Dreams and mythologies

I've been remembering my dreams more lately.  Most likely because I'm actually sleeping again for more than an hour at a time.  I have the inevitable bathroom dreams where I am frantically trying to find a private bathroom but they are all out in public.  I end up trying to be as discreet as possible only to call attention to myself because I've been peeing for 20 minutes without stopping.  Then I wake up and make a beeline to the bathroom.

Then there are the house dreams, where I'm in a house that has many, many rooms.  I love those dreams even if I can't tell you what they mean.  I'm always wandering around these huge mansions (or sometimes these little cottages that look like the TARDIS inside.)

Then I have the dreams that actually mean something.  I had one of those the night before last.  I don't remember every second of it but I do remember an owl showing up everywhere I was.  I found the owl beautiful, even moreso than my beloved crows.  I felt a strong attachment to the owl but I couldn't figure out why this owl was in front of me, behind me and sometimes on my shoulder.  Then Athena stood in front of me and the owl left my shoulder and flew to her.  She just looked at me, holding the owl on her outstretched hand and simply said, "Come home."

I've been thinking about that dream ever since.  I'll be honest that I frequently slip when approaching the altar and call on the Greek Gods by mistake.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  Well, actually I do know what I'm going to do.  I'm not going to do anything for now.  I'll play it by ear and see what happens.  I have given up trying to call upon Brigid as the household Goddess.  The only name that comes to me when praying is Hestia so I thought I should just give in.  I admit that I've had a hard time feeling connected to Brigid for a pretty long time.

I called upon Athena last night and felt a connection that I hadn't felt before, not even when I was on the Greek path.  It felt loving and supportive.

But it also made me wonder just what to do with mythologies.  The Christian mythology I was raised in was taught to me as true, completely true.  I admit that as a child, I always thought of the Roman and Greek mythologies as being true as well.  When I discovered that the Christian myths were just that it made other mythologies problematic for me.  I couldn't just look at Christian myths as being pictures of how mankind saw their god and look for the larger meanings behind them.  I had been taught that if it wasn't all true, none of it was. 

And this is a problem I have with the Celtic mythologies as well.  Quite frankly I can't see the larger lesson in them.  In fact, for the most part, they don't make sense to me.  And maybe this is why I feel a disconnect so often with the Celtic deities.  I don't get whether they were human beings who became Gods, or were Gods in the first place or what the hell it was all about.  I'm not alone in my disconnect.  Isaac Bonewit's widow, Phaedra admits she doesn't feel connected to them either.

There is something comforting for me in the Greco-Roman myths, in that they were Gods from the beginning (aside from those who were made Gods later on.)  And that they made mistakes and weren't this perfect unreachable dieties.  And yet, if I take the mythologies as true, they were also a bunch of dicks.

So I can't see myself taking any of the myths as fact, but I do believe they weren't created out of a vacuum.  There is some kind of eternal truth in there.  I'm just not sure what it is yet.

And since it seems like I'm being led toward some greater truth, I'll bide my time and wait until that unfolds before me.  But I'm not sitting and doing nothing.  I will continue to look to myself and inside myself and learn to be more receptive.  And if it seems like I'm mentioning the wrong names in my daily ministrations, maybe I'm really not after all.