BELUGA WHALE

A post about animal communication and teachings

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While spending one month alone in our forest house here in Sweden (under very severe weather conditions) I dropped into a place of deep dreaming.

I divide my dreams into three categories:

• Composting dreams (processing everyday experiences, I don’t write those down)

• Dreams of personal significance (which I use as pointers for inner work)

• Dreams of larger or collective significance (which I often turn into paintings, essays or classes)

One such dream of larger (global) significance happened about a week ago. There currently is a Beluga Whale swimming in the coastal waters off the Shetland Islands. Belugas live in pods, they are not solitary animals. Nor do they normally venture this far south. (They belong to the family of arctic whales). There is a small population of Beluga Whales in the Gulf of Bothnia (which is the northern arm of the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland), so for me they are local animals.

I set an intention to dream into this situation, in the hope of finding out what might be going on. In the dream I grew a whale tail myself and I was swimming along with this animal. We communicated by sending each other images telepathically. What I understood Beluga was telling me was how there is currently so much upheaval and grief in the world of human beings that this is pulling on (or distorting) the energetic field which we share with animals (and all non-human beings).

We all know that the issues of climate change and pollution are affecting all animal peoples big time, but Beluga showed me how the levels of suffering (war, displaced people, refugees in boats etc.) have an impact too on habitats, and the way that animals move around the planet. I am a bit hesitant to use the expression “song lines” but I am aware that whales do sing and communicate through song. Also that their songs weave pathways of sound, connecting all our oceans.

A song line (also called a dreaming track), is one of the pathways across land (or sometimes through the sky) in the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia. Those ancient tracks mark the route once followed by the ancestral beings who created (and became in a very real sense) the features of the land. Those song lines are closely linked to the movements and migration pathways of animals as well.

Anthropologists coined a word for this worldview: the Dreamtime or the Dreaming. This term is based on a rendition of the word alcheringa, used by the Aranda people of Central Australia, although it has been argued that it is based on a misunderstanding or mistranslation. Some scholars now suggest that the word's meaning is closer to "eternal or uncreated”. Source

Song lines connect individuals to their ancestral land and they are always being recreated (by the voices of animals and the human beings singing their ancestral wisdom songs). Creation did not happen “once upon a time”, it is always happening in every moment! Every creature on Earth (humans included) is part of this larger collective Dreaming. We are all weaving and following song lines on land, in the air and under water.

A dear friend recently gave me a wonderful book: Song Spirals, Sharing women’s wisdom of Country through songlines by the Gay’Wu Group of Women. This book is about the Yolngu people from North East Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory of Australia. It explains how Songspirals are radically different ways of understanding the relationship people can have with the landscape. Well worth a read!

Those songs carry (and preserve) intricate geographical, mythical and cultural information. They tell people which animals are passing through the area at certain times of year; also about migrations pathways and where to fish or hunt. The star patterns seen overhead (a completely different cosmology or astronomy from our Western view of the night sky!) contain the same information, seasonal reminders and kernels of myth.

So, anyway, Beluga was showing me how the imbalances and collective grief (of oceanic dimensions) in the human realm are affecting the song lines followed by animals. It pulls them off track and disturbs their peace of mind. It also pulls them closer because of their concern for us human beings.

I awakened from that dream feeling shaken by the notion that the animal peoples appear to care more about our wellbeing than we (commonly) care about theirs. We use animals for our own ends and we thoughtlessly use their bodies as a resource, but we do not (as a rule) give back or make amends for cruel (current and historical) injustices (horses ridden into war, monkey in laboratories, dancing bears in the circus, fur coats, canaries perishing in coal mines etc.)

The animals in our oceans are already affected by pollution and large amounts of garbage floating around, over-fishing, rising levels of species extinction, acidification etc. But there is more: much of the world's underwater sound is human-made (the fancy word for this is "anthropogenic"), the result of shipping, fishing, exploring for resources, construction and military operations. Source

I worry, and marine biologists worry, about how the human noise pollution is affecting marine animals. Add to this the force field of grief, pain, trauma, imbalances and unhealed issues which vibrates around humanity at this tipping point in history.

This dream offers food for thought. Also for spiritual work. Animal communication is not my main line of work (I work primarily with human beings, land and spirits of place). It would be very interesting to hear if other people have received similar messages or dreams.

As a closing note I will say that I have a special connection to both Beluga Whales and the Arctic. (I will be teaching a sacred art course in Greenland later this year!) There have been many deaths in my personal Circle in recent years. This has resulted in a series of paintings, documenting intense soul work with The Bone Mother. You can see this series of paintings here (and I have used a few to illustrate this essay):

THE SECRET GARDEN OF THE BONE MOTHER

In that process, navigating the cosmic cycle of life-death-rebirth, a powerful ally came forward. I called her “My White Mother” (because initially I perceived her only as a maternal white presence swimming alongside me in the deep sea of grief). Ultimately she gave birth to me (the “new self”, who had completed a prolonged dismemberment and grief journey) and I then saw that she was a Beluga Whale. Beluga Whales are also known as white whales. I will need to visit her too, and ask what is going on with Beluga Whales on Earth right now. I will keep you posted!

I aim to post two essays a week here on Substack, but if you would like to see my daily posts about about sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch, please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

Imelda Almqvist, Forest House and School, Sweden

BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) will be published in June 2022.

The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.

Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.

Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time!

Website:                           

http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/

YouTube Channel:             youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist

Online School:                  https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

Facebook:                            https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/

Instagram:                          https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/

Twitter: @ImeldaAlmqvist