Dream: The Magus

Many strange dreams Tuesday night; I'm blaming the garlic artichoke dip.

I had what I would imagine was a Ritual Magic dream.   There was a someone I'm going to melodramatically call a Magus, who I'd say was a little older than I am, balding a little, with mostly dark, short hair.  I think he had a mustache as well.  He was the leader of a small group of people, men and women.  I've got the feeling they were wearing early ABBA outfits, all flowy and purples and blues.  Now that I think about it, the whole dream had a late sixties-early-seventies artsy British feel to it.

There was a ton of vivid visual imagery that was clearer to me at 4 AM Wednesday morning than it is now.  The first scene I was traveling from England to the United States via a large stream or small river.  Although I was floating down a steam, I was simultaneously crossing the Atlantic.  The scene became darker and darker, and the water way sunk under ground until it was completely enclosed in a conduit.  At one point I was freaking out a little, because I was in a dark current which was drawing me deeper into subterranean depths and the stony conduit was coming closer to my head and becoming more constricting.  I somehow changed the narrative, and was floating, disembodied, and looking at an old Greek vase, black glaze showing the Atlantic Ocean, red glaze showing Europe and America, and a little red dotted line showing my progress between the two continents.

I was supposed to meet the Magus and his group on the other side, but I'd wound up at some sort of kink convention or merchandise show.  Insert (whoops, wrong word...um, imagine) gleaming rows of naughty, stainless steel machines here... I'm reminded a little of the North Side McMinnemon's in Eugene because of the wide open floor plan, but the decor was more Scandinavian Design.  The place was airy and light, with a hardwood floor, and very simple lines.

The place was mostly empty, but was slowly filling up with mostly naked people (think "The Garden of Earthly Delights").  I think I was dressed, but for whatever reason, people kept thinking I was there as a sex slave.  I kept saying, "No, um, I'm here to meet [The Magus]."   Eventually, somebody tried to put a collar on me (or something) and my aura popped out like a bright blue force field.

"Oh," someone said as lightning bolts played about the outside of my aura, "He really is with [The Magus]. You want to go over here." (It was like, "Oh, well; this is the kink convention.  You want the magic convention next door...")  I was pointed to a darkly stained hardwood door.

I went to the door and eased it open.  There was a medium-large, dark dog on the other side.  I have a strong sense the dog was Cerberus.  There weren't three heads (I think), and the dog didn't breathe fire or anything.  I closed the door a little and slowly made friends with the dog.  "Hello," I said.  The dog growled, but I kept talking to it as if it were friendly and eventually it let me open the door and come in.

There's a confused part here, but I was either travelling with the dog or else I was carrying it.  I want to say that I was carrying it.  I was sliding down a stair banister, or else I was walking along a narrow incline; in which case the dog may have been behind me.  I had to stop moving forward because there was a three foot high stone horse head, like a statue of a chess horse in the way.  It was looking to my right, but as I bumped up against it, it started to rotate slowly, grinding stone against stone, so that it was looking at me.

I'm not sure how I got out of the knot of me, the dog and the horse, but the next thing I remember, I was in a outdoor garden compound.  I want to say it was night, because everything was dark and blue, and my sense was that the moon was out.  Tall foliage, like bamboo, stood against stucco or cob walls.  The garden was a square layout, with short walls at ninety-degree angles at the corners, and wide paths at three or so levels.  There were low bungalows irregularly placed along the garden's parameter.

I found a kind of rotating metal stage or merry-go-round.  I want to say it was fifteen feet across, with three different levels gently spinning different directions; it was kind of like a bulls-eye with spinning rings and center.   The metal was painted different shades of dark blue, cobalt, and indigo; it was corrugated like the merry-go-rounds I played on in the seventies.

I got on the outer ring.  The Magus was singing in one of the bungalows, a sort of night time slow song, not quite a lullaby, but more of a the-night-creatures-are-stirring song (no, not quite "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", more active in a quiet way).   As I slowly spun along on the outside ring, I came upon a Black man who I somehow knew was the gardener, and who was standing still, holding a garden hose with water streaming out of it next to the ring.  I reached out my hands as I glided by and washed them under the stream.

I made my way to the center of the spinning platform and lay down.  The stars gently wheeled above and I fell asleep listening to the song in the garden.

There were other dreams, but it's been too long between the dreaming and the remembering for me to fix anything down.


Looking at this dream, it's got the typical travelling to an Otherworld via a water crossing, typical threshold guardians (dog), and the usual fairy horse (although this is the first time the horse has been a stone chess piece instead of a giant white horse).   The rotating stage sounds like the song of the Primium Mobile, or Vision of the Machinery of the Universe.  I'm not sure what the kink convention was about, although I had recently studied "The Garden of Earthly Delights."

I'm not sure what to think of this particular dream, although it looks like my symbolic self was working over-time.

Dream: Otherworld Reversals

I was in a very large house with relatives.  I think they were the cousins on my dad's side.  There were a lot of empty rooms, and it was almost as if we were staing in a half-empty hotel.   The house had three stories.  Some of us were staying on the second story, which was a bunch of rooms connected to a central kitchen or dining room area.  I remember the sun was rising (I think) and the ruddy light came through some of the windows.

Then J. N. (not a relative) was there and she was complaining that she was stuck in one of the room on the brick third story.  "Oh I know nobody will believe me," she said.  "But the stairwell to my room is haunted."  She was going on to no one in particular.  "One night I got stuck.  I was on the stair and I couldn't move."  

