by Joshua Gryniewicz

A Vision of Salamander
copyright (c) 2003 by Josh Gryniewicz

The old man’s gravel voice scraped the words into my head long before I had a fictional framework to house him. He spoke an encrypted poetic command: “Find the flame that burns on water.” I had no key to decipher this riddle, let alone an answer to the puzzle itself. Stories come to me this way--a descriptive snapshot, a character, or a snatch of dialogue that evokes a reality around it. This, however, occurred a little differently; the old man and his instructions offered the origins of a narrative, but the place in which I found it unfolded in a somewhat more unusual fashion.

I was meditating on changes that I needed to make in my life, practicing a series of deep relaxation and breathing exercises that I do nightly, when I was suddenly induced into a vision. In the course of the meditation, a salamander would scurry into my mind, traipsing over smooth mossy stones and rocks along a riverbed reflecting memories of my childhood. The revelation and recognition of the significance of place would be slow in coming, as I feel the analytical voice of cognition is suspended for the functions of vision. However, the riverbed was one that was readily identifiable from a family vacation spot in my childhood--Hueston Woods in Oxford, Ohio--significance I will reveal later. I chased after the scampering amphibian, as though perceiving him before me with my own sight and then, in chase, I became aware that I was in fact the salamander leaping and skittering along the flow of the rushing water. A narrative voice spoke over the scene, announcing that there should be a cave just ahead. There is no actual cave in my memory of the place, nor, so far as I know, in the actual Woods itself. This cave exists only in my psycho-geographical impression of the location.

I entered into the cave in my vision, greeted by a cascade of memory like uneven spools of film cut together in presentation: images linked in a fashion that would only make sense to me. I climb aboard a large, hollowed-out canoe of birch wood, massive and composed of completely natural bindings. I begin a journey in the canoe through a thick fog that parallels similar mental journeys that I have taken before. Here, the river that I am paddling down leads me to a flight of stone, temple-like stairs, which ascend into a dense, dark mass of deep green foliage. After climbing the stairs, I see a hut made of bone and fastened together with sinew bindings. There is a primordial sensation that nearly overwhelms me as I approach this scene. I am physically sick with fear (in the waking world) as I approach the hut. I enter into the sacred place, into the flickering torch-light. Across from the entryway I witness an altar, upon which sits a bowl of bone, filled with blood. I am instructed by the narrator to drink the blood and as I begin to raise the dish to my lips, the sensations are nearly overpowering. “This is the house of death that you’ve made,” the voice booms. I snap to alertness, my hands shaking as badly in the waking world as they had been in the vision.

I regard the symbolic content of my meditative visions in the same fashion as I would my dreams, first analyzing the details for personal significance, then applying historical and cultural properties to grant a greater level of insight. Only in the research that followed my vision did I learn the symbolism of the salamander in it. I know that there was no prior conscious knowledge of the imagery that existed before I began my analysis. It seems even more amazing that the meditative vision was laden, almost ad nauseam, with images of birth, death, and rebirth--as if to reinforce the interpretation and assert the symbolism. For example, even the location where the salamander first appeared is a place of personal origins. I was born in Oxford, Ohio and our family trips to the location, in my child’s mind, always denoted some feeling of personal importance and significance. The images of the cave as womb, the house of bone, the drinking of the blood--each reasserts these impressions and complements the symbolism of the salamander.

It was only after I had decided to compile some of the notes and impressions of the experience with hopes of turning it into an essay that I had one of the more interesting revelations of the lot. The salamander itself is the missing metaphor for the flame that burns on water. The very symbol for rebirth is intimately tied to a personal symbol for balance, which happens to loan itself equally to the story I had been working on, as well as to the issues that had provoked the meditation in the first place.

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This article was published, originally, in the NILAS Newsletter, Fall 2002/Winter2003.  It is republished, here, with permission.

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