#Introduction

Hi All, my name is Fran and Spirit Bear Dreaming is the label I use for teaching dreamwork and doing things like writing about the things that interest me and which keep me going.

My earliest memory was of picking a tomato from a huge sunny garden with my mother and her mother. We washed it and I bit into in the summer sunshine food, surrounded by loving ancestors. That's my foundation memory.

I grew up in a little village in the laps of the Italian side of the family in the Pennsylvania foothills. I thought their church was goofy from an early age and I looked for more. In my early teens I discovered the I Ching and was blown away by the fact that divination still worked. Later, I had a transformative initiation experience with a tarot reader and then entered into a world of meaning and a living universe, and I've read tarot ever since. Very poorly at first and for years after that, but I've improved a lot over the decades!

I started out working as an artist and ended up doing art production to make a living. As more tech came into the art world I did more tech work and eventually became a developer. A marriage, a family, a home, I hit midlife and realized the trip was half over and that I better get to those things I'd been putting off! A deep dive followed into dreamwork, qigong/tai chi, and then shamanism and now I do a broad mix of those every day.

I read tarot in a small non-public situation and occasionally teach. I've been involved in tarot publishing, including my own intermediate level book on layouts and things. Dreamwork is an lifetime long, ongoing work of imagination in the greater sense. For nearly two decades I've led dream groups and taught dreamwork with a focus on the shamanic Active Dreaming developed by Robert Moss. For a decade I was part of a local shamanic circle build on our leader's Celtic traditions. We worked with spirits, local and otherwise, traversed a lot of interesting realms and did a lot of psychopomp work and clearing, clearing, clearning!

My second Saturn return of a few years ago was very rough, but I survived it. It clearly informed me that I'm in the last few chapters now and that I need to clear up any remaining messes and see if I have anything good to leave for others. I'm learning about that now and frankly, climbing down off the wheel isn't too bad. Lately I have been mostly writing and studying, figuring out what to let go of or get rid of, and finding little tasks to help pay the bills.

The social media scene has been a bit toxic or boring for a while, but as I checked out Mastodon, this site seemed to be full of people interested in many of the same topics as me. So, I did a tarot reading on joining and it told me this would be a good place, if a bit challenging at times. Last night I got a reading that reminded me that I need to get myself out there beyond the gravity of my default introvert self. So I signed in and here I am.

My main topics of interest are:

#Divination in general, including astrology, which I think I will never master, but it pulls at me. Sun in Aries, Moon in Taurus, Sagittarius rising.

#Tarot and especially #TarotLayouts and interesting technical issues in using and reading tarot. I love shared readings where we collaborate and everyone brings things to it.

#Shamanism of the modern kind, using sonic drivers or the like. My teachers all trace back to the Harner efforts to build a system that modern Westerners can use to get back to the foundations of being human after being long separated from their shamanic ancestors. I don't really know much about traditional people's works and I try not to interfere or appropriate things I should avoid.

#BodyEnergetics since that seems to be a requirement for any spiritual efforts. I've worked a lot with QiGong and Tai Chi, but I am always open to learning more.

#Dreaming and #Dreamwork especially using the techniques developed to get more help from dreaming and finding more practical ways to use it in waking life. #ActiveDreaming is very powerful.

I appreciate you reading this whole thing! Cheers!