The Panthers chose me,too.As did the Godess Sekhmet and a being named Missipeshu . This is how I got associated with Panthers,and how I met The Underground Panthers.
I had this dream on the night of my birthday,I had just turned 5 that day.
The dream began at night (in the dream)when violent thunderstorm came.The windows flashed with lightning.The rain was reflected in the flashes,the thunder roared,as rain came in wisping through my
windowscreen smelling of ozone and green freshness..Then it was dark and silent.Then,I woke up.(in the dream)
And it was a sunny morning .
All the colors were so hyperreal,golden..
In our backard a weed had sprouted. I was in bed again(in the dream) and an even more severe storm came,lightning flased the wind felt like it may blow the house down..
I woke up to another golden morning more beatiful than before,and the weed became a tree.And the tree was rainbow colored,shimmering, like stained glass,it had grapefruit sized crystal clear fruits on it's branches.
A winged horned lynx the color of the rainbow with flickering lightning in it's fur offered me a fruit off of the tree to eat.
I took
it.It was a shimmery orb very much like a soap bubble with clear seeds in it's middle and a plant structure
holding them like an apple or a pear has in it's center.
I ate it,it was sweet and tasted like an berryish orange grape.I turned around to see the sun. The sun swirled it's light from green to red to orange and blue.On the other side of the sky a silvery moon hung in the high horizon .Lots of animals showed up nearby quite suddenly,out of nowhere.There were even tigers and peacocks butterflies and hummingbirds.There were all sorts of animals snakes, lightningbugs birds ,mammals,had gathered around my backyard standing close to me.
I saw the sun it was flashing and I greeted it .
I held aloft my hands(similar to the ka symbol in egypt) and it came down to me, I started throwing it and catching it like a beach ball.Then I sent it back to the sky and it rose up like a helium balloon.
I did this with the moon too but it was heavier,and I had to throw it back into the sky with some force and it spun out it's phases
in reply until it went back to it's normal place in the sky .
The animals were all around me so quiet but so friendly and they were
speaking to me without words.I wish I could remember the conversations..
Suddenly the sky above me shifted it's clouds,and a huge panther's face emerged made of the sky itself and appeared
hovering above me. It's eyes were so gentle and soft .It's face covered the sky from horizon to horizon .Huge whiskers brushed against the tree tops.
The Panther's eyes began to glow and it sent energy but it bumped me like waves as I was lifted up 1 1/ 2 feet off the ground,
my hair was swirling up in this electrified wind swirling around me, and the panther's eyes changed, they went on forever like a vortex into eternity. Two beautiful bolts of lightning it flowed from the
Panther's strange lowing inner eyes, merged into one bolt, swirled down and struck my chest ,throat and head. It was gentle like it was being poured into
me.It had faces in it of all sorts of animals..swirling through it.
Lightning of every color came out from every pore and orafice of my body.
It was color changing looked kinda like a hologram made of many kinds of beings. It didn't hurt me at all .
I looked down and below me I saw another panther's
face.It's face was covering the Earth and it was made of Earth
for as far as I could see.treelines and muntains made it's stripes,it's eyes were open oceans..Both felines "held" me in a free moving kind of balance above the ground suspended on a stream of lightning.
Almost like a bead on a string.I could float/walk around. The lightning went through the earth,through my body into the Earth
panther's eyes,right through the World into space. The Panthers eyes were stretching on forever,the sky bolts went through me
into the eyes of the sky panther and up forever the same way.
As I observed the panthers as swirling shapes of things flew out of thier stripes and manes. The sky panther had a horned halo..
On the panther below had markings that were trees and rivers and it's head was encircled by mountain ranges as
all sorts of things flew from the ends of the stripes..Living animals,music,art,anything you can think of was swirling off the fur
and becoming alive.Looking at the face of the panther above,
I saw the sky,clouds, stars, nebulae, galaxies,comets and worlds..spirits..swirling off it's fur sky clouds.
