Author: Denise

(Thursday, July 3, 2014) I believe this dream is prescient of my 2017 trip to Glastonbury England for Jill Purce’s Red Tara Mandala.

I’m in the sacred Black Hills, driving out of Rapid City. My children are in the back seat: a boy and a girl. The boy is Cullan at the age of 6 or so, and the girl is Jamie (my sister in waking life who is 6 years younger than I). We are searching for my mother-in-law Kay, who has dementia. She has left her room and gone wandering. Walkabout. [I visit Glastonbury in 2017. It is considered one of the most sacred sites in England. I travel west from London. When Chris and I were in the Black Hills in early October of 2013 we experienced a very rare polar vortex.]

The road begins a gradual rise. It’s coated with a light layer of slippery snow. The car slides off the right side of the road, at the start of a low ramp that curves to the west (left), but I am able to regain control and steer my vehicle back onto the pavement. I decide to stop and park alongside a purple-red granite curb, walking down a gentle slope on the left side of the road into a large, open plaza made of white marble. At the (top) north end of the plaza there is a building made of the same stone. The structure is built into the hillside beneath the curved ramp, like a druid barrow or dolmen. [Dolmens are ancient structures in Britain, I think connected to the Druids. The Glastonbury Tor was visible from the retreat center where I stayed. The Tor sits on a large green mound.]

I enter the building, a conference center. An event is underway. I look to my left and see the registration desk. Two men are seated at the desk, their backs facing me. As I approach them, the man on the left turns around to greet me with an enormous grin and sparkling blue/grey eyes. He is wearing a blue star-studded gown and matching tall, pointed hat on top of his brilliant white hair. Wizard’s garb. Merlin. My dream uses the word “sorcerer.” [I attend Jill Purce’s Red Tara Mandala ceremony in Glastonbury. She has two sons named Merlin and Cosmo who look nearly like twins. Merlin and the Arthur legend are a story deeply connected to this region, also called Avalon. On the opening day of the retreat, we entered the main lodge and filled out paperwork at a registration desk.]

I feel a tremendous shock of electricity run through my body as our eyes meet. He is overjoyed to see me. “Hi, my name is Harry!” he says, as the other man now turns toward me and smiles. Both faces are beaming at me. The men seem to be identical twins, but in fact are one entity, split into two figures. This understanding sends another shock deep into my bones. The sorcerer’s energy envelopes me in a sensation of hyper-reality. This part of the dream takes place in a very magical dimension. I feel more awake than in waking life. [This seems to be a Harry Potter joke. Obviously this is Merlin.]

I think I am looking for Kay, but the sorcerer knows I have come to begin my apprenticeship. He takes me by my left elbow and leads me into the conference hall to my right. The conference is about lucid dreaming and much, much more. Jean Campbell and other characters from IASD are in attendance. [Working with Jill did indeed feel like an apprenticeship. I had highly shamanic experiences.]

The sorcerer begins to recite a poem, a spell, from a small piece of paper. The spell is about the chakras of the earth. An animal is associated with each chakra and each line of the poem. There is a line about bulls and one about lions. I think the sorcerer is going to mention eagles next but he surprises me with polar bears. White bears. He shows me the poem so I can read it for myself. (I try to bring it with me into waking life but of course I cannot.) He then expounds with tremendous scientific detail on climate change and the implications of the loss of the polar ice caps, which is changing the ocean currents. [Jill’s ceremony was at Earth Spirit Centre, an eco retreat. We were surrounded by white sheep. I had my first black wolf dream a few days into the mandala. We also celebrated Beltane, an ancient honoring of the earth.]

I am deeply sad and this reminds me of Kay. I remember, too, that I have left my children waiting in the car. They must be hungry by now.

I tell the sorcerer that it’s time for me to leave. He helps me scrounge some food for Cullan and Jamie. In our every moment together he is joyful and completely supportive. As I turn to go he holds me lightly, lovingly by my shoulders, looks directly into my eyes and says, “Hey, happy birthday!” I don’t think it’s my birthday but I smile at him anyway. Wondering what he means. [I attend the mandala ceremony on my sixtieth birthday, in late April of 2017. It did not even connect with me that this dream was prescient of my big birthday till months later. ]

I walk the short distance across the plaza to the edge of the road where my car is parked, my arms full of treats for the kids. As I open the driver’s door and tuck my head to slide into the car, I brush the top of my wizard’s hat. Only at this moment do I realize that the sorcerer has placed a cap on my head made from the leathery, dried bell of a flower. Foxglove? [A “wish” I worked on at the mandala was for Cullan to find a new love. A few months later he met Hillary. They moved in together, got married in July of 2018 and had baby Wyn Franklin in June of 2019. Jamie means love. In Tarot, 6 is the Lovers card.]

