....from the shadows and shine.
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I find myself detachedly viewing a drama inside an old alchemist’s workshop the room has a very particular atmosphere sort of from the medieval and Enlightenment period all at once. I see a wizened old man with long grey hair he is dressed in a long fawn colored gown with a peculiar long and lumpy cream colored floppy night cap like hat.I’m aware that the man is Isaac Newton and that in my dream he is not the mathematical scientist of renown but is an alchemist of the spiritual and psychological realms. As Isaac walks about his workshop he is visited by the physical embodiment of Death. This character isn’t at all frightening and is almost identical to the same character portrayed in the film ‘The Seventh Seal’ by Ingmar Bergman save that in my dream he wears a brown cloak instead of a black one (something more akin to a monastic habit).
The Death character is also an alchemist but his line of work is purely scientific and practical as opposed to Isaac’s more mental practice. Death speaks to Isaac as he paces about his workshop and accuses Isaac of merely being a collector other men’s wisdom (at this point my mind was flooded with a great many wise verses unfortunately none of which I can now recall but I’m still left with a flavor of their meaning and essence).
Its clear that Newton is going to die of old age soon he is incredibly aged and frail but he begs with Death for a little more time as he has one last experiment he wants to perform which is linked with the second coming of Christ (?). Death seems patient and compassionate and gives Isaac the opportunity to perform his last experiment.
The aged Newton takes hold of his one and only last possession which is a small bag of flour, he turns to a large old solid wooden door behind him and opens it inward. The room is pitch black almost like a cave or cellar, I can just make out from the light falling onto the threshold of the entranceway that the floor inside the dark room is one of hard compacted earth.
Isaac takes a beautifully crafted little golden cylindrical scoop and digs into his bag of flour then without passing through the door he scatters the flour out onto the floor of the dark room. I watch as he gives a flick of his wrist over the threshold as if he were casting seeds to the ground like a farmer, it seems important that he mustn’t enter the dark space.
After he has done this he pulls the door closed and locks it with a large iron key which he places in his pocket and guards closely, he now waits for the experiment to take its course and hopefully come to fruition, Death stands by casually picking objects up from a large wooden table and looking at them in a disinterested fashion as if whiling away the time.
I gently move from this drama leaving Isaac and Death in their scene and head over near to a window at the other end of the room. A disembodied voice tells me that it wants to play a very old recording from a wax cylinder to me. I’m semi-conscious at this point and become very frightened by the prospect of what this old recorded voice will sound like, I imagine a deep booming godly voice all raspy and scary.
I make a powerful mental impression on the guide like voice that I am too scared to listen to the old recording and will be terrified out of my wits if I’m forced to listen to it. The message is obviously very important as the voice decides to read it out to me instead in order to make me feel more at ease and less afraid.
The voice reads out a poem of sorts which consists of four lines of rhyming verse it’s also a little reminiscent of one of Nostradamus’s prophetic quatrains. The theme of the poem has a vague flavor of Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’ particularly in the characters of the three ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
The first three lines are mostly forgotten but I recall contained the following details in this order: Father Christmas in the first line, a Christmas tree in the second and the color red in the third. Each of these symbols primary meanings seemed to be important when stripped of their Christmassy themes which then simply become a Father figure, a bushy full pine tree and a thick red liquid.
The final line or last few words of the poem are “....from the shadows and shine.” this seems very positive and powerful and seems to be directly linked to the Newton’s alchemical experiment in the dark room.
Additional Comments:
Interpretation: This was a very strange dream but so vivid I’m pretty certain that this is one of those dreams which has a real meaning in there somewhere. The alchemy theme which seemed to be central probably represents transformation in some way, probably in Newton’s mental spiritual alchemy and Death’s physical scientific alchemy. The act with the casting of the flour has to mean something I feel as it was so definite, literally acted out in front of me. Whatever transformation was going to take place in the room it seemed to be linked to the last line of the poem in the transforming of shadows into light. The dark room also reminded me of the cave or tomb where Jesus was laid after he died, this was amplified by Newton’s experiment which seemed to be concerned with the second coming of Christ (another transformation symbol too in the Resurrection). I’m not at all religious in that sense and can only imagine that this dream represents some kind of psychological drama. I’ll have to think some more about this one as I feel I’m close to understanding it, there are plenty of clues some recurring like the father (Christmas) and the (Christmas) fir tree. Christmas is also meant to symbolize the birth of Christ too, lots about birth and death in this dream....hmm, oh well the general ambiance was a positive one anyhow.Dream 2: female mystery – I’m at the familiar house of a childhood friend the group of four or five mates I used to hang around with are all here too and we are all teenagers again (the feeling is so real it feels funny and peculiar). The friends are all asking me to make them drawings of the various football boots and socks worn by their favorite soccer clubs and stars, I make them the sketches which they like a lot. My best friend asks me to put extra detail into his particular sketch which I do, he’s really satisfied with the result but now asks for me to draw the rest of the players body but I tell him that I unfortunately can’t do that as I have run out of space on the paper owing to the fact I put so much detail into the boots and socks (it seems obvious but he doesn’t see it or understand). My friends then pull out a sheet of paper with a black and white image of a woman’s vagina on it, the image isn’t vulgar its just plain and simple like one might find in a biology text book. All of my friends think the drawing is a completely fascinating they are acting like young male teens who have just seen a woman’s privates for the first time, it’s all very innocent in strangely laddish sort of way. I seem to suddenly age by a few years and tell my now younger friends that if they enlarge the image of the vagina so that it is much bigger they will see something special and solve a mystery. They need my help to enlarge it on their computer or photocopier and I have to explain how the sheets of paper increase in size by doubling the shorter side of the preceding paper size (like with the ISO 216 paper sizes A4, A3, A2 etc). In order to create an enlargement for them we have to print the picture off on a number of separate pages and then piece it all together on the floor like a jigsaw puzzle. Once the giant picture is assembled its clear that it is now more abstract and the vagina actually looks like the wooded entrance to a cave or grotto.
