Now the ears of my ears are awake and the eyes of my eyes are open ~ ee cummings
Arwork: Remedios Varo, The Creation of Birds, 1957.
The queen of night
The burnished gold of the owl’s eyes smouldered in the darkness, fixing me with a stare so intense, it felt like a hand was reaching inside me and squeezing the soft tissue of my heart with its long bony fingers.
Huddled inside its downy, white cloak, the owl continued to scrutinise my innermost being from down its long, thin nose. I had the strong impression this owl wanted something from me but couldn’t tell what.
Then I forgot.
It was a hollow, reedy cry floating out of some nearby woods the following evening, which brought the memory of the owl from my dream back. I felt the constriction in my heart even more acutely than the night before, as if the owl had been sleeping there this whole time and was now readying itself to take flight once more.
I’ve been out searching the dark for this owl ever since.
Although the owl isn’t the only bird of prey able to rotate its neck by 270 degrees, it’s this almost supernatural agility, coupled with the owl’s powers of invisibility, its cryptic plumage, natural far-sightedness and extraordinary ability to see in the dark, which means that, since time, this winged traveller of night has come to symbolise the inner, intuitive wisdom of our deep, dark depths.
In fairy tales and myth, the owl can be found gracing the shoulders of the Greek goddesses Athena and Demeter, alongside Sophia, the great mother of all wisdom, said to have been with God from the beginning of time. Meanwhile, legend has it that the dark mythical figure of Lilith (either a she-demon, Adam’s first wife, or both) roams the desert nights in the form of a screech owl. And if you go to room 56 of the British Museum in London, you’ll find a tiny terracotta relief originating from ancient Mesopotamia depicting a naked winged woman flanked by two owls known as ‘The Queen of Night.’ Not only the preserve of witches and wise women, the owl is also the sage companion of Merlin, Harry Potter and Celtic god of the underworld, Gwyn, and can frequently be found accompanying both the living and the dead across the threshold between realms.
The third eye of our depths
Animals in dreams represent an ancient, instinctual part of our psyches. The owl, in particular, is symbolic of the very deepest part of our nature which Carl Jung calls the Self. The creative, whole-making “principle and archetype of orientation and meaning” - as Jung describes it - it is this deep Self who guides, dreams and imagines us.
It’s the owl eyes of our deep self who can see in the dark right through to the sub-perceptual frequencies, vibrations and tones of night and silence; death and dreams; cosmos and psyche.
The third eye of our depths, the owl travels this moonlit landscape, meticulously transcribing the quantum entanglement of the primordial creative forces that underly our existence into the luminous, nighttime language of image, myth, archetype and symbol.
Jung said “only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul.” Since the Greek root of psychedelic is psyche (meaning soul) and deloun (meaning to reveal or show), as we travel with this feathered creature of our deepest nature, we find that, almost without our knowing, our souls become psychedelized beyond our wildest imaginings.
Just ask Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Mozart, John Coltrane and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Toni Morrison and Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci and Yayoi Kusama, Emily Dickinson and Rumi.
It’s with the owl’s nighttime vision that we can see with the ‘eyes of our eyes’ the goddess in the marble, the hands in the desert, the heart in the oak and the band playing beyond the rim where darkness and light meet. It’s out here at the edge of the known that we find ourselves living inside ever widening circles, as the poet Rilke puts it - beyond the myth of separation from each other, from nature and from the deep self, which night after night, dreams us awake.
Only, we’re so used to seeing with the daytime vision of our physical eyes and the literal perception of our ego self that we risk becoming blind to the mystery of everything we can’t see.
It’s my small ego self who loves to have all the answers and likes to think she knows better than everyone else. But the last time I checked, I have yet to grow eyes in the back of my head.
A kiss without lips
I think of the owl’s luminous eyes shining from inside their snowy ruffs and its oddly human looking face and wonder what it knows that I don’t? What can the owl see that I can’t?
If the owl is a totem of wisdom, in many traditions and cultures it’s also a harbinger of death. The owl, after all, wings silently across the night skies, snatching the life out of rabbits and mice, disembowelling them in seconds with its razor-sharp beak. Did the owl in my dream have blood on its breath? Had it appeared as an omen or warning or… ?
Out here, searching for the owl, I hear a ghostly wooooooo and then a hearty, full-blooded, WOOOO WOOOOOOO as a pair of wings appear like a flurry of snow on a winter Arctic night.
I watch the owl hover in the darkness, an Olympian diver at the very edge of a springboard waiting to jump, frozen in some temporary rapture, its pale moon eyes fixing a small creature I can’t see at the centre of their fine cross hairs.
After what seems like forever, the owl takes a dive and floats to the ground with a strange, unhurried tranquillity before sinking its talons at the speed of light into the scruff of a mouse. The air fills with the sound of crunching bones and I realise with horror that the small, furry creature being ripped apart by the owl, is me.
It goes dark again and I can’t see the owl. I can’t see anything. I’m dead, after all.
Then I’m flying through the vaster wilds of a country without borders, a poem without words, a kiss without lips, softly beating back the dark with my heavy cloth wings.
If you enjoyed this dispatch, do heart, comment & share.
Upcoming Events
Write Your Undiscovered Self 5 week course, 29/10 - 26/11, 6.30-8.30pm London time
Write, imagine & explore the pioneering ideas of Carl Jung
We’re living in a time of collective upheaval and many of us are feeling overwhelmed. But according to the pioneering founder of analytic psychology Carl Jung, beneath our everyday awareness, there’s a larger, cosmological reality at work that’s wide and deep enough for us to anchor ourselves in. If you’re curious about how we can tap into our hidden potential, you can join my five week online course Write Your Undiscovered Self, online on Wednesday evenings, 29/10 - 26/11, 6:30pm - 8:30pm, London time. You’ll be introduced to key Jungian concepts and have the chance to explore your undiscovered self with guided writing prompts through the lens of the child, shadow and self archetypes. If this sounds up your street, I’ll look forward to welcoming you.
Find out more & book your ticket here.
Re-Wild Yourself: Women’s Yoga & Journaling Retreat - Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, 20/03 - 22/03, 2026
Free your mind on the page & the mat
Yoga and journaling both play a big part in how I keep myself grounded so, I’m delighted to be teaming up with friend and expert yoga teacher Donna Southwell for a women’s yoga and journaling retreat in the heart of the West Yorkshire moors - famous for inspiring the wildness of the Brontë sisters and the much-loved landscape where I’m based. The retreat will be a chance to press pause on the busyness of life and re-wild yourself through yoga and journaling suitable for all levels. It will take place at the stunning, newly restored, Lumb Bank, a writers’ centre and former home of Ted Hughes.
Subscribe to rachelnewsome.co.uk to stay up to date about future courses & workshops
‘Dreaming Awake’ is primarily where I ‘explain by doing’ - as the Dodo said to Alice - through sharing my writing. The best way to stay up to date about depth writing courses, workshops & retreats grounded in Jungian psychology & cognitive neuroscience is to subscribe directly to my website newsletter ~ rachelnewsome.co.uk