We drive to the hotel or residence where Kay has been staying. It’s a pretty white stucco building with ornate carvings on the silver frames of the large picture windows. Very baroque. I am immensely relieved to discover that Kay has returned to the safety of her room on her own.

Next door to the hotel is a clothing boutique. Kay and the kids and I decide to do some shopping. The walls of the boutique are lined with wooden shelves full of beautiful scarves and accessories. In the middle of the shop is an oval-shaped display stacked with fine linen blouses and dresses. I find a white blouse that I like but I am distracted by the many other exquisite, colorful pieces on display. It feels like every garment is designed exactly for me. At one point I pick up a small hand-tooled purse of brown leather. I’m tempted to buy it but all of my shoes are black so I would have to find new shoes to match the bag. I return to the spot where I left the white blouse. It’s gone, and some of the other dresses are gone too. It’s a popular shop, apparently, and I will need to make quick, firm decisions about my purchases. [I think the leather purse is a clue about Jill Purce. She always wears a white blouse. Purse/Purce puts me on a new path (brown shoes). Linen scarves were a part of the ceremony, which rotated in oval and circular formations. It was also required to shop for clothing in certain colors to bring to the retreat.]

I had the strongest possible feeling when I awoke from this dream that the sorcerer was a real entity. Not a dream character.

(Saturday, August 31, 2019)

In the last two days I have had a series of very lucid dreams, three to four per night that I remember upon awakening. My definition of lucid is a dream that feels like actual reality, full of intense visual and emotional details: a level of existence we experience in sleep. Hillman’s Underworld. I have been too busy with work and chores to be able to record them with the details that were still clear in my mind early in the morning.

(Friday)

1: I am moving in the dream from house to house, homes I have owned in my dream lifetime. There are many. One matches exactly the two-story house my Luther grandparents owned in Brewster, Minnesota. Another is a complex, flat-roof design that is undersized. My head touches the ceiling. It feels like the ancient pueblo dwellings in the mountains of the Southwest. Humans were much smaller then.

2: I am an East Indian woman of my current age, but my physical appearance is very, very old. My soiled teeth are nearly fully decayed. Those that remain are filled with black cavities. My skin is covered in dark, liver-colored age spots. My mood and persona, though, are energetic and extremely positive. I own a huge house occupied by many East Indian guests. We are working on a decorating project that seems to be part of a show on HGTV. We all group together for a team photo organized on multiple levels. I pose in the top row, nestled inside of a comfortable open box designed to keep people at the top safe from falling. The man standing at my left side is Brad, one of the men I met at Jill’s Healing the Ancestors retreat. His dream physical appearance is East Indian, like mine. Dream Brad is mildly surprised to see that I am at the same high spiritual level as he.

(Saturday)

1: I am writing my dream blog. Cullan is nestled next to me on my left side. In waking life, he just completed a software update for my WordPress blog. We texted back and forth last night for half an hour or so.

2: I dream that Chris has the angry, aggressive personality that appeared after his craniotomy. In the dream it is even worse (that anger has dissolved over the years). He is threatening to violently attack me. I travel with rapid stealth through the world to escape and be safe. I move into forests, vacant buildings, rivers, oceans. As I do, Lola is present in my mind. Who will feed her? Keep her safe?

3: I am standing with grade school children in a classroom, waiting for the first day of school to begin. There are quite a few empty desks and it seems the kids that enter the room will all find a place to sit. But more and more students continue to fill the room, including two bully boys. I head down the hall to the main office in order to grab more desks. I thought I was just another student, but I realize that I am the teacher. (Day notes: two male coworkers bullied me a bit on Friday. Irritating. I stood my ground.)

