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Bertille Deroche
In A Dream Across Time Bertille Deroche has many attributes. One of them is the loving caregiver for her family. Because of Clarisse’s emotional collapse Bertille had taken on the role of mothering Andre and Emile. She is one of those women who takes on the mothering role for all comers in need. Her lap is ample and all encompassing with love and security.
There is boundless physical comfort as well as security and she extends her love through the food she prepares. It is important to her that her "parrots" are well fed. For her the food preparation is not work but is a sacred fulfillment.
Bertille’s care of her family extends to her contact with the spirit world where she maintains intimacy with Mother Earth of whom she is clearly a representative. In her flights she seeks underlying understanding of current and future events so that she may better protect her brood. In her contact with the spirits she finds ways to clarify her own perceptions of her people and what is happening to them.
While Marcus is the Wise Old Man, Bertille is the Earth Mother. She represents all that we experience about love, nurturance, comfort and security with our mothers. As such she is a universal. But in the island experience she represents something else to the "civilized" world. She exists not as a symbol but in the here and now. She feels eternal and ancient. The keeper of the flame is, in fact, a priestess and, in modern life, is generally hidden. Not so much in the islands, where such women are more readily glimpsed.
And then, of course, we cannot forget that Bertille is deeply in touch with the mystery of women. While men have traditionally held what is called "power" and "ruled" there are more elemental powers and a rule of mystery which balances the rule of men. In fact, mystery is, perhaps, regardless of the age in human history, the more fundamental power. In the end it is the women who conquer the conquerors. And their mystery is implicit in everything that is important to humanity.
Whether you believe in astral projection or not, it is clear that people can project themselves. We have imagination and in our daydreams, night dreams or wandering in our imagination we project ourselves. Bertille travels with the spirits and seeks their wisdom. She is adept at these travels although there is always risk in such flights. That is why Marcus stands guard over her when she travels in the spirit world. Her travels are in the interest of love and wisdom; representatives of evil could disrupt her flight and her intentions. At the time of her travels she is fragile because she has given up much of her solidity in the physical world.
Bertille is unusual in being an adept in such processes. "Modern" peoples do somewhat the same thing when they clear their mind in yoga, meditate or enter a prayer state. She is both a fundamental human symbol and a real person in a society where the primal ways are closer to the surface. Her ability to move in both worlds makes her a truly powerful person. It is her power which overwhelms Jamie when she is in contact with her because Jamie is also a dreamer and can be pulled away into Bertille’s world. But Jamie would find herself in an unfamiliar place in which she is not in a position to be in control in the way that Bertille can be. So, she consults Bertille and does not travel with her.
We can only hope that the cusp between our primal world and our modern world does not disappear. The loss would be tremendous. We can already perceive the impact of the erosion of this connection in our hunger for meaning. And so we greet Bertille with wonder and affection. She slakes our thirst and stills our hungers. She offers truly great comfort and safety found in a living representative of Mother Earth.

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