Visions in the Dark

This is the first of three dreams I had on October 14th, 2009.


I am in a medieval castle with grey stone walls. I am a princess of some sort and I have just arrived with my fiancé prince. It is the day before are wedding and we are shown to different rooms on opposite sides of the castle after we arrive. When I have finished putting away my things in my room in the tallest tower I go back down to the main floor and have a look around. The main floor is bustling with servants and people running around preparing for the wedding. I am able to walk around without many people noticing or bothering me.

Later that night I am in my room just laying down to sleep when I hear something outside my window. I go over to the window but there is nothing there. For the first time I notice the courtyard of the castle which is a lush and beautiful garden. I take off my night clothes and put on a simple dress and cloak overtop and sneak through the halls of the castle and out into the garden. I am careful that no one sees me, not even the few guards who are patrolling the halls. The castle and garden are illuminated only by the full moon.

I don't know why I feel drawn to the garden but I sense that there is something here for me. I walk through the carefully tended isles and come across a beautiful archway that is covered in red roses. I see something silver shining in the moonlight on the ground and find a ring. I immediately recognize it as a ring that once belonged to my mother (in the dream, not in real life) whom died when I was very young. I am perplexed but excited that I have found her ring. The design on it is of a bird of prey spreading it's wings perched over a circular design which I guess is supposed to represent the Earth. The ring is very old and the design seems a bit faded.

I suddenly hear someone walking through the garden towards me and turn arround and see my fiancé prince followed by several guards. He seems upset and tells me that he raised the alarm when he found me missing from my room in the tower. I briefly think it is strange that the prince came to my room in the middle of the night but do not question it out loud. I show him the ring I found by the prince is uninterested and has me escorted back to my room by the guards, which are then posted outside my door so that I cannot leave.

The dream skips to the next day after the wedding (which took place in the garden courtyard) and I am walking around asking high ranking officials and guests if they know anything about my mother, who I am convinced was once at this castle because I found her ring here. No one knows anything. I sense that the prince is becoming annoyed with my fascination with the mother's ring and not the giant diamond ring he put on my finding during the wedding ceremony. The prince absolutely forbids me to wear my mother's ring but does allow me to carry it around with me.

I cannot exactly remember the beginning of this dream but there was something about some former friends of mine being with me over at my parent's house (though we were still friends apparently in the dream). There were some things about food in the fridge and stuff but there was also some stolen dirt bikes that kept appearing outside of the garage. Also, I kept locking all the doors from the inside of the house but they kept mysteriously unlocking themselves and I was afraid that the person(s) who were dumping the stolen bikes outside would get into the house and steal things from me. I was also afraid that I would be blamed for all of the stolen bikes.

The dream kind of changes and I am still in my parent's house but I am planning a wedding or something with a handsome young man who happens to be living with me. I am very shy and when I hear the doorbell ring I hide instead of answering the door, fearing that if the person who was outside saw me that they would not leave.

For some reason I find a goose living in the food closet and she has laid some eggs that are almost ready to hatch. Actually some do hatch but for some reason I do not think the baby geese are ready to be born and I put them back into their broken egg shells which then magically reform into complete eggs.

Just then a large group of people and arrive at the door and start urging me to join them outside. At first I try not to be seen, but that doesn't work so then I try making many excuses like I'm too busy, I don't have time, I can't handle the stress etc. but the group leader (an adult man with dark curly hair) keeps insisting that I join them on their excursion. They are all going somewhere but they will not tell me where until I agree to go along. I hurriedly shut off the computer and tidy up a few things around the house and follow them.

We end up walking for a while and come across a house that has recently been completely rebuilt. David Suzuki is standing on the sidewalk telling us about how dangerous and unenvironmental the old house was and then gives us a tour of the new house and points out how efficient the new one is. There are some parts of the old house that have been reused for the new one (including a chain link fence that has stained glass embedded between the wire) and I say something to Dr. Suzuki about how cool it was that some of the art history of the old house was preserved. He nods in agreement. As the group and I are walking away from the house, I notice that windows of neighbouring houses have bullet holes in them.

The group and I end up at a store selling veils and belly dancing clothing and I look around but don't really take interest in anything. The rest of the group are trying on clothes and belly dancing (even the men) to drumming that eminates from somewhere. I find a long veil that is black in the back and turquoise in the front and is decorated with white and silver gems. I put it on and start dancing slowly to the drumming, which I can still hear in my head as I write this out, (ta da ta dum - repeated over and over again).

Behind me a friend I have not seen since public school (Carolina from El Salvador) appears and comments that she cannot believe what she is seeing, refering to me dancing.

The dream ends there.