I'd say half of us believed some supernatural force had rooted her to the stair, half through she'd somehow hypnotized herself or something, and half though she'd dreamed the whole thing.

--

There was a break.  The house was an old monastery.  The setting had changed to England.  The haunted stair / room was the room that the monks, who had been doing inner-city work, would store confiscated guns from the youth they helped.  One night there was a terrible shoot-out in the monastery, and (at least) two monks were killed.

A voice-over narrated while a lone monk, standing by the back-side of the house, pensively looked at black smoke rising from an industrial complex across a dark river.  "...After that, the brothers were forced to make a living at the very same nuclear power plant they despised."  The monk turned and began climbing either stairs or an embankment.  It was dark, and his hands glowed green.  

"Oh, come on," I said out loud to myself.  "Glowing green hands?"  And I was watching the monks on TV.

--

There was another break.  A famous actor, like Hugh Grant or Beckham, was noticing that young girls were in an area where there was a gun deal or a drug deal going on, and he got them away.  This might have been a prelude to the monk section.  

--

There was a break.  I was standing on the corner of Willamette and Broadway in Eugene.  Only it was a junction where gleaming, silver, double-decker trains/subway cars converged.  Four story department stores stood on every corner.  

I got onto a car, which had a layout like a bus, and had wide benches to accommodate three or four people.  The train pulled away and onto a looping turnpike, as if it were travelling on an interstate highway.  There were a bunch of other commuters in the car.  We went over some marshland, and had somehow gotten to the outskirts of New York City.  Suddenly, a policewoman appeared at the head of the car on a big black horse.  The horse slowly clomped down the aisle, and stopped at my seat, and began to sniff my up-reached hand.  Then it wanted its nose rubbed.  

The policewoman got off her horse and sat down with some people behind me.   She pulled out a small round flask, the size of a pocket-watch, and took a sip of something alcoholic.  The she passed it around to the passengers next to her, explaining that it was an herbal extract (chamomile, I think) and that it helped her condition (or to feel better or her cold or something).  

--

I'm not sure if I got off the car or if there was another transition.  I was in a castle or small European village.  I think it might have been a documentary, because the narrator would say some short small fact about the season life of a medieval / renaissance village.  

--

The Child and I had gone for a short walk along a path which ran through the woods and by a stream.  In waking life it was very much like the Reed College canyon, especially the more wooded east end.   I had a slight sense of something malicious in the slow, stagnant stream.  I also had a sense that I was lying under the quilts and blankets on my bed, and the carpet of small, red-brown leaves underneath the trees took on a dual, blanket appearance.  

"Let's race back home," I said.  "I'll give you a 30 second head-start."  He ran along the curving, wooded path while I stayed behind at the water.  (In waking life, I'm not sure why I thought splitting up would be a good idea... although I wanted to make sure nothing was coming up behind us.)  Then I quickly and cautiously followed.  I thought I'd catch up to him, but when I got back to the castle, The Child wasn't there.  I went back along the path, carefully looking for small arms or legs under the leaves or the water plants, thinking I'd have to save him from a Kelpie at any moment, and kicking myself for letting him get away from me.  

A bunch of other folks were also searching, but then the dream shifted again, and the narrator said, "In late October, the villagers set out at night with small lights."  I and the other searching villagers were scrambling around a hill with three-inch diameter pumpkins stuck on our index fingers.  Insert grinning, finger-sized jack-o-lanterns floating in a dark forest here. 

It was dark.  I was climbing a hill with a lit finger pumpkin.  At the top of the hill, there were a bunch of people standing in a line in front of a bright light.  One of them was the policewoman, only now she was a a policeman.  I rushed up the hill with a sudden desire to kiss the policeman.  Just as I reached the crest of the hill a furry head interposed itself between me and the policeman -- at first I thought it was the horse, but the horse had turned into a kind of black panther.   (Possibly the cat, who sleeps with us, was nuzzling me in real life, but I don't know.)

We'd come to a concession stand at a train station or a highway rest stop.  It was Halloween night, and the policeman was selling snacks.  

--

I'm not entirely sure what's prompting this dream.  I've been having some stomach issues, which typically give me anxiety dreams -- but I've been careful to remind myself as I sleep that I've had an upset stomach and not to respond with a Never Reaching the Airport Anxiety Dream.  I'm guessing it was several dreams, and I've scrambled the sequence a bit.  

There were lots of reversals in this sequence.  Meeting my cousins in a labyrinthine house isn't new, but usually it's my mom's side of the family who meets, not my dad's.

The horse and crossing a river is a typical motif, usually signalling that I'm operating in an otherworld.  This is the first time that I've had any interaction with the horse's rider, usually it's a knight, not a New York Horse Policewoman.  And usually the horse is white, not black.  This is also the first time the horse has transformed into the black panther, which is usually associated with erotic desire and thoughts.  

I'm guessing the monks may be related somehow to the techno-monks in Girl Genius, but aside from being monks, the similarity ends, as these weren't train-running techno-monks, but rather, inner-city monks working with troubled youth (and nuclear power plants as construction workers)

The Child in Peril is a typical anxiety dream, although this is the first time The Child has been in supernatural peril from a Kelpie; usually, it's physical danger, like falling out a window or over a railing.  

Watching the dream on TV is a typical dream shift motif, but this is one of the few, if not the first, times that watching hasn't been literally "and then I was watching it on TV" instead of a narrator's voice-over providing summary.