posted August 09, 2003 03:48 PM
I do not normally have religious dreams.
Astrology, yes. Programming, yes. Religion no.
I have had moments of stunning clarity which I would call religious
(revealments is the term I use to describe them these days), but for some
reason, when I am asleep, religion doesn't come up.There are two exceptions to this:
First there was The_man_with_two_eyes and now another dream with
Christian religious figures and cryptic symbology.
In this dream, I am walking with John(the beloved and faithful historian
of the Christian Gospels) who is showing me the way to something. As we
approach a clearing, I see, coming out of the ocean at least 300 feet,
a HUGE gargoyle or something with all of these eyes and horns and a huge
proboscis stabbed into the water that appeared to be sucking something up
to a fire just below the monster's eyes where whatever it was would explode
shooting what I'll call a "moustache of flame" out each side of the creature's
nose, quickly followed by a dark cloud of smoke accompanied with a short of
"chuff"ing sound.
I immediately recognized this thing as the beast written of in the book of
Revelations and stated under my breath, "The beast. It was a real monster."
(That was a second or two after my jaw first dropped open I'm pretty sure. It
was absolutely the most phenomenally amazingly frightening sight you could
imagine. Up close and personal it sure scared the whizz out of me.)
Then John said, "You see it then, good. Now look closer and see it
as it appears to those whose eyes remain shut."
So I took a closer look and saw that it wasn't a monster at all but a giant machine
with a huge tube coming from its underside that disappears into the sea.
There was a lot of smoke and noise and a really unpleasant odor. The water was
dark with thick blobs of black oil floating to and on its surface, forming an
iridescent ring around the large tube thing.
"The beast is OIL?" I asked. "Look closer", John instructed, "You're almost there."
As he spoke, I thought I caught a faint hint of a smile play across his otherwise
grim and determined expression. You could see that he was relieved about something.
"Do you see it there?", he asked.
I didn't see anything. Just a big oil rig type
drilling/burning machine and a bunch of people hurrying here and there, barely
visible except for their bright yellow hard hats.
"I can't see it. What Am I looking for?"
"The hands", came his answer,"look at the hands."
I looked more closely. There was a group of workers toward the bottom of the rig
doing some sort of repairs or something on the right front leg.
I looked even closer. (I'm not sure how exactly, it was sort of an insta-zoom thing.)
I saw that their hands had numbers on them. More specifically, the finger part of
their hands. Each worker had the digits 0 through 9 tattoed on their fingers between
the first two knuckles.
"There!", John hiss-whispered as he pointed to one of the workers. That's when I saw it.
I'm not sure why the image was burned so clearly in my mind, it wasn't much. Just the way
the worker had put his hands together to push a beam in place:
His right hand was placed over his left with the fingers woven so that the thumb and pinkey
of the right hand clasped the left palm on opposite sides, with the pinky down in the crook
formed by the thumb of his left hand. All of the fingers of that hand (the left) were extended
so that the tattooed digits(no pun intended) on his fingers appeared to fall into four rows or
groups.
The top row consisted of the pinky through index fingers of his left hand. These were numbered
0 - 3.
Then came the second row,which was slightly lower and contained the index through ring finger
of the right hand, numbered 4 through 6.
The third row consisted of the pinky of the right hand which was covered at the second knuckle
by the thumb of the left hand. These two were numbered 7 and 8 respectively.
Finally, the thumb of the right hand made up the bottom row. It's number was 9.
"Do you see it?" repeated John.
I didn't know what it meant, but I had seen SOMETHING. I turned to explain this to John, but he
wasn't there. Instead there was a guy who looked to be a rig worker. He had his arms extended
toward me, holding a yellow hard hat.
"C'mon man! Let's get back to work. We've gotta get it all out before they find out what it is
and stop burning it."
I woke up screaming and pushing at the air in front of me.
As soon as I found a pen, I wrote the numbers down as a memory cue to help me remember the way
that the worker's hands had been clasped. This is what I wrote(minus the underscores):
0123
_456
____78
9
When I woke up later this morning I looked at what I had scribbled, pondering the meaning
(if there was any) of that very strange dream. I'm not sure why, but I felt like straightening
the rows out. I wrote this:
0123
_456
__78
___9
You can probably see that it wasn't a huge leap of curiosity that led me to add the numbers together.
Again my jaw dropped. This time I wasn't dreaming.
I'll let YOU put two and two together.
I'm just going to call it a very weird dream, so I'll still be able to sleep at night.
(I'm very freaked right now.)
Daf