Last night I had a dream.
I was with Angela, my mother-in-law. We were sitting on a bench in a park. The weather was beautiful, the sun was shining, and we could feel the warmth of the rays on our bodies. Angela’s nose started bleeding. Beautiful scarlet blood gathered at the tip of her upper lip. I heard buzzing and saw hundreds of bees flying around us. Each sat at Angela’s face and picked up some of her blood. I asked her if she would like me to scare them away. She said: ‘Let them be. They will pick all the blood and make red honey. It will heal us all’. I woke up bemused and a little startled. Next day we found out that the tumor in Angela’s nose is a rare and aggressive cancer. Somehow, after that dream I knew she doesn’t have long. This was our first step on a liminal path.
The word ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin ‘limen’ and means ‘threshold’. ‘In its literal sense, a threshold is a doorway. Liminal is often used to describe the threshold, or gateway, between two stages’ (1). The doorway leads from here to there, and from there to here. The doorway is here and there, and nowhere at the same time. You can never be sure what you will see when it opens. It’s a place that is ruled by its own order, different than the one we are used to in this world. This is a place out of this world – a place in between. Liminal space is a place of transition. Death is the Mother of Transitions. When we hover on the brink between living and dying, we are embodying the liminal space. Dying people inhibit two worlds at the same time – they are still here, but a part of their soul is already reaching out and begins to be ensouled in this new place creating a bridge, a passage that we can travel. Without knowing we stepped on that bridge together, Angela and I, and we found our directions and understanding through dreams.
Last night Angela had a dream.
‘I was packing my suitcase and getting ready for a trip. I didn’t know where I was going but I was very excited. I was standing at the sea front and the sea was calm and peaceful. You were all there and I was happy to see you all come to see me off. You were taking your time and walking slowly, stopping for Raven (the dog) to play in the sand. I was getting more and more restless. I wanted you to hurry up as I was worried that I would miss my trip, but you didn’t seem to mind. I decided to leave you behind and went towards the sea.’
The significance of this dream dawned on me right after I’d heard it, and I knew that Angela understood it too. I asked if she was scared, but she didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet.
Since her diagnosis we have been spending a lot of time together. We met every morning and if we had time, we shared with each other dreams from the previous night. If mornings were busy or difficult, we shared our dreams at bedtime. Our goodbyes looked similar each day as well. ‘Good night’, we would say. ‘See you tomorrow and in our dreams.’ The things we dreamt about were similar too – sea, family, loved ones who passed, and bees. Sharing dreams together induced the liminality of storytelling and became the wooden planks of our bridge allowing us to walk together comfortably, although both of us knew that I would stay on this side, and that Angela at some point will cross the entirety of that bridge by herself. As liminal places have a more fluid relationship to time, we could travel together into the past and future and meet in the present to share what we’ve learned. It was a precious time – it was a sacred time. Dreams are liminal – they convey allegoric life lessons and allow us to safely pass from here to there and back again. ‘They allow us to lose ourselves in the liminal space of not knowing how it will end’ (2), and at the same time deeply knowing and understanding what the outcome would be. Our dreams were the stories we were telling ourselves, so we could find solace, wisdom, kinship and through togetherness look into the future, however bleak it was unfolding to be.
As liminal spaces lie at the outer edges of our consciousness, we often must transition into the subconscious to be able to travel them – here dreams become very helpful. Through being of this and at the same time not of this world, ‘liminality provides a fertile ground for creative exploration of self’(3) – and here also dreams bring the answer. Another thing to remember is that ‘psychologically and emotionally we crave homeostasis and predictability’(4), but liminality throws us right into the depth of the void, into the unknown, sometimes scary and un-walked territory. Into the nooks and crevices of the underground caves, filled with velvety darkness and the buzzing of bees.
The bee has a deeply rooted place in folklore and mythology throughout the entire world. She is connected to many goddesses – Demeter, Persephone, Aphrodite, Cybele, Diana, and to many gods – Re, Vishnu, Krishna, to name a few. They were always considered messengers bringing news from the otherworld, from spirits and gods(5). ‘In several German folktales the soul comes out of the body of a sleeping person in the form of a bee (we shall find the same belief in Scotland)’. ‘Egyptians often represented souls as birds, but the soul could also assume the form of the bee’. In Greek and Roman myths ‘bees, who lived in clefts of rocks or in caves, appear to have been considered as intermediary connected with, if not actually embodying, the souls of the dead. These clefts in rocks or caves were thought to be entrances to the underworld of dead spirits’(6).
