One-eyed Dreaming

The night before last I had some strange dreams that seemed to me to be full of symbolism and meaning.

I’m not entirely sure of the order of all these dreams but I think it was about like this:

The first dream I dreamed I looked out of a window and down to the ground where a raptor of some sort looked back up at me. As I look closely I see it is a Merlin, the smallest of the British birds of prey. I call to it and it flies up to me, and tried to land on my hand, but its feet are somehow deformed as if the toes have been broken or dislocated. I steady it with my other hand and after a short while I see the feet are again normal and the bird is able to fly off healed. I’ve had similar dreams about injured birds on a fair few occasions but this is the first time it’s been about a raptor. I’ve handled a lot of birds in real life, including birds of prey, but while I’ve seen Merlins in the wild and in captivity I have never held one. For me, the significance of the name is quite something.

The second dreams is also related to one I have had a lot over the years. A massive bull has broken loose in a market, an old-fashioned cattle market like the one I grew up near as a child, with stalls and pens and conrete floor and a maze of runs made of moveable boards. I see the bull gore and toss someone who lies very still and I and my unknown companion seek safety within the confines of the market itself. The bull is seen again but from being a typical British bull, roan and white and with a curly coat and a ring through the nose, it has become a huge black Spanish bull. In previous dreams, the bull (though it has also been a wild black stallion, a rhino, an elk stag and even a massive bighorn ram) pursues me with supernatural determination and skill, outwitting my every move to escape and I usually wake up sweating and terrified. In this dream the bull simply doesn’t show up again and the dream fades away and into the next one, which may be related.

In the next dream, I realise that an abdominal wound is bursting open. In real life I have had abdominal surgery a number of time, though keyhole style so the wounds are quite small. In this case, the wound seems to cover most of my belly, but it’s not quite like a wound at all. It’s like the skin has been tucked up and folded up and then sewed together, like making a tuck in a garment. I look down and see there are two other wounds beneath this wound. One is obviously surgical, a straight bloody line with stitches visible, that is pulling at the edges as it is wants to burst too, but may well be healing cleanly. The other wound is older and does not look surgical as the edges are ragged and round, like the wound a weapon might make. It seems partially healed but as I look and touch, the edges start to gape and first a little blood and then pus start to emerge, making me feel very sick. It’s clear that this wound is festering and going bad. I touch it again but the pain is too much and I leave the dream behind.

The next dream woke me and left me crying.

Two kids approach me carrying a notebook each. I guess they are in the higher teens, but I don’t recognise them. They ask me if they can put my name in their book. I ask to see the books and when I look I can see they have already put my name in. Above my name are two other names, with various things written after them which seem to be the titles of books. One book is entitled something like The journey to God  and I begin to realise that this is each kid’s list of books that have helped them on their own individual spiritual journey. My name is third in their lists and when I try to see the title of my books the dream begins to fade and I wake up crying. I am not sure why I am crying just that I feel very emotional. I also feel very stupid because I didn’t understand what the kids wanted from me before it was too late and the dream slipped away.

I woke up to a cup of tea waiting for me and a little later, still one-eyed and tired and still a bit wrung out from the day before I went back to sleep and dreamed again.

This time I dreamed a bird had become trapped in my house. It was a little and very fast moving bird, so fast I thought at first it must be a humming bird. I’ve never seen a humming bird in real life so then I wondered if it were a humming bird moth, which have begun to appear in Britan. I chased this creature around the dream house as it battered against surfaces trying to get out, and eventually I saw it had feathers, confirming it was indeed a bird and not a moth. At last, I managed to catch it in both hands and saw that it was actually a gold crest, a relatively rare bird, a cousin of the wren and in fact the smallest bird native to Britain. It struggled a little and was still as I took it out of the house to release it.

Last night was much more disjointed and the only dream worth reporting was a lucid dream. I was in a bookshop and I realised as I took out one book and it became another book altogether, that I must be dreaming. I asked someone in the dream if this was a dream and they told me it was. I also told them they must be another dreamer who had strayed into my dream. I do rather enjoy lucid dreams so I floated down some steps and went off in search of anything interesting. I met a Spanish girl in a wedding dress and I asked her where her bridegroom was, and I was explaining I knew him from work when I lost lucidity due to my cat scratching and mewing at the door which then fully woke me.

I don’t know really what all these dreams mean but it seems an odd coincidence that such a full night of dreaming should occur immediately after an eye injury. Odin hung for nine days and nights on the world tree before he received inspiration. 

Maybe the next seven days will bring changes for me too.