Religious overtime & holy blood.
Level of Lucidity:
Level of Cohesiveness:
Rating:
Lucid Intent? No
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Late afternoon and I find myself at my place of work it is nearly 6 O’clock and time to go home. Unfortunately I cannot leave though and am forced to continue working as certain colleagues keep bringing me work which they say is very important, each time I think I’ve finished and can leave I’m brought another item that needs taking care of.
An incident to my right suddenly catches my eye when I see a familiar male colleague walk over to the desk where two female colleagues are sat. The man takes out a huge can of air freshener and sprays a huge cloud all over the desk of the two ladies completely engulfing them in a choking billowing white vapour.
I then see a male manager approach me who I find very awkward to get along with he comes up to me with hostile intent. I have to immediately back down because I feel that my arms aren’t strong enough compared to his, I would be sure to be defeated should we start to wrestle and grapple with one another. I decide to yield and turn away to continue with my work but silently I make plans to do some special exercises like push-ups to make my arms strong so that I can return in the future to confront him once again.
I decide to go outdoors to take some fresh air I find myself in a rural setting something like a steep foliage lined country path the setting looks like the kind of (dream) place where employees might come to smoke their cigarettes. I see the same hostile manager here from earlier with a large group of unfamiliar women all of whom wear beautiful and very wide dresses in a 17th century Spanish style, the same as those seen worn by the Infanta Margarita and her maids in the painting ‘Las Meninas’ by Diego Velázquez.
The manager with the strong arms goes toward the ladies and starts herding the women into a tight group just as if they were sheep, I gather that the man is something of a despicable pimp. It would appear that the ladies are wearing the unusual dresses as they can be used to store mysterious objects beneath the pleats, even the pimp character uses the women’s dresses for this purpose and I watch him stash something beneath one of the women’s skirt. I find the scene distasteful and turn to go back inside but before doing so I see a black and white frilly garter belt lying at the end of the path, this detail seems quite significant and catches my eye.
When I go back inside the office I find that there is no more work to do but rather than being able to leave to go home my employers force me to visit a church in Belgium (a dream fabrication as I’ve never visited a church in Belgium). I feel very cross and annoyed with being forced into visiting the church but there is nothing I can do as it is a kind of order or is compulsory, I feel helpless to do otherwise.
I finally get to the church and enter and take a seat at one of the pews on the left hand side facing the alter the atmosphere is unpleasantly pious I find. My field of vision never manages to take into account the priest even though he is standing behind the alter to his left, I only get to see his right hand man. As the service draws to a close I see the priest and his helper preparing a silver platter with many clear plastic party cups full of the alcohol known as schnapps. I find this very strange as it would appear to be a part of the sacrament and is meant to represent the wine as the blood of Christ only here there is no chalice and no red wine.
Later the following day I return to the same church but this time with my wife accompanies me, we both take a seat in the same place I sat the previous dream day and begin to watch the mass. The church service is a very stiff and orthodox affair and once again and the priest is still out of view but his sour faced assistant still gives me his glaring bitter expression.
Just like the previous time the sacrament of the wine is being prepared and just as before there is no wine or chalice but the silver tray this time is loaded with many clear plastic champagne flutes filled with sparkling wine this time. Before the priests right hand man has finished his preparations and has a chance to offer the sacrament to the congregation my wife gets up from the pew and walks up to and behind the alter and helps herself to two champagne flutes and then brings them back to where I am sitting and hands me one.
I start to sip the champagne and suddenly notice that a small napkin has been placed around the stem of the glass, in fact on further inspection I see that it isn’t a napkin or serviette at all but a ladies sanitary towel or rather panty liner. I look around puzzled as if looking for answers but continue to drink regardless finding the situation most perplexing and bizarre.
(This really was a strange detail which completely stumped me for most of the day but after thinking about it for a while I suddenly thought I could make some sense out of it although I still have no real meaning as what that particular drama or symbol represents, normally the chalice would have been filled with red wine which would have represented the blood of Christ, this association with the sanitary towel seems to make a sort of link particularly as the grail like chalice is a feminine symbol, although just what its trying to say I really don’t know. If I really jog my memory I can just recall seeing the priest at the church I went to as a child using a white serviette to clean the chalice after it had been used, I guess now I think about it I always used to be sort of a bit fascinated by the way he cleaned the chalice out….anyway on with the dream).
My wife’s apparent innocence or perhaps that should be gall in going up to the alter makes me smile, the priest’s right hand man seems utterly shocked and outraged at my wife’s actions but is helpless to do anything. It’s almost as if my wife’s actions have cut the stoic and stuffy atmosphere in the church and made things less oppressive. As if to compliment this new mood the congregation start to try and dance and sing in a kind of gospel style only the congregation are still a little stiff, fidgety and tense and are lacking any rhythm and fluidity. The dancing greatly displeases the clergymen especially as it has shifted and damaged some of the wooden pews.
It would appear to be up to me to have to pay to have the damaged pews repaired and I have a kind of flash forward and see that the newly repaired wooden benches have had little oil paintings perfectly painted on the backs of them. I see a violet, some apples and other fruits and ears of corn it is almost as if each symbol represented a kind of harvest or fertility crest or emblem.
I retract into myself from the noise of the church and glance over my shoulder to the left side of the pew where the Stations of the Cross run along the wall, I see a familiar lady stood next to a giant life sized black and white woodcut. The lady is heavily pregnant and stands almost with her back to me although I can just see her face, I sense the lady’s happiness and femininity and the love she has for her unborn baby, I find the lady quite beautiful and stand there silently entranced by her loveliness. I see that the woodcut is actually a kind of medieval or Pre-Raphaelite representation of the lady herself, with her raised right hand the lady touches her pictorial semblance whilst she lovingly caresses her tummy and baby with her left hand.
Later that day and still in the daytime I go up to the bedroom where I see my wife lying on the bed, my wife is dressed in her clothes but I am getting undressed to get into to bed to go to sleep as I am feeling exhausted. As I go to pull back the quilt and get into bed I see that my wife has somehow procured the church’s silver platter and has it on her bedside table fully laden with the alcoholic schnapps like drinks in the small plastic cups.
My wife proffers the tray in my direction insisting I take a drink, she tells me that its what all the good cyclists on the Tour de France do, with those words an imagine springs to mind of cyclists passing a water station and quickly sweeping up a small paper cup of water.
Additional Comments:
Thoughts: This dream seem to be a real melange of many of my own personal dramas and themes, it’s such a mixture and a bit of a tangle that it would probably be better if I were to come back to this one for another read with fresh eyes and a clear mind to try and understand the finer details. At a quick guess I’d say the crux of the dream is about trying to find harmony or reconcile my instinctual feelings with my spiritual or more intellectual outlook.
