Chapter IV of WHIF Beachcombing

Homesick for a land

That I’ve never been to

Ancient and windswept

As I long for a long, forgotten home

Where curling vines pull down the walls of stone

The remnants of a realm unknown

Pulsing down in my bones

Combing the beach, curiosities in endless seas

Sifting the sands for the artifacts left behind in my hands

Look, there’s an Adder stone

Lift it to one eye and peer into the other side

As you search for your long, forgotten home

Where tumbling tides of Time

Wash the sandy grains

Translucent sea glass jewels remain

Which mark your lost terrain

Combing the beach, curiosities in endless seas

Sifting the sands for the artifacts

Left behind in my hands

Beneath the foam swirling ‘round my feet

The lacy edge of a mystery

Oh, how to dive down far into the fathomless

Where I cannot breathe

And float through kingdoms of majesty

While jousting beasts of antiquity

Who guard the finest trinkets buried

Underneath the briny deep

Underneath the briny deep

Combing the beach, curiosities in endless seas

Sifting the sands for the artifacts

Left behind in my hands

Combing the beach

Combing the deep

Combing the beach

Underneath the briny deep

THE MAGICAL INGREDIENTS:

Key of D Minor | 4/4 130 BPM

Vocals, percussion: Nymphya

Moog, keyboards, and percussion: Francisco Vives

Recorded at WooHooYa Studios and Vives Music Studios, June 2021

was unprepared for what a huge impact my listeners have had on the actual making of my music, and this song, for me, is the exemplar for that.

Because of how connected we are in this Internet age with e-mail and social media, I have developed ongoing personal friendships with a few folks who follow me, which is an unexpected treasure, like one of the “finest trinkets” dredged up from the briny depths that I sing about.

The music and lyrics for this song came into being because of a video I posted on my social media page of my friend and I relic-hunting along Tepco Beach on San Francisco Bay. Tepco Beach is this really cool and unusual spot that was a dumping ground of detritus for a now-defunct porcelain factory from the 1930s.

To this day, you can find hundreds of broken porcelain bits. In fact, someone has also since intentionally dumped intriguing clay trinkets with figures like buddha heads, spirals, pigs, crabs, and inspirational quotes that become a treasure hunt within a treasure hunt.

My friend and I went there because we are both mosaicking enthusiasts, and sought to collect these unusual environmental bits to create a mosaic together. I posted a video on my social media channels of us beachcombing, as we sifted through the stony shoreline. One of my dearest fans responded about how much he loved beachcombing with his daughter, and that they had a song they sang together when they did it.

Somehow, that struck a chord with me . . . I became entranced with the word “Beachcombing” which is not a word I use often (even though I managed to use it twice in the video that day).

That entire afternoon spent combing through sand and pebbles to find these odd relics of a lost Industrial age seemed to have an enchanted quality to it, and the reactions I received from that video post was my fuel to capture that enchantment, if I could.

So, I sat down and conceived the melody and lyrics together, like an interlocking puzzle. I set up a repeating Dmsus4 arpeggio and just sat and listened to it over and over, letting it lull and wash over me like the perpetual, lapping waves of the shoreline that inspired this whole idea. As I fell into a deeper trance from the repetitive loop of the music, I wrote a note with this metaphor in my notebook: “Finding the relics dredged up from the depths of the ocean. Group Mind. Past Life”

“Homesick for a land

That I’ve never been to

Ancient and windswept

As I long for a long, forgotten home

Where curling vines pull down the walls of stone

The remnants of a realm unknown

Pulsing down in my bones”

There is a feeling that I sometimes get; and so I imagine we ALL sometimes get it, too; an indefinable ache.

It’s hard to identify it. But I know it when it’s there. It shows up unannounced, but can get triggered by places of enchantment: shorelines, natural springs, caves, twisty tree-lined trails, abandoned spaces . . .

The name I have for it is “spiritual longing”.

The first verse of this song is an attempt to express that … this ancient call that resonates and resides in our heart and soul; and our very bones and blood.

We are homesick for a land that we’ve never been to, because we are trying to remember where we were before we showed up here. And so we search on the metaphoric shoreline for relics that may give us some clues.

We know our origin is ancient, and we also know that our walls of stone that we build to attempt permanence will inevitably always crumble; will eventually get engulfed by tendrils of what seem to be delicate greenery. A delicacy that is in fact Nature and Her sublime supremacy over us.

