At The Gates

The Dreaming...

“Promethean” - Gwyllm

Dreams must be heeded and accepted. For a great many of them come true. - Paracelsus

We all dream. Even if we don’t remember the dreams we had during sleep, they are there. We know that humans are not alone in dreaming, we can observe our companions, cats, dogs, birds and other creatures during sleep, reacting to the world their spirits are in.

Many indigenous societies (along with others) hold the dream state as deeply important. “It was just a dream”, doesn’t enter the conversation like it often does here. Dream interpretation is firmly rooted in these societies and dreams are not taken lightly. The Dream State is held in great reverence/regard. The ancestors reach out to assist, the Gods message, one’s relatives (alive or dead) at a distance are talking to you.

In some societies/tribal groups there is the idea/theory that in fact, Dreamtime, is in fact the reality the real world, and this place, this world, the illusion. This runs counter to the predominate western viewpoint of course. But is it incorrect, or at least part of a greater picture? Let’s move forward and think about it a bit.

We all have dreams that seem realer than real. A form of hyper-reality. Lucid, clear, vibrant visions the imbue one’s self with wonder, with awe, with cascades of emotional information, visionary glimpses into another reality. This is IMPOV part of the great gift, the connecting bound with the deeper world that this one often precludes. It is the realm that we all are a part of.

We are all probably familiar with the Australian Aboriginal thoughts around The Dreaming/The Everywhen (The Dreaming is the western anthropologist term for the concept/Everywhen is as close as an actual translation.) Slowly, surely the concepts from Oz have been percolating into Western Media and thought for many years. The Dreaming is tied deeply into connections with the land, and one’s place their in. It is complex redolent with myth and life experience(s), and I touch on it here as more of a lodestone, than an exploration of the concepts, and beliefs. I do feel a kinship with what I do understand of it, and that of course is limited, filtered through various cultural and personal lenses.

There are similar traditions still holding on in parts of the West, mainly in countries with the remnants of Celtic Traditions, which my family background and culture is rooted in. The tradition of Fairy/Faery the Fae… comes out of the deep archaic. We are not talking about the polite Victorian rendering of the tradition, but the old, truly old tradition tied deeply to land, place, and the very Celtic Version of The Dreaming. You have but to read the older tales of the Fomorians & Tuatha Dé Danann to realize that the mythic still resonates down to current times. Hero’s, Gods, Visions are all there.

Even in later Celtic literature, say the tale of Oisín in Tir na nÓg, where he pursues the faery maid Niamh (daughter of Mananan Mac Lir) to The Western Lands (Tir na nÓg), where he believes he spent 3 years in revery with her and her companions, but in reality it is some 300 years. On his return to Eire upon alighting from his horse, he ages instantly and dies in the presence of Pádraig, (St. Patrick). The rendering of the tale by W.B. Yeats is a great favourite of mine. I would suggest it… I would suggest as well, “The Voyage of Bran”, another tale along the same lines. Yeats summed up the mind/dream state as “The Celtic Twilight”.

Ossian playing his harp, by François Pascal Simon Gérard, 1801

Which leads me to talk on my dream life, replete with its tales, myths, stories. I have had what we call lucid dreams since I was a child. If you have been following this Substack, you’ll probably be aware that I speak of dreams, and how they propelled me to Europe from Hawaii. There is more to that tale, but it is for a later time.

Over the years I've had repetitions with certain dreams. Some have been prophetic, with events replicating in this state. Others visit, and never return. Yet, there seems to be themes running through them. One such theme is a city, perhaps an amalgamation of cities I have lived/visited. The streets can be busy, or empty. Crowds of people, bars, market stalls, traffic, the lot, or absolute stillness, wherein I wander looking for… something, someone perhaps.

There is an apartment complex that comes and goes in my dreams. It is in a hilly, wooded area (mostly firs) with pathways meandering through. I wander through this area, sometimes entering buildings, but usually not. I visit it every few months. I have no recollection of this location in my waking life.

Then, there is one place that I visit again and again, that for years I’ve thought that I had visited in this life. It is a place where roads end, dipping into a valley, and one can walk along a barely visible trackway. Deeply forested, with meadows. A Wilderness, A Boreal Forest... Eventually as one walks through it, it opens up into broader grasslands, but the forest is always close by. I thought for the longest time it was in Canada where I grew up. It envelopes one in peace and dappled sunlight.

I dreamed of it again this past week. In the dream, I was travelling towards it, and there was a wall between it and myself (and others). I managed to open up a gate in the wall to find there were a series of walls and gates receding off into the distance, where the forest begins. As I stood there, a woman came up to me and spoke. “Not yet, it is not the season for you to return”. It all faded away I stood there with great longing filling me to the brim…

On this I awoke, and for a day I pondered what exactly I had experienced in The Dreaming.

Later on, as I was driving through Portland from the Asian Market we use, it hit me. That place of peace and beauty was The Western Lands. Where myth, is entangled with being, with what we call death, for some The Land of the Dead, or as I prefer The Land of Faery, The Land of the Ancestors, The Great Dreaming. I almost had to pull over it struck so hard. It was not fear, nor was it sadness in the inevitable finality that we seem to accept in this culture.

It was, a longing, and a desire to return. I realize that I have been visiting my version of Tir na nÓg since my childhood. It is not an ending, but a longing of return that I see in my visits.

Mary and I talked about this as we drove on. “Wait for me if you go first!” of course, of course. The idea of parting is a hard one, but after the years we have spent together I am beginning to suspect this is not the first time on the great wheel for the two of us together. ;)

We spoke as well on death the other day previously. I had been talking to a friend about the passing of a relative. They were not sure of the idea of an afterlife. “Well, if there is, fine, if not we won’t know” … as I said. Truly, is there anything to actually fear? After several brushes with death in my life, I don’t think so, and yes, there are moments of deep doubt of course.

Which brings me to this…

What is posited on the main is that there is the waking state, and the dream state. Which side of this coin you choose to identify with is entirely up to you. I posit a third state, which is that both states are real/dreams. Both states are the dreaming of consciousness, which extends far past our individuations. When we sleep and dream, we return to one life we are living in the mythic, but truly, isn’t that what we are involved with here? Is the world anything but a dream? We perceive time, space, physical nature here through our senses. Did we dream those into being?

As I go along, I have more and more questions, and I realize the depths of the unknowable answers to these questions. The part of me that visits the far country in the dreams is not separable from the being sitting here typing.

But here I am. At once looking towards the Gates and looking back behind. If I am truly present, I am in the now, which is all there is.

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” ― William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

Bright Blessings….

Gwyllm

References:

The Dreaming/Everywhen

Oisin

The Voyage of Bran - Wikipedia