Then I rose a bit higher and the seasons started mixing up together.There was snow on one side of the backyard ,spring on another,
The passing of the days sped up. Clouds rapidly moved as the shadows of the sun and moon rapidly moved across the sky ,
shadows moved across the yard faster and faster. it would snow,rain, hail..in quick bursts,with sunshine in between..Soon the sun and all became like a strobe light and chaotic.
I saw the stars in the sky in motion moving like a syncopated gyroscope,or a flickering spinning top.
I was inside of it..The stars that were far away formed into a snake shape and it danced around the horizon line.
Then I felt my body being pulled up more. I discovered I was inside that rainbow tree trunk.The same tree I had eaten the fruit from before..,And the lightning was streaming through me still.I was moving up the tree like sap. Looking out from inside the trunk was like looking out of a tunnel shaped crystal and stained glass room.I looked down to the earth panther,and the gnarled roots of this tree I was in looked
like her fur markings..It was the tree roots as spinning galaxy of fractals.
This fractal/fur root system was making worlds,and animals and people and all sorts of stuff before my eyes.
I saw so many dreams, thoughts ,inventions,things people..but it formed patterns and it looked different from a higher up view.
Everything was forming off it's many ever changing fractalizing spiraling ends..It "ticked" in it's swirl motion.
I looked up at the The sky Panther and in it's eyes I saw outerspace made of milky ways,suns, moons, planets, dust spirals, comets ,nebulae,and there were many orbs of stars that had faces,
many kinds of faces that changed shape and type .It was shifting wispy ,very beautiful .They were clear with stars inside,thier features were defined by membranes sort of like in the fruit I ate..
They were nebulas and galaxies that were alive with beings. I was among them floating backwards slowly. They were speaking, all of them. I felt myself falling a feeling of panic.Suddenly there was a HUGE crash of thunder and I was startled awake in my real life.. in my bed on a sunny morning.When I woke up I ran outside to see was the tree there?
In my backyard overnight a bean plant had grown,the day before nothing was there..But this day there was a bean plant it was 6 or so inches tall.I put a stake in to hold it up and it grew.I still keep a few beans in a special pouch from this plant.I have no clue how it got there.Or how it grew so quick..I have never forgotten this dream.
Years later I went into trance to ask Why after such a glorious dream was I awoken by thunder...?This was how I learned about myself being trapped here before I was born.I was slammed by some force not wanting me to escape,compressed into a small stream and forced or funneled into a fetus.That was born as me,now.
More about these beings that came into my life..
Mishipizheu is who gave me the fruit in my dream and one of the panthers who shot me through with lightning.Mishipizheu or Gitche-anahmi-bezheu,among some other similar names ..is a manitou of the underwater realm, spirit of rapids and tubulent water.This Great Panther can be in the form of a snake looking creature with sharp teeth, anthers or horns, a long flaming tail, spiked ridges alomg his back like liberty spikes,and power lightning shooting out from from its body,.Mishipizhiw was also pictured as a big horned feline,sometimes mixed with attributes of a bird of prey.
"Great Lynx", "great underwater wildcat," "underwater panther," or "fabulous night panther" aresome of the monikers this great cat
goes by too. Like other Manitous, Mishipizhiw has power to shape-change into different animal forms.Mishipizheu is my first spiritual
connection to the feline dieties.The other is the Egyptian Godess Sekhmet,which I met in 6th grade when I touched her statue,
,that is another story I can tell you later.A factoid unknown to most people who don't study Sekhmet deeply ,She is a transgodess/god.Sekhem..is her masculine name,it means power. The "et" ending is the feminine ending shanging"power" into Lady of Power.
She wears both female and male dress and is a genderqueer lion.
She's my mother,and I am of her.(spiritually)
I have her image tattooed on my left lower leg,on my other leg is Bast,on my right upper arm is Mishipizhiw.