Elen Sentier

I believe in my dream to…? 
I have to begin this with a quote from Jung, ‘I don’t believe, I know …’ Jung was a man of dreams and
is one of my heroes.
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I was brought up by parents and relatives who followed the old ways of Britain. And their parents,
and their parents, for many and many generations. There were quite a few of what we call the “old
folk” in the villages where I grew up so I wasn’t alone, there were several people to take me and the
other old-ways- children under their wings, and show us how life works and how to live it. Part of
that teaching was about how to dream. In consequence, I don’t “believe” in dreams, I know them as
old friends who are there to help me … and who ask me to help them. This is such a comfortable and
easy way to be, I wish more people would be brave enough to try it.

So, I work with the dream, with the dream-world, with otherworld, learning and exploring, helping
too. Remember 9/11? Well, that was one helluva work-time for those of us who do, who work with
dreams. We were finding spirits, catching them, herding them up, and generally helping them get to
where they needed to be for quite a few nights! We had great help from otherworld, particularly
from Gwyn ap Nudd (as we call the antlered one here in Britain) and the antlered lady whom he
partners (yes that way round! She’s in charge 😊) Elen of the Ways. Elen is lady of the dream-paths,
amongst other things, so dream-work is always part of her work … and the work of those who work
with her, like me.

What started this dream? 
What starts any dream … a need. Often the need is both in oneself and in otherworld; we need to
know more about something; they need us to do something for them. After all these years of my life
I’m now well used to “night school”. It’s like the catnapping my cats do, I cross the bridge into
otherworld, and the dream world, and there I go into situations that teach me things; or I go places
where I’m needed to do things; or I travel to learn about places and people and things. I watch my
cats do this, they’re much more adept at it than any human I’ve ever known.

Dreams are about learning and discovering with otherworld, and being useful with them. It’s a
partnership, where you and otherworld work together for evolution – that’s evolution of the whole
spirit-world as well as your spirit, of thinking, and of the emotional world, as well as physical
evolution. It goes through all of that, through everything in creation, and creation is a part of spirit.
At first, many folk don’t really know how to dream, and most get no instruction in it nowadays
because it’s all tangled in bad-science which says it’s just your brain giving off weird and fragmented
electrical signals. Sigh! Good science doesn’t actually say this but the TV and google and most of the
internet crap folks choose to believe purports the most dreadful rubbish. It’s all about reducing it
down to a size, a box, that is easy to handle and doesn’t strain anyone’s brain … sigh, again!
Stretching your mind, thinking out of the box, expanding the envelope … they’re what real living is
about. And dreams can help us do this – if we allow them. That’s the premise that starts every
dream. Just because most of them are stillborn and scrapped as soon as we open our eyes doesn’t
make the dream useless … it shows how incredibly small our own thinking and belief system is.
The trick is to learn this, to learn to open up, to learn to work with otherworld – we call it walking
between worlds. That phrase – walking between worlds – comes from one of our old seannachie
(Scottish Gaelic “shaman” types, spirit keepers) called Thomas of Erceldoune; you likely know him
better from the old song, Thomas the Rhymer.

What motivates you to follow this dream? 
Work. My work is my raison d’etre, reason for incarnating, and it’s all about working with
otherworld. This really isn’t a personal thing, my life is my work – and it’s such good fun!
Work – working with spirit, all the time – is always what motivates me. It’s not the same as the usual
“personal” motivation most people have. I consciously joined the club, joined with otherworld to
work, when I was in my teens. Oh yes, I’d been doing it all my life but it’s different while you’re still a
child. Then you do things because “that’s what you do”; later, as a teenager, you gradually become
yourself and, if your lucky with your parenting or other factors in your life, that’s about becoming
your spirit self. You don’t get all that overnight, it takes time and space and purpose on your part,
and you’ll make mistakes, everyone does, they’re best means of learning there is. It was, perhaps,
less hard for me to make it towards being myself because of my background, but there were still
ptifalls and hard times, and times when I just wanted to crawl away and be “ordinary”. But the
dream-lif, the dream-world, and Elen of the Ways helped me through these – she still does when I
get really down nowadays 😊.

And, ultimately, my “one dream” is to work with otherworld, always, all the time … I’m doing this,
following that path. It is sooooooo good!

What are your goals? 
Like I just said … to work with otherworld, always, all the time. But there’s more than that. Working
with otherworld is also about helping others who want to do that as well. That’s why I write, that’s
why I teach. Watching people open up, seeing that joy in their eyes … there’s nothing like it!
The writing comes through dream-work too. I’ll set up an objective, an information need, or the
scene for a novel, before I go to sleep, then the dreams come, and they lead me into how to write
whatever it is I need to.

I do the same with teaching too, both with the lessons and with problems the students have. All
good students have problems – that’s how they climb out of their boxes and grow! I only ever worry
about those who seem to be having it easy, they’re not growing, not changing, not expanding. The
old saw about snakes sloughing their skins is so true, we all have to put off our old skins and grow
new ones, and that can be difficult and painful.

Working with otherworld through dreams is a really good way of being useful for the books and the
students. I take myself of for a “catnap”, a dream, and come back refreshed and with some new
ways of solving the problem.

In our old ways, we do “daydreaming”. It mostly gets an awfully bad press nowadays in ordinary life,
often called time-wasting, foolish and illusionary. Sigh … yet again! Ye gods, we have lost so, so much
in the past 50-odd years, really (as I see it) since the later 1970s. everything gets crammed into
“rational” and “logical” boxes, rather like Cinderella’s sisters cut off bits of their toes and heels to try
to fit their feet into the glass slipper! I mean, how dumb can you get, to do that sort of thing? And
most people’s brains are so overworked, and in all the wrong things, their quite addled. But using
anything but your brain, nowadays, is considered stupid. Ah well … ho hum!

So one of my goals, when working with anyone who comes to me and wants to grow, is to get them
out of this frightful head-set way of being. It’s hard work! But it’s so worthwhile as their “past their
sell-by” dated stuff falls away from them and the real person emerges. It really is like the caterpillar
coming out of the chrysalis as a butterfly.

What would you like people to know and where can we find you?
I’m an author, teacher & wilderness woman. Born into a family of British cunning folk where the old
ways were passed down since time out of mind. I live with my cats, husband and a host of wildlife in
the back of beyond, a magical twilight place between worlds, on the Welsh Borders.

I write novels – Owl Woman & Moon Song – and non-fiction @MoonBooksJHP, my latest is Merlin:
once & future wizard, and I’m an Awenydd/Shaman who teaches the old ways of Britain. I love cats,
spinning & weaving, wildlife, ecology, mountain walking, wilderness, rewilding, music, folklore.
Find me at http://www.elensentier.co.uk @elensentier and https://www.facebook.com/elensentier

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​The Dreamer Blog features two people each week in pursuit of their dreams, large or small everyone has a dream that deserves support. Douglas Geller, the author of this blog is also the author of the book The Dreamer; you can learn more about The Dreamer and purchase it at: http://amzn.to/2j7W79P

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