The Salmon God

I used to work as a commercial fisherman, in Alaska.  I worked as a deck-hand on a 32-foot drift-net vessel, fishing the sockeye run in late June/early July.  I was at first unused to the work and disturbed by the violence to the live fish as we ripped them out of our net, the faster to get it back into the water to catch more.  The captain screamed at me to work faster, as I hesitated to insert my gloved fingers into the gasping fish's gills to free it from the web.  Harrowed, I was unable to reconcile myself to this treatment of another creature.
One night I had a dream.  In my dream, the Salmon God and Goddess appeared to me.  They told me that it would be alright if I killed their children for money.  I was to make a daily ceremony of releasing back to the water one live male and one live female.  This I did, except only on days when we lacked the catch to do it.  I never told the skipper, who would not have permitted it.
In the dream, the Salmon God was huge, almost as big as the sky, and filled the space above me.  He was powerful and wise, but also feeling, vulnerable.  The Salmon Goddess was human-sized, slender, in human form, with small, uneven teeth, small breasts, black wet hair.  She was full of sorrow.  She made love to me.  She smelled of salt water and fish, and was cold and wet.
After this, I felt free to catch all the salmon that we could, free to tear their hard bodies, to fling them against bulkheads and into holds.  I had a clear sense of moral justification.  I needed the income to support my career and life; I respected the fish and was grateful to them.  I had the permission of the Salmon God and Goddess.  I had made love to the Salmon Goddess.
The dream was particularly vivid, and I recall some of its details even now, twenty years later.
I have no illusions about my need to have this particular dream.  What I find striking is my inclination to treat it as a spiritual event.  Part of what I wish to come to terms with, in this Blog, is the meaning of that expression and its significance - a spiritual event - in terms that neither defy logic and empirical science nor disdain the felt truth of spirituality.