Ultimately, what is pulsing down in our bones is not just the blood of our ancestors, but the knowledge contained in that blood. The DNA helixes turning through Time in “Forgetting to Remember”.

We carry all of that wisdom within us, waiting to be excavated. Not only the wisdom of the blood, but the knowledge of our collective unconscious.

The collective unconscious is a concept proposed by the great Carl Jung. It is the deeper aspect of our unconscious mind, beyond the first layer, which is our personal unconscious.

The collective unconscious holds memories of which we may not be aware, but which are a part of the development of humanity as a whole in our inherited psyches.

We can access this part of our unconscious via imagery and symbols when we drop into an Alpha state of close to 7.5 Hz. This “gateway to the subconscious”, as it’s known, is the brain frequency where our intuition thrives. The language in this state is one of symbols, not words, and one of the universal symbols that represents this vast unconscious is the ocean.

Because it is deep, expansive, full of life and rich with worlds that are unknown to us. Shadowy, unfathomable, and chaotic. Just like our unconscious.

And so we go beachcombing to see what will wash up from the ocean of our unconscious to the shoreline of our conscious awareness.

“Combing the beach, curiosities in endless seas

Sifting the sands for the artifacts left behind in my hands”

And as we bring more and more artifacts to the surface, they tell us a story about ourselves. We begin to understand our deepest impulses, shadows, fears, and gifts. Our place in this world.

Even of other worlds.

“Look there’s an Adder stone

Lift it to one eye and peer into the other side

As you search for your long, forgotten home

Where tumbling tides of Time

Wash the sandy grains

Translucent sea glass jewels remain

Which mark your lost terrain”

Someone asked me the other day “What is an Adder stone?” The Adder stone is a stone with a naturally occurring hole carved by centuries of elemental forces that runs all the way through it. In Britain it is also called a hag stone, witch stone, or fairy stone, and legend holds that possession of one augurs good fortune, protection, and magic. Finding them is not particularly easy, so legend also holds that they find you.

Which, indeed, happened to me on a beach in Mexico when I was there shooting mermaid footage for my “Song of Sirens” music video in 2019. As I walked down the Tulum beach to select the location for our shoot, I stumbled upon an Adder stone in the sand and picked it up in awe and wonder. And, in fact, you can hear this stone along with other shells I found and carefully carried back to Northern California. We used them in a shell percussion track in the song, “Pythia”, which is an impending waypoint in our journey.

But, back to beachcombing and the Adder stone. . . legend also holds that if you hold an Adder stone up to one eye and look through it, you can see through to the kingdom of the Fae and encounter beings that otherwise you cannot perceive.

“Lift it to one eye and peer into the other side

As you search for your long, forgotten home”

The other side. . . is that our long forgotten home? Is that perhaps why we are so drawn to know and understand it?

In the mythology of the world of Fae, there are countless references to it being the land of the dead, or of our ancestors, alongside many more references of it being an astral realm of light beings who have receded from our physical world into their less corporeal one. If the Fae are regarded as non-humans, they hold many interesting clues about what it is to be human by comparison. And if they are our ancestors, it goes without saying they have a knowledge of something we as the living have not yet experienced. Or if we have, have forgotten. In either case, this deeper knowledge is part of what we seek in our spiritual alchemy.

”Not a fae fan, personally (or, Owl-ally). They like to warn the mice that I am in the neighborhood!”

“Where tumbling tides of Time

Wash the sandy grains

Translucent sea glass jewels remain

Which mark your lost terrain”

Sea glass are beautiful colored pieces of glass that you find near the ocean that are weathered and transformed due to the constant tumbling of waves, similar to the Adder stones.

Just as our souls and beings are altered and our edges smoothed, shaped and colored with the ceaseless wash of our experiences in Time, marking our journey along the way. Every scar, inner or outer, every wrinkle or new freckle is a marker of our time spent here.

“Beneath the foam swirling ‘round my feet

The lacy edge of a mystery

Oh how to dive down far into the fathomless

Where I cannot breathe

And float through kingdoms of majesty

While jousting beasts of antiquity

Who guard the finest trinkets buried underneath the briny deep

Underneath the briny deep”

… Now with our feet bathing in the foam fringe of the vast ocean we are standing between the two worlds and seeking to find a way to enter this lacy edge of a mystery; the ocean of our unconscious, where it seems we may be in danger; where we cannot breathe.

Yet we know there are kingdoms of majesty to behold there; if only we can float down to find these buried parts of ourselves, our finest trinkets, that we long to apprehend.

