In our first class, we’ll call on the blessings of Brigid, beloved throughout the Celtic lands and especially in Ireland, where she is both goddess and saint.

Patron of poets, healers, and metalsmiths, Brigid is therefore a patron of dreamers — since in Celtic tradition the gift of inspiration that moves us to acts of creation and healing is directly linked to what opens in dreams.

We’ll make a heart journey to Brigid’s eternal flame, let ourselves be bathed in her blue radiance, and receive — if it’s timely and appropriate — the word of light she reserves for warriors of the heart.

We will learn from Brigid, who is born at a threshold with a red sunrise blazing, how to manage the liminal passages in our lives. We’ll track the Blue Lady in myths and dreams, including the visions of P.L. Travers, a world-class mythologist as well as the author of Mary Poppins, who encountered her Greater Self in the form of Brigid in a wild wood.

We shall seek such a revelation for our own lives and:

• Invoke Brigid to bless our lives and our healing
• Make a heart journey to the place of Brigid’s eternal flame
• Seek Brigid’s help in approaching threshold moments when we have the chance to birth something new in our world
• Bring inspiration for fresh creation, craft, and healing from our dreams
• Grow our power of “goodly speech” to practice a Celtic blessing way
• Follow the footsteps of the Blue Lady through myths and dreams, perhaps all the way to a luminous encounter with a Goddess self

With the coming of spring, as the Earth bursts into fruit and flower, many societies have honored the dying and returning god/goddess who embodies the cycle of death and rebirth.

For ancient Greeks, this was the time of Persephone, whose story resonates with many of us. In the season of Persephone, who is goddess of spring as well as Queen of the Underworld and guide of souls on both sides of death, we’ll learn how to bring treasures from darkness.

In the myth, a maiden is torn from her regular life and plunged into the Underworld in a terrifying, dizzying journey from which she comes up shining. As an initiate, she is now an initiator, guiding souls on the roads of birth and death and rebirth. She comes and goes between the worlds. There are a thousand versions of this story and its many players…

You’ll find the one that speaks to your current life and use its in-spiriting power to:

• Claim the gifts from your wounds
• Explore the mystery of the pomegranate seeds
• Confront and resolve nightmare terrors on their own grounds
• Become a shaman of your own soul and a healer of your own life
• Enter the mysteries of death and rebirth and bring through courage and clarity for life choices
• Meet Persephone enthroned beside Hades
• Claim the power of an archetype — a goddess or god from myth — for your larger life

Most of us know what it feels like to let ourselves be trapped in a box, because it looked pleasant or because we thought we had no choice. We have felt the crushing burden of being used to prop up a whole structure, be it a marriage, a job, a community, or a world.

This is where the great story of the passion of Osiris and Isis begins. As we enter its mysteries, we may know the joy of being released by one who loves us and never ceases from seeking us.

We will recognize the pain of being torn apart, our pieces scattered to the four quarters, and losing something that could never be found again in an ordinary way. We enter this story in order to find the sacred healer who can bring our broken pieces together, and to come alive under the great wings of the Beloved of our soul. We will claim those wings, and know the fierce joy of giving birth — through soul magic — to our golden child, a new creative life project.

As we go deep into great Egyptian myths of Divine Family, we will:

• Meet Anubis as gatekeeper and opener of the ways
• Seek keys to our own life story, and potential, in the Sacred Triad: Osiris, the one who dies and comes back; Isis, the soul shaman who brings vital spirit back into the body; and Horus, the magical child
• Discover why in ancient Egypt a dream is an “awakening”
• Learn the power of magic words and journey to the Library of the Goddess Seshat, patron of scribes and writing
• Develop a personal ritual of rebirthing
• Learn ancient Egyptian rituals of spiritual cleansing and dream incubation under the aegis of Isis

In the Iroquoian cosmogony (the creation stories of a North American tribe), our world begins with a fall — not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Sky Woman from another realm known as Earth in the Sky.

The old ones say that the origin and purpose of human life is to be found in that Sky World. Tosa sasa ni’konren, they say in Mohawk. “Do not let your mind fall” from the memory of that other world where everything is directed and created by the power of thought, and everything lives in the glow of a great Tree of Light.

The first person on Earth who was anything like a human came from that Sky World, after she fell — or was pushed — through a hole among the roots of its great tree.

As she fell, she was given light by a Native American version of the Dragon, called by the Huron tribe the White Lion. Her fall was finally broken by the wings of great blue herons, who carried her gently down to a chaos of water.