Narrow caves and nooks in rocks symbolizing the gateways are very liminal, and bees as the messengers are embodying the liminality themselves. They are the messengers and mediaries between the realms, able to share the knowledge from there with us here, able to share the wisdom of the Earth and Gods themselves. In Greece they were also called ‘Birds of the Muses’ and were often considered a source of divine inspiration, prophecy, song and dreams.
Last night I had a dream. I was standing in a field, totally lost. The field was immense, and I couldn’t see anything else. I didn’t know which way to go, and I grew more tense and worried with each passing minute. I was surrounded by flowers I didn’t know, by colors and smells that overwhelmed me. I saw a bee, a single bee take off from a flower. I felt this urge to follow her and as she flew very slowly and low to the ground I walked behind her. With each step I felt calmer and more at peace.
Last night Angela had a dream. ‘I was standing on cliffs looking down at the sea. The sea was rough, the weather turned quickly. The wind picked up and the waves were crashing on the cliffs. I felt lonely, I didn’t like it. The deafening roar of the waves was all I could hear. Then something shifted. The roar became the hum, and I thought of bees. There was a man standing behind me, circling me with his arms. All was as it should be then, I was at peace.’
Dreaming is one of the most liminal places I can access when connecting to spirits or prophecy. Meditation is another one. Sleep brings you to a place between being alive and dead at the same time. A place where the soul can leave the body (dead), but then safely return to awake again (alive). Dreaming is a space touched by the divine, it’s a gate. Death is a gate as well, and because of that death is liminal. Death is a transition, and all transitions have liminality embedded in their texture. The in-between and in-betwixt, a place where gods and spirit dwell. Dreaming brings us into the sacred – time and space. Heart for me is a liminal space too – it’s placed between Great Above and Great Below – such a powerful energy centre. This is why we always begin in the heart and end in the heart. Breath, heartbeat – it all comes into the sacred space, this energetical centre. In the liminal I can find my healing. Through the liminal we change and grow, it’s a call into depths from where we return transformed.
Last night I had a dream. It’s all in pieces and moments. I remember a bridge, a crystal bridge. I was walking the bridge feeling different frequencies the further I went.
Last night Angela had a dream. ‘I was dreaming about the bridge. You were there, and someone else. I don’t know who it was, but I knew them.’
After that night she stopped eating and drinking. When we talked about the bridge dream, I asked her if she was afraid. She said she was before, but now she feels at peace.
Thinking of the liminal I wonder how much dying and giving birth have in common. In both, there is an energy of contraction and expansion and pauses in between. There are so many similarities between both energies. Contraction and relaxation, contraction and a baby is released from the body. Contraction and relaxation, contraction and the soul is released from the body. In both the journey, the bridge, the liminal. Death is the birth of the soul. Birth is the embodiment of the soul. Once embodied for a time, the soul must be born once again. I’m holding space for our dreaming and preparing us both for what is to come. The bees became our guardians and guides. We both hear them, see them and follow them in our dreams. They tell us that death is near, but they also fill our hearts with the promise of re-birth.
When Angela slipped into a drug induced sleep, we knew that she had entered ‘the sacred house’, a deep realm of dreams I couldn’t follow her to. She crossed the middle of the bridge and had to finish her journey alone. As I stopped dreaming for two weeks after her death, I imagined her walking towards the hive. I imagined the Goddess as Queen Bee waiting for her sister, for her daughter to come back home. I imagined her immersing herself in her beloved ocean, the primordial waters, and being guided through death and regeneration. I imagined her united with her husband, sister, niece and parents, with the ancestors she dreamt of – I imagined her becoming pure, ever-new and reborn. Now, I’m waiting for her visit in my dreams.
In loving memory of Angela Evelyn Prime (24.10.1930-15.09.2024)
With love,
Agnieszka
Notes:
- C. Gillman, Learning to love the spaces in between: Discover the power of liminal spaces, Welbeck Balance, London 2022.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- S. Gordon, Popularna encyklopedia mitow i legend, Amber, Warszawa c1998.
- Hildam, Ransome, The sacred bee in ancient times and folklore, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London 1937.
Photo credit: Natasha Fraga