As the best treasures of all are those that are guarded by our own beasts of antiquity … our beasts of self protection that we constructed seemingly so many eons ago.

And which protect our vulnerability or innocence or fears that, once excavated, will give our lives that much more depth and expression by finally being freed.

But that are now buried underneath the briny deep…

The 2nd Alchemical Stage: DISSOLUTION

The process of dissolution is when we take the ashes of our Calcination and dissolve them in Water, which is the element associated with his phase.

(Illustration based on the 18th century De summa manuscript)

In this case, it is the waters of our unconscious. Prior to taking on the Great Work, or walking any spiritual path, we are driven by our Ego, and all of the attachments associated with it. We all have buried parts of ourselves and projected other parts so that we may look good to others and feel protected on some level.

Water represents the primal, undifferentiated possibilities that lie within us, waiting to be manifest.

And now we have the Adder stone of protection, because of having gone through our Calcination. We are ready to wade into the ocean of our unconscious to unearth those parts of ourselves that have been guarded by these beasts of antiquity: our pride or our fear or our vanity, for instance.

 

The Moon has been long associated with the waters of the Earth, as well as those within us, as its pull affects the tides as it waxes and wanes. The Moon is also the heavenly body associated with Dissolution, because it dissolves in front of your eyes every month, and its lunar qualities are associated with deconstructing the rational, Solar energies of fixed externalities and beliefs.

Dissolution can break down these corrupted and artificial structures, allowing you to loosen your hold on the false identities you created; allowing you to float a bit and get in touch with a greater picture of yourself; how you fit into the whole.

The Dissolution phase of Spiritual Alchemy can be characterized by deep, mystical communion, which this pathworking can give you to a part of yourself that you may perhaps never have encountered.

DISSOLUTION RITE: YOUR PERSONAL SHORELINE

This pathworking will be your opportunity to meet your Anima or Animus, archetypes of the collective unconscious, perhaps for the first time if you never have met them before.

Your Anima is your unconscious Feminine side of yourself and your Animus is your unconscious Masculine side. We all have indwelling male and female energies, regardless of what our physical gender is. It is not related to our sexual orientation; rather it is an eternal and ever-present aspect of human psychology and of our souls. These masculine and feminine aspects are reflected in the culture and society in which we live and grow, and we all carry cultural associations with us as to what is considered masculine or feminine.

My experience of meeting my own indwelling Anima and Animus for the first time was extremely exciting, surprising, illuminating and rewarding. And returning to encounter them again and again is also endlessing fascinating, as they are dynamic beings, just as you are, and go through transformations as you grow and evolve.

Encountering them allows you to integrate this part of yourself in a way that you may have never done, and can also be a first step in breaking down an artificial construct you may have about yourself and your roles.

So, when you are ready, find a nice, comfortable quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and prepare for another liminal ritual to discover a relic from your great ocean.

Settle into a comfortable seated or lying position. Close your eyes and take a long, deep, slow breath. And let it out. Do that one more time; a long slow inhalation, as you allow yourself to become more fully in your body now. And again, a slow inhale and exhale.

With each exhalation feel and notice how your awareness, in fact, your whole physical body, seems to be dropping lower to the ground.

Just be present to this now and continue to breathe in and out, feeling relaxed and content. Allow any sounds that you may hear to anchor you further into how relaxed and content you feel as you drop further into your body.

Notice your own deep, dark blackness that is surrounding you. With your next exhalation, let your awareness drop from behind your eyes further down into that darkness. Floating, down, down.

Become aware now of an opening that allows light to shine through. As your awareness floats softly and effortlessly down towards it, the light and opening become larger. You float down to land right before it, and see that it is an open doorway. You realize you are in the liminal.

With your awareness, feel how you easily take a step into the opening of the portal. Your feet touch the gritty texture of sand beneath them, a familiar feeling. The sand is warm, and inviting. You step further, and as you pass through the portal, you find yourself on a beautiful, twilit sandy path leading to a beach. Tufts of beach grass jut this way and that from the smooth dunes that define this trail that leads to your shoreline.

It is nearly silent here, save the soothing sounds of the purr of the moving ocean, the ocean breeze that carries the saline smell and moves your hair across your face, and the barely perceptible crunch of the sand beneath your feet.

You continue to walk forward down the narrow, sand path that winds between the tufts of beach grass, noticing the mix of colors in the sky above you as the day just begins to wane and give way to evening. Notice how you feel here, now, in this safe and sacred meeting between earth, water, and sky. Allow yourself to relax and sink even further into the sand as you slowly move towards the ocean.

