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Dreamrider


From Chris Wayan's journal, 1986/4/15. Not a dream. Repeat: this is not a dream.

Cover of Sandra Miesel's 'Shaman', formerly titled 'Dreamrider'.

I'm reading Sandra Miesel's book, DREAMRIDER, (a new edition is out now, retitled SHAMAN).

By day, mousy Ria works as a historical researcher in a sleepy Midwestern college. But her night work gets wilder and wilder, as Ria dreams further and further off her particular branch of the Tree of Time. Is she mad? Or increasingly... sane? Her experiences form a classic shamanic initiation, and soon even madness seems irrelevant.

Ria lives in a subtly different America. It's a safety-obsessed world, an oppressive psychiatocracy where everyone conforms out of fear they'll be judged crazy or a potential terrorist. Yet her world grew from legitimate environmental and health concerns that most of us support. Dark humor, and the joke's on us.

But as I read on, the parallels between Ria's inner voyage and my own life get uncomfortably personal...

Am I taking a SF novel seriously as a life-guide? I think so. Miesel's research on traditional shamanic initiation is quite sound. It echoes and illuminates what I'm doing, clumsily, slowly and alone... in reality. Not science fiction. Real clairvoyance, real predictions, real telepathy. Real initiation as a functioning shaman. Hungry for models, I keep forgetting that. I feel inferior, jealous of this fictional character's more spectacular accomplishments!

I've gone through this once before, about another issue. I was a child prodigy in a sleepy suburban town, and the only models I had for how geniuses should develop were all science fictional: Heinlein's tales of psychic adepts (Lost Heritage and Magic, Inc.), geniuses (Gulf and Waldo) and child prodigies (Podkayne of Mars and Have Spacesuit--Will Travel); the Mule in Asimov's Foundation and Empire; Stapledon's Odd John, and Sturgeon's Maturity and More then Human. The kids in Marc Clifton's story Star Bright, Wilmar Shiras' In Hiding, and Howard Fast's The First Men. Like all such models, they were two-edged; while helping to build a sense of my difference, of my identity, they also carried a risk they'd distort it.

And then, too, I felt inferior. No, more than that, fake. I felt like a fat black girl with a skinny blonde Barbie doll--I felt defective while their exaggerated models felt real. I couldn't fully live up to science fiction's fantasies and stereotypes of my... race.

Species?

2001 NOTE

I wrote this in 1986 of course, so all my examples of parallels with my life were from earlier years. Since then, fifteen more years of shamanic teaching-dreams have just confirmed for me that spiritual initiation can indeed occur without a material teacher, and that parallel worlds, shamanic powers, and spiritual callings are as real as cars.

And I still think Miesel's book, marketed as science fiction, is a pretty reliable description of the sort of challenges and complications and rewards that a modern initiate faces. That's not surprising, since, like Ria, Miesel really is a historical researcher, and did her homework thoroughly. DREAMRIDER, retitled SHAMAN in later editions, is a clearer guide to shamanism and dreamwork than many nonfiction texts, and I recommend it as such.

For if your society has declared people like you invisible and nonexistent, fiction may be the only truth available.

NEXT: UNICORN TAG, CHAPTER 6: HALF SHAMAN, HALF STATESMAN.
I get a scholarship to Shaman U! But I stink at magic. Yet... they want me there! Why?


UNICORN TAG is a set of dreams of hoofed animal teachers who dragged me (kicking and screaming!) past simple dreamwork into shamanism. 1: The Deer Party 2: Ariane's Honeymoon 3: Everest Marathon 4: Who'll Be My Love? 5: Dreamrider 6: Half Shaman, Half Statesman 7: 8 To A Horn 8: Black Magic 9: Misfits On Mars

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