that is and always will be, in grace and silence and searching. I will leap again. I will sit in my power. And I will walk on to heal and shine.’