Diary - Dream

Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:07am - 6:01pm
Moon: waning gibbous, libra (air/cardinal)
Earth: early in the morning, still, but the weather forecast is calling for a chill, gray day with chances of a rain-snow mix later this evening


Last night, I had several intense dreams about the ocean, one after another as I woke and then fell back into sleep again. The first were more mundane — images of being at the beach, waves rolling, strolling along the sands, sun shining down — I suspect because high winds recently have sounded very much like waves during the night, and we're also reading a book at the moment that takes place by the ocean, though it's a rocky coast in Cornwall. A bit later, the dreams became more erotic in nature, with Jeff and I racing along the sands, chasing one another, catching one another up in passionate embraces and rolling, tumbling along in our lovemaking. (You can tell these were dreams, because the sand wasn't a bit irritating!) During this dream, there was at least one scene that took place in a kind of hotel room or small apartment furnished with lush décor and rich colors. Out one window, a scene stretched away far below (as though I was looking from the tenth story of a building) of rolling dunes and hills tumbling up over themselves into mountains — yet, facing the other direction, the room opened up onto the beach itself, right at sea level, the walls and floor slowly fading, giving way to sand and horizon, the ceiling stretching out and out like an awning that eventually became a drape of cloth that could be pulled away. The apartment had a sense of being cozy and enclosed within, and yet there was no discernible break between inside and outside where it met the waters running up the shore.

After waking up from this dream in very early morning, about two hours before sunrise, I fell back asleep to have another dream about the ocean, even more intense than the last. In this, the ocean's size seemed magnified, the waves huge and deep, harboring enormous sea creatures like whales incredibly close to shore, their slick, dark backs arching up out of the blue waters as they leapt and splashed. Above the ocean on the horizon, it seemed there was a god — the god of the sea himself — who would pull away and withdraw like an outgoing tide, and when he did, there seemed to be this great, overwhelming noise of... gathering, gathering in, not a sucking exactly, but a rumbling, gathering cacophony among the clouds, and in the sky there appeared a kind of expanding sphere of inward-collapsing cloud and light that pinched in, almost the way an hour glass might, or a funnel, as sand slowly drains from the top — the faster it falls away, the larger the sinking hole around it becomes. This sphere of pinched, withdrawing sky seemed to undergo a color shift, along with the terrible, tremendous noise, that shaded it the colors of sunset — reds and oranges and rose into deeper blushed-purples.

I witnessed this happening twice, standing within the lushly-furnished room from the dream before, and after the second time, once the sphere collapsed and the great noise was replaced by sudden silence, it seemed the sky turned into paper confetti, bits of cloud shredded up and falling, drifting down in bits of white curls of thin paper, and other pieces of sky in huge, flat papery circles that were on one side the colors of sunset and on the other side the bright blues of a sunny day, these circles that drifted and fluttered down past the windows, some of them five or six feet across. Of course, the sky itself was still there, it wasn't as though the paper confetti was the sky itself — only, bits of the sky that fluttered down after the noise and change in the sky had ended.

After this second time, the sea god returned to the room, which seemed to be his room or temple in some way, and he was in human form, or at least, that was the impression I had, or that he left. I had been with someone else, an older woman, in the room, but she was gone now and there was only me. I remember the vague sense of intrigue and accident, as though I were not supposed to be there and it seemed the sea god mistook me for someone else in how he greeted me with familiarity and intimacy (though at another level, it seemed to me that he must know who I really was and that there was no mistake, for he was a god, after all, and had to know these things). I was wearing garments of shimmering, sheer, sparkling blue and green in the flowing robes of a priestess, and he came to me as his priestess and drew me down beneath him and we began with an embrace, touching and caressing each other, our mouths searching each others' out. His body felt as heavy and wide as the ocean.

Through this intimacy, I could feel a sense of mystery flooding me, overwhelming me, the mysteries of the ocean that were only known and kept by his true priestesses. And because I was not a true priestess of his, I felt that rush of power and revelation and eager excitement, but also a kind of growing, intense fear as though I might drown. He could sense it, too, and seemed suddenly to realize that I was not his priestess (though, again, it seemed he had known this in some way all along) — and he pulled away, and we parted. He disappeared, went off again somewhere I did not know, and I was alone for a while in the room, thinking on the experience and the mysteries I had barely glimpsed. Watching out over the sea from the room where I sat, I could see the deep waters roiling, the winds above them pacing back and forth and churning up whitecaps — the sea seemed restless and an expression of his restlessness and reckless energy stirred up by our embrace. There was about the whole scene a kind of uncertainty about how to proceed, and a sense that I had "gone too deep" already to turn back now, and that once having glimpsed the mysteries I had to commit myself to pushing forward, moving on to become a priestess myself. As though a seed of mystery had been planted in me that I would have to honor and nurture, or it would one day rise up suddenly to drown me nonetheless.

I forget exactly how the dream ended, but I think he came to me one last time. I had walked out of the room and onto the open beach beneath the sun, bare feet teasing along the edges of the waves lapping up the shore. There he returned, found me again, and walked with me for a while. I don't remember what we spoke of, or if we spoke. The dream just faded away, with no real ending or conclusion, only a strong sense of his presence there by the ocean, and an intense longing almost more powerful than I could bare to touch him again, to be with him — a longing I felt echoed and returned from him.



Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this dream. I have always had intense dreams about the sea, and maybe that's all this is: a combination of memories of the ocean stirred up by the book we're reading, and some sexual desire, and some other emotional tides. On the other hand, I have also felt drawn to the Celtic sea god Manannan (or, in Welsh, Manawyddan) for quite a time, now, and that draw has always held a sense of the erotic in it in some way, as he has seemed to me in meditations not as an old man, but as younger, wilder, both more playful and more dangerous. I wonder if this dream is a call from him to take seriously the invitation to become his priestess.

Yet at the same time, I find myself resisting that call, if that's what it is. I am so far away from the ocean here, it seems impossible to be a priestess of a sea god landlocked surrounded by hills and mountains! Not to mention, I'm not sure how I would handle that relationship and my relationship with Brigid Star Fire — after years of practice being monotheistic, I feel at most comfortable with the idea of henotheism: belief in many gods, but devotion to just one. I'm not sure how I could possible be a priestess of two gods, when both could make such a claim on me. I feel as though, to go deeply into the mysteries, I would have to be devoted primarily, if not exclusively, to one alone. How would I handle my daily devotional work to balance a relationship with more than one god? How would I work with each in ritual — would they work together in a single ritual, is there any basis in the lore for such a thing, would they be compatible, would they expect rituals devoted solely to them for each of the holy days, or more?

In my astrology, Neptune is opposite my sun, and forms a great triangle along with Saturn and Pluto conjunct. The watery connection of the moon, too, plays a part, and I had already been talking to Jeff about setting up a schedule of regular meditation and journaling in preparation for my upcoming Saturn Return. I was even planning on doing another journal entry today or tomorrow to explain the details of this work, since my first meditation is scheduled for tomorrow (and then approximately once a month when the moon is conjunct Saturn both in the sky and in my natal chart). Perhaps I am meant to work with Manannan as a guide to my Saturn Return in some way. He is considered by some to be a kind of psychopomp figure, a guider of souls back and forth between the mists of the world, across the sea into the west and the Otherworld.

As my first Saturn meditation is scheduled for tomorrow, I'll look into it then, I think. For now, I wanted to record this dream, since it was so very strange and intense.