(There is a "trigger warning" on the content of this dream.)

It is the mid or late eighteen hundreds. I live on the edge of a crowded city in grey brick house at the end of an small street or alleyway where there is a laundry pool, beyond which is a forest. In the dream I am an only child and live with my mother and a few of her friends. We are not wealthy but have enough to live comfortably.

There are several men courting me. The first man is someone I have never met, which was set up by my mother and her friends. I am not comfortable with the arrangement, even though he is an established doctor, because I will not be able to meet him until the wedding. I know nothing of what he is like, let alone what he looks like. I have not said no to the proposal, but I have not said yes either, and I try to stall my answer as long as possible. The second man is homeless and in rags with scraggly hair and beard and unkept hair, but I talk with him by the laundry pool and he is very kind. Everyone opposes interaction with him and "polite society" all but shuns him.

The third man appears on day when I am in the forest on the otherside of the laundry pool, sitting on a tree stump, reading my tarot cards. He comes and sits on a tree stump behind me and strikes up a conversation. He is handsome though I thought he had a kind of shifty look to him. The man's manner of speaking is very well, he is suave and magnetic and I find myself beoming drawn to him. While we are sitting and talking I pull either the Six of Cups or Six of Swords from my tarot deck (I cannot remember which) and say that is the card which represents him. The man scoffs dismissively, not believing in such trivalities as tarot cards, but also not disturbed that I do.

The man asks me to marry him and I say yes. I take him home to meet my mother, who is not enthralled at first but is quickly charmed by my new fiance. There is something about him that makes me uneasy, but I figure that I can't do much better with anyone else so I ignore my nagging doubts. He is eager to move in with mother and I. He has little in the way of worly possessions and it is clear to me from the onset that he is the one to benefit from this union financially much more than I. I am overcome with the dreadful thought that he is interested in me only for my money.

A week passes and the day of the wedding comes and takes place in a clearing in the forest beyond the laundry pool. The other residents of our household vacate for the night so that my new husband and I will have the place to ourselves. Almost immediately he takes me into his room and strips off my wedding dress. I am afraid and trembling because I have no idea what is about to happen. He roughly pushes me onto the bed and climbs on top of me, not bothering to remove any of this clothes, not even his shoes. He begins having sex with me but I am uncomfortable and in pain but he ignores my protests and continues until he is completely spent. As soon as he is done he climbs off of me, pulls up his pants and demands that I return to my own room. His tone is cold and flat and he does not even look at me as I leave his room, very unlike the warm, magnetic man who initially drew me in.

I am in my room on the second floor of the house, laying on the bed and looking up at a dream catcher in the window that is made with pink beads and white feathers onto which I have apparently stuck a tarot card. I cannot identify the card but I stare at it for a while. I don't know how much time passes but my feelings of being used and violated prevent me from falling asleep. I am just drifting off to sleep when I hear a door slam downstairs. Putting on a robe and going downstairs I find all of my valuables gone. I rush to the window and see my husband climbing into a horse-drawn wagon which has all of my possessions in the back. He sees my shocked and horrified face in the window and arrogantly laughs and waves as he drives away. His mocking is the last I can bear it and I collapse to the floor admist tears and despair.

My mother and her friends return and learned what happened and we are all infuriated but can do nothing, since we do not know where my husband has gone and cannot do anything anyway, since all of my worldly possessions become the property of the man upon marriage (an actual 19th century law). To avoid utter poverty I am now forced to accept the first man my mother arranged for me, the established doctor who I have not yet met. It turns out that he is more than twice my age and has children from a previous marriage, some of whom are actually older than I. We do not tell him that I was just married and robbed of all my possessions.

The marriage date is set and while everyone else scurries around making preperations or caught up in the excitement of the coming union, I feel shamed, betrayed and depressed. I resolve to drown myself in the laundry pool so one morning I sneak out of the house just after dawn. I am surprised to discover some of my stolen possessions sitting on a wooden deck next to the laundry pool. The objects where peices of pottery and soapstone carvings, some of which I have actually made in in real life, though in the dream I merely recognized them as possessions and not peices of art that I made. One particular peice that stood out was a small White Tara carved in soapstone and placed on a tree stump in the middle of the laundry pool. There were also some roughly carved faces and my pack of tarot cards wrapped in green silk.

My mother comes up behind me as I am looking at these things and is just as perplexed as I as to why some of my things have been returned. I tell her that I believe that my con-man first husband is mocking me from afar and only returned the things that he could not sell and would thus be worthless to him. I also believe though that it is an ironic twist of fate that the things he considered worthless are the things most treasured by me because of their sentimental value. The dream ends there.