Your path opens up to the entire beach, and you turn and walk a short way down the white, still warm sands, as you watch the hypnotic waves coming in and receding back out. There is no one else here; this is and shall always be your own private beach.

You see before you the perfect place to sit in the sand, safe from the wetness of the waves, but close enough to enjoy the nearness of the power of the sea.

You settle into that spot, and take a moment to ready yourself, however that feels for you, to meet your Anima or Animus.

With your intention, invite your choice of either your Inner Feminine or your Inner Masculine to join you, now, in this secluded, sacred space, on your own private beach.

Allow him or her to appear before you, with as much or as little time as they need to do so. And as they do, take time to notice all that you can about them.

What are they wearing? What color are their eyes and hair? Are they tall? Short? Medium build? Slight?

Spend some time with them now in communication. They may speak or say nothing at all. You might understand them with a feeling, or a sound, a color, or a knowing. Just take as long as you wish and let your communion flow.

You may ask them some questions…. such as “What is your message for me?” ” What do you wish for me to understand about you?” Allow whatever questions you may have to come up, and ask them. They may even have a name… you may ask that, too.

Take as much time as you wish with this eternal and sacred part of yourself.

When you feel it’s time to start returning, ask them if they may have a gift to bring back with you as a memento of this meeting. Accept their gift with love and gratitude, and thank them for it.

Rise from the sand and make your way back to the path between the tufts of beach grass. Notice the sound of the ocean start to recede behind you as you retrace your steps back to the portal entrance between these worlds.

When you reach the portal, allow yourself to step back into the doorway to return to your safe deep, dark blackness, and start to float up, up up. As you do, let the portal close behind you and recede into the distance. Know that you may return here as often as you wish . . .

As your awareness rises back to behind your eyes, when you are ready, open them, and return to the here and now.

I really really recommend taking some time to write down your experience once you’ve returned, as over time, just like dreams, the impact and imagery can fade from your memory. Sometimes it may also take some time for you to truly understand all of the nuances of these inner journeys, and your journaling reminds you of aspects that you may forget. Journal with as much detail as you can muster, for you will be grateful for those details when you look back on these pages later.

Feel free to return to this place as often as you wish, now that you have staked out this territory within yourself. Just be sure that you always return to the here and now. You may wish to journey back to your personal shoreline soon to meet your alternate half if you only met one in this sitting.

You can also get creative and invite varying entities of interest to meet you here. (Just be careful who you invite, just as you would whom you allow into your home). One practice that works well for me is to get to know any beings or entities I am interested in a little better by learning and reading about them before I invoke them. Think of it as if you are building a vocabulary so that your inner resources have more to draw from, making your experience richer.

And know that you now carry your own personal shoreline with you everywhere you go, to do your own beachcombing as often as you wish.

Copyright Valentina Osinski | Nymphya 2023. All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without prior written permission from the author.

NYMPHYA (Valentina Osinski) is a former Mechanical Engineer and Opera singer who now instead writes music and musings to sooth souls.

When she’s not brandishing her pen, microphone, or digital audio workstation, she enjoys fashionable excursions, painting, garden contemplation, studying the ancient mysteries, and the occasional single malt scotch.

Prior to launching NYMPHYA, Valentina appeared throughout the United States as an opera singer (NYCO and SF Opera), actor (Magic Theater), performer and musician, guesting on numerous soundtracks for television, film and commercials (Time/Life Warner, IMAX, and Garfield), on multiple CD projects for recording artists, (Sky Cafe and Royal Fingerbowl) backing up John Cale (The Velvet Underground) on the Tonight Show, appearing on MTV with her group Screaming Divas, and opening for Todd Rundgren at the Fillmore in San Francisco, for George Benson at Villa Montalvo, and Dana Carvey at the Shoreline Ampitheatre.

She lives on the northwest coast of California, near the redwood groves and foggy crags, nestled in her 1922 bungalow surrounded by a myriad of greenery and relics.

“WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN?” is Nymphya’s first book and third album, released on the WooHooYa Music label, and can be found at shop.nymphya.com.

Join Nymphya in WooHooYa for other musical offerings and behind the scenes info HERE

Listen to more excerpts from WHAT HAVE I FORGOTTEN? HERE

Purchase your hardback, color illustrated copy and receive the digital album download HERE