At the Robert Moss BLOG

In the dream, I walk through a house, speaking with fervor about my plans for a new class on Celtic shapeshifting. I walk briskly between rooms, waving my arms like a swan on the water. Standing in the kitchen, I declaim the first lines of the Robert Graves version of the Song of Amergin

I repeat the phrase, “Celtic shapeshifting”. I say it again as I leave the dream. The Song of Amergin claims affinity with all animate life, with the swan and the stars, with a tear the sun lets fall. I also feel breeze from the tale of Tuan mac Cairill, who survived the Flood as a mighty salmon, and became a hawk and many other creatures after. [2] How can I not recall his kinsman Fintan mac Bochra, who changed form when he changed his moods?

In his prose poem “Stone Boat”, the poet John Moriarty gives us this grand Irish shifter of moods and forms. Once he has been paid with a story – in the Celtic way, you never come in to the good stuff without a story. sung more than spoken – Fintan reveals, “At Connla’s otherworld well it was that I first realized that being human is a habit. It can be broken. Like the habit of going down to the river by this path rather than that, I broke it. And so it is that, although I always know who I am, I can never be sure that what I am going to sleep at night is what I will be when I wake up in the morning. In me the mutabilities of sleep survive into waking. What I’m saying is, my shape depends on my mood.”

One to One with Robert Moss

A recent interview with Jon Wilson for his “Jung and the World” podcast

Available Now!

GROWING BIG DREAMS

Here’s a fun note on the pre-history: A year ago, I had a clear vision in the space between sleep and awake of the manuscript of my new book being delivered to my door in a baby basket.

July 6, 2019: Hypnapompic zone

Baby Basket at My Door

Someone is at the door, making a delivery. I go to the door and look out into a narrow street of whitewashed houses, flooded with sunlight. At my door someone has left a baby basket. Really? I look more closely. Instead of a baby there is a bundle of typed pages, neatly stacked and tied with both pink and blue ribbons. I know this is the next book I will publish. Feelings: happy, excited

At that point I had not decided what my next book would be or made a publishing plan. After I shared my dream and the drawing with my wonderful editor Georgia Ann Hughes we agreed on a plan for the book.  GROWING BIG DREAMS, which contains a chapter on the creative gifts of hanging out in that liminal space between sleep and awake, was officially published on September 29. The audiobook version, narrated by me, is available on Audible.