Indigenous initiation into manhood involved a time of isolation in the forest. That is when the spirits spoke to us, later we told our visions to the elders. Depending on the stories we told and the images they evoked, one might be given a new name. In this way the transition from the old to the new was marked. The child’s name was lost, when the man was born in him. Leaving the parents is an excruciatingly difficult passage and in ancient indigenous cultures the process was understood by everyone who had made the journey. The tribe continued the traditions with oral transmission of the secrets of manhood to each succeeding generation. After initiation a man could wed and raise children of his own. The process repeating eternally. We know this story well, but what about the journey into wisdom and old age?
I my case we have to land in America at the end of the 20th century, in the redwood forests of northern California mixed with the vast forests of oak trees surrounding the coastal mountains. There, after thirty years of marriage, I was cast out of my home and marriage by my wife. She saw me as a deer shaman and struggled with my Stag’s herd mentality. I welcomed all the ladies and their children to our school in the woods. My affectionate attention to the herd was frustrating to Mama Bear, my wife, who had very different values. She became jealous of my fondness for the young bucks and new does. Mama Bear and Papa Deer produced four male children an eagle, a wolf, a cougar and a bear. Three Aries and one Aquarian born to Virgo and Capricorn. The ancient patterns laid down in our childhood began to emerge in our family. Slowly I became aware that something was wrong. I had strange flashbacks and craving desires to touch people. The years of forgotten abuse in childhood began to emerge from the shadowy depths of my soul and eventually burst forth our bonds of gray. I was cast away and found a wizard counselor, an elder woman who helped me into the next phase.
At that time I decided to study psychic abilities and my teacher, another coyote, oh I failed to mention that the deer morphed into a coyote as soon as I was free of my wife. But the psychic surprised me with his respect and acknowledgement of my highly developed abilities. He did a reading of me and saw me as Merlin, the Celtic wizard of the Arthurian legend. That was a little difficult to swallow at the time. I did not feel very powerful or adept after losing my dream of “married happily ever after.” It was something of an initiation into a different stage of manhood. I was in my mid-fifties, a teacher, college professor, dreamer and interpreter of dreams, mentor and a closet Native American. Makes perfect sense why he saw me as Merlin, look at the job description. By embracing my indigenous heritage of Turtle Island, I soon became involved with Indian Education, the Native American Church, Vision Quest, Sweat Lodge, and Sun Dance. That’s when the Eagle began to emerge.
It was during the second peyote ceremony I sponsored in 2001 that I experienced hatching. My biological children, the Puma and the Bear, sat up all night long without drinking the medicine. I was fed thirteen medicine balls and in the morning, as I began to stretch my arms out, they felt like wings, like the egg broke open and my feathers were wet. I wanted to dry them out. The year before my nephew had taken me as his uncle by gifting me his Vision Quest feather, a white tail feather of a bald eagle. During the year I had used it in the many ceremonies I had attended. That morning the feather seemed to have a lot of power. Across the fire from me was a young man who seemed to be enjoying some self massage, pressing into his pectoral muscles. The effect on the man beside him, a Sun Dancer, was excruciating. It looked like a psychic bond had developed during the meeting and the inner vampire was licking his chops as he watched the man beside him. I lifted my feather and pointed it directly at the vampire/youth. Then it happened. He was caught in my gaze like the deer in the headlights. I softly told him to change his movements to petting himself and used my feather to gently caress the wounds in the chest with its soft healing energy. The vampire did exactly as I instructed. No words were spoken aloud. Later after the ceremony one of my brothers came up to me and asked what I had been doing. “I saw the energy flying across the fire from your feather.”
During the following years the eagles have been more and more insistent that I acknowledge them, that I accept membership in the Eagle Clan. And this I did. The white eagle is the spirit eagle, also the voice of an avatar White Eagle
channeled in the 1920s, a Native American holy man who teaches us of the other side, the spirit world. Although I resisted the calling for several years while raising my family, I finally accepted my inner world through the process of psychotherapy. This healing of the soul required remembering the sexual abuse of my childhood and how it repeated with the eagle and the wolf. As often happens in these stories, the honest vulnerable and transparent man must accept his inner feminine and his dark, repressed shadow if he hopes to be whole. The good dad begins to be experienced and remembered as the bad dad while the children go through the phase of letting go. The ones who manage to stay in communication with us might or might not like who we become in this psychic evolution of character. And a new name is also appropriate. Merlin and the White Eagle are the human and spirit bird aspects of Michael John Melville. MA.
Merlin and the White Eagle 