Animals, diving into the black deep, found Earth for her, so she could begin to make a world. Turtle offered its great back and First Woman danced a new world into being. Under her feet, a handful of soil became all the lands we live on. She arrived pregnant and now gave birth to a daughter who, in turn, gave birth to cosmic twins — Dark and Light — and the contest that has raged ever since.

You will find your own place in this marvelous creation story, which may already have been playing in your dreams, and you’ll find confirmation for the power of dreams in a rich shamanic tradition.

In this class, you’ll explore how to:

• Look for the ways to dance a new world into being when you fall through a hole in your old life
• Apply signature dreamwork practices of Iroquoian tradition
• Connect with the spirit animals and bird tribes, as well as the Fire Dragon of the White Body who gave Sky Woman light and encouragement
• Search in your dreams for the secret wishes of the soul
• Approach life in the understanding that, as the Seneca Iroquois say, “the dream world is the Real World”

During this class, you’ll make a visit to the Dream Clinic. You’ll have the entire class to share your reports and ask your questions — surrounding your narratives, themes, preoccupations, and more — and you’ll receive Robert’s answers and guidance.

You’ll be invited to choose an archetypal figure who has aroused you, and to share your understanding of that character. You may want to prepare for this part of the class by doing a quick writing exercise that will be suggested as a deepening practice following each previous class. Think about what elements of a myth you recognize in your own life, and perhaps in your own dreams. Then write, as fast as you can, your immediate responses to the question, for example, “Who is Persephone to me?” If names from your own family or your personal history come up, so be it.

In this session, you’ll explore:

• How much energy can be generated through the process of sharing
• The magic of empathy, compassion, intuition, and guidance — in action
• Robert’s simple four-step process for sharing dreams and life stories
• How to carry this sharing process with you anywhere in life
• How to deepen your relationships and grow friendships on the level of the heart

You may know already that on a path of transformation, you reach a point where you break down or you break through, and sometimes the breakdown comes before the breakthrough.

The story of the Descent of Inanna to the Underworld is seen by some groups today as the model for a woman’s journey to the depths to meet and integrate her Shadow side. The myth does not explain clearly why the goddess chose to go down seven terrifying levels to be hung on a meathook in the realm of her dark sister Ereshkigal.

We do know that she did this of her own volition. It was a choice she made freely. We know also that after she came back, she forced her unwilling consort Dumuzi to make the Underworld journey. This is a story for men as well as women — and may be scarier for men.

We will honor the Goddess of many faces as she descends to the Underworld and draw courage for our own journeys. We’ll explore mysteries of the Goddess and the Bull. And we’ll learn from the story of Enheduanna, the priestess-princess who composed some of the most amazing poems in the Cycle of Inanna.

In this class, you will:

• Find the gifts in your wounds
• Draw creative fire from the dark places of initiation
• Follow the 7-stage journey to meet your Dark Double
• Discover for yourself why the Goddess chose to descend to the Underworld
• Draw inspiration from the life of the priestess of the Moon, who gave us hymns of Inanna and is the first named author in history
• Learn why in ancient Mesopotamia dreams may be “zephyrs” or “archive baskets of the gods”
• Explore the practice of the ancient Mesopotamian “dream questioner”
• Study the Dream of Dumuzi and explore what it means for a man to share the trials and transformations of women

In our final class, we’ll look at other faces of the Goddess that appear in our dreams and our lives. We’ll enter the story of Saranyu, a Hindu goddess who was so miserable in her marriage that she projected a double — a kind of ancient Stepford wife — to take her place in her home while she ran off like a wild mare.

We’ll celebrate the power of regeneration under the aegis of the Antlered Goddess of the North. We’ll sing for Sequanna, the Fast-Flowing One, a Celtic goddess of dream healing and sweet waters. We’ll borrow from Dante’s Divine Comedy as you’re invited to make a personal journey of ascension to encounter the Beloved of your soul.

And we’ll draw the message from the heart of Western religion and literature that our dreams open the ways to the Greater Self. In your own journey, the Self may appear to you as a god or goddess. If you have traveled far enough on your path with heart, you may find you have opened a space where you can now embody more of your Greater Self. This may lead to the profound transformation known as spiritual enthronement.

You will awaken to the divine comedy beyond the veil of consensual reality, which requires three things. In this final class, you’ll learn how to:

• Develop witness perspective
• Believe there are happy endings even when going through hell
• Never leave home, or return to it, without your sense of humor

Then you can harvest the core techniques and discoveries you’ve made in this course, and play world-weaver as you create an evermore magical life.