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.