(Friday, August 23, 2019) moon third quarter Gemini / tarot knight of pentacles

A very long, detailed dream, also inspired by Lola waking me up in the predawn. Then I fall back to “sleep”:

Bonnie and I attend a retreat together on a large island. We are staying offsite at an Airbnb, not at the hotel where the retreat takes place. The rental is a huge, ramshackle, multistory house. It has the vibration of an old hippie commune from the 60s or early 70s. Nothing is tidy. Rooms are strewn with all kinds of treasures and trash. The furniture needs mending, and the building structure too.

We walk outside and head to the hotel. The island village is busy and populated. Bike riders are ambling everywhere. Pedestrians travel together on cobblestone walkways. Some people are catching the bus. It feels like Berkeley-In-The-Woods.

Our retreat takes place in a modestly-sized square meeting room in the hotel. We the participants, all of us female, sit on wooden chairs along the wall and are guided by Jill Purce. She has her own throne-like chair across from the meeting room door. This intimate space has no windows.

Bonnie and I are seated together, listening to all of the moving, emotional stories of our women friends. Bonnie’s narrative describes the heart-breaking, psychedelic-style behaviors of Paul as he sinks into dementia. I have experienced a similar tale in my life, but without the predictable, permanent fail of Alzheimer’s. I worry for Bonnie. At one point we move closer to Jill, just one or two chairs away.

Bonnie is very connected to everyone in the room. She is a medicine woman. She is rubbing her hands against my breasts, which in the dream confuses me, but when I wake up I think she is healing my heart chakra. My maternal instincts?

When our group finishes our work together, Bonnie and I return to the Airbnb. We have to get ready for a next-day early flight and we are having trouble packing up our gear because of the chaotic ambience of the house. The windows are wide open: there was a strong storm while we were away and the rooms are rain-soaked and wind-scattered. A tuxedo domestic shorthair feline sits outside of one window, staring attentively into the weathered mess. He has the energy of a powerful psychopomp.

Suddenly, two gregarious gay men of late middle age come dashing into the foyer of the house. They have rented a separate space, which surprises me. I thought the Airbnb was a single dwelling. In the same moment, a threatening letter is delivered from the owners, accusing Bonnie and me of causing storm damage to the house by neglectfully leaving the windows open. They demand $7,999! This completely shocks me and I howl out loud, falling to my knees. Tears stream down my cheeks. My heart aches. I feel deeply traumatized. Bonnie contacts my ex coworker Dave S. for legal advice (he now lives in Colorado and is a “green” realtor).

The dream shifts. Bonnie and I arrive at the harbor to catch our water taxi. We have moved on from the lunacy of the nasty Airbnb owners. We have places to go. A fit young woman captains the open speedboat for us. I sit at the bow, watching the waves. Bonnie sits at the stern with a group of laughing little girls. All of our hair is waving in the strongly flowing breeze.

Day notes:

Complex messaging in this dream. Black and white Lola has become my psychopomp because of her pattern to wake me at 3:30 and 5 in the morning. I feel this dream confirms the karmic strength and wisdom of Bonnie’s work as a dream guide. She was a popular choice for members of the Hollyhock retreat.

Perspective from Bonnie (an email from August 24):

“Some things that caught my attention:  We are staying ‘offsite’ as opposed to ‘onsite.’  So something is not right. I am wondering about the reference to the era of the 60s and 70s – hippie, Berkeley. It was quite a transitional time. Anti establishment, lots of drugs, simplistic (all we need is love), yet good in how it shook up the status quo (personally as well as the culture). So a time of change? An upheaval (even more so with the storm). We are still in the woods and surrounded by water which to me is a positive. The house being ramshackle (love that word) makes me wonder if my life and/or my physical body is a mess right now. Everything up in the air (Airbnb)!

“All of us women meet in a square room with Jill. A more secure, stable place? And we are all emoting, cleansing our emotions. I love that we move closer to Jill. Are we moving closer to wisdom? I am rubbing your breasts. I would think that has to do with stimulating maternal energy. For who? You?  

“When we get back the windows are wide open. Does that reference being able to ‘see’ more clearly? I love the cat outside the window also witnessing. 

“Gay men? Some new energy entering the space. Maybe in reference to a more happy energy?  

“Threatening letter? $7999 adds up to 7. From the handout from the woman who did the workshop on numbers at IASD: Mystical, inner wisdom, healing, transformation.  Change, even for the better, is always threatening to our egos.

“And then of course, is our glorious get away. I love it especially with the wind in our hair. We should also all have our middle fingers raised!!“