Reflections by Olivia Robertson

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"Hey diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle, the dish ran away with the spoon. The little dog laughed to see such sport and the cow jumped over the moon."

Ah, let us elevate this delightful folk ditty by identifying the dramatic personae with Egyptian Deities. Bast the Cat Goddess is famous for her sons' midnight howling, which connoisseurs call singing. Bast is musical! Her purring is an adagio to our peace of mind. Anubis the Jackal God - where does he come in - he obviously has a sense of humor, for he has been dubbed the Egyptian Hermes. So of course he laughed. But the last line is the most famous because it is the most surreal. How could a square, clumsy creature like a cow dream of jumping - let alone jumping over the moon? We need to bear in mind that the Cow Goddess Hathor of Love, Joy and Beauty sometimes appears with a cow's head and Her insignia is the Moon. Her cow's horns supporting the Sun and she dances!

Pondering on affinities between Gaels descended from the Egyptian Princess Scota and her son Gaelglas, I did discover one feature in common. The Gaelic folk live in pastoral harmony with the Sidhe, Nature Spirits and Animals. The Greeks and Romans could not accept Animal Deities - look at their slaughters and their horrible games - that's the Romans, not the Greeks. But they were very keen on being human, because of their intellect. These however appeared natural, even beneficial, to both the Gaels and the Egyptians. And above all, we have found the Buddhists have this affinity - this compassion - for all life, all animals, and don't divide us up into castes or classes or humans being the 'crown of creation', 'lord of nature', and all that nonsense.

I put this affinity between all Nature - animals and birds and people - compassion - down to the psychic senses. Over-intellectual education, like the Greeks, left side of the human brain activity, leads to a separation of the intellect from the psyche. Only when I began to waken spiritually did I find that I had a Soul. An individual soul, and so also had everyone else including animals, birds, crystals: all that is. We all emerge from Divine Mother. However, the establishment regarded as possible, even religiously acceptable, to see angels, spirit guides, and respectable relatives from the next world - but not to converse with the lower creation. A famous medium staying with us and reported it - she had a curious reception she received on returning to her London circle. She was applauded for having a nighttime conversation with Bishop Lesley in the 4-poster bedroom - you know he was from the 18th century - but laughed at when she said the Castle had a pleasant population of tiny leprechauns. Three sat on her bed-end, three on her mantelpiece and three later joined us for morning coffee in the conservatory. Leprechauns- no, Bishops - yes.

© art by Olivia Robertson, courtesy Minette Quick

When you achieve Faery clairvoyance, this includes animals and birds. And in this dimension they can talk. My sister-in-law Pamela, came into my bedroom early one morning, went over to the window, drew the curtains and said she had just received a visit from an owl - came right through to her window. I said laughingly, "Oh, I suppose he had a message, indeed?" "Oh yes," she replied. "He told me what's going to happen today." This was private information - it happened!

Once in bed in London, I had a vision-dream. Honey Howler, our ginger cat, came right up to me and put his arms around my neck. He always did this when I returned to Ireland. Just once. Never again, just when I came. He looked larger. Then he spoke. He said, "I always liked you." He jumped off my lap and ran away. Later, I received a letter from Pamela informing me that Honey Howler had died. He died on the same day that he had come to me. Right from Ireland to England.

I have not had any experience so far with one of the kine of Brigid. But I did have a remarkable encounter with a very large bull. In dream-vision I was in a village and people were terrified of a bull at large. He looked extremely square and big with sharp horns. I took two people to safety in a cottage. One was an old white-haired man. I told them we were safe in a room, but to be sure, we needed to sit with our back against a wall. He would not charge a wall, his horns you see. To our alarm, the bull darkened the doorway. There he was - and came in. He came right up to me and gave me a huge wet, friendly lick, with his long red tongue. Was this Olympian Zeus in his favored Bull form to Europa?

A friend of mind, who wrote under the name of Melita Denning, told me of a lovely experience she had enjoyed while camping by a river. Going to bed, she looked back at the river bank and saw a tiny little horse cropping grass. Minute. He was white, but had a mane like bright red wool. She couldn't see the ears. He had a tail of fluffy red fuzz. He was a typical Gaelic faery horse. This was in Ireland.

When I saw a shining gold little boy with fluffy red hair and wings, I was fully conscious, up and dressed in our hall in the Castle. His hair was like the uncarded red wool of the faery horse. His body was made of golden crystallized light. It was not fluffy light but strongly made with golden muscles. His red wings were of the same substance as his body. But what I really liked and shall never forget, was his smile - he had a wide glorious smile, showing all his white teeth, rosy lips parted. It reminded me of an Indian boy called Sabu that I had seen in a long ago film.

One thing I like about Roman Catholics is they have no problem in identifying heavenly visitants. I had thought I had seen Eros in his Cherubic form, but a friend told me I had seen a Seraph, of Love. During these hard times, and they are only relatively hard for we Westerners, it helps to become aware of multi-dimensional reality that is eternal good and all around us. Some simply call this, heaven. But it has dragons in it!

I always thought Kwan Yin always going around being compassionate all of the time, it wouldn't be much help if things went wrong. But, I had a vision of the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen - a dragon. And I couldn't make out its color - it was a far more beautiful color than I'd ever seen. Later I found this was Jade. But this dragon could get rid of evil. What this dragon did was, it dispersed what was bad, but kept what was good, because I saw a tiny little bit of a white petal floating in the air that was all that was left of something that was rather unpleasant, sort of turgid, non-stuff. I say non-stuff, because everything good is forever. And I obviously adore dragons.