Do religious images appear in your dreams?
Last night I had a nightmare - irrespective of its bizarre conclusion which involved someone playing "patticake" with a woman's bottom-cheeks - that was the first dream using concrete religious imagery. The religiosity of it gave it a uniquely intense flavour that affected me troublingly. Being a born-and-raised unbeliever I have a blank spot there in my subconscious - but for others, is the religious appendage not hardwired directly into their neuroses and sense of the profound?
What dreams have you had where your god(s), devil(s), demons, hell, heaven, saints, sinners, rituals and ceremonies, etc, etc have prevailed upon you?
I dreamt that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified beside a man and a woman likewise punished, with his cross embedded in a small mound of kindling in which he was to be burned alive. A crowd were watching passively, as were lines of Roman soldiers armed with pila, as an executioner plunged a lit torch home, but it sputtered and was extinguished when it was revealed that a small boy had secretly mounded snow up inside.
Cloud fled before the sun and the snow was melted, but the kindling was still wet. Two officers arrived, the first a brisk and efficient type charged with confidence and purpose who strode down the side of a dusty path to reach the scene, announcing calmly that he would destroy all of his masters’ enemies without thought or hesitation. As the assembled troops saluted him as one I felt impressed by the feeling of having so much respect accorded to one as their due - and I BECAME the officer with orders to kill Jesus.
Strutting forward I seized up the relit torch and thrust it in myself, expecting to make a bold display of decisiveness and not bothering to ask for details of what was going on - of course it failed once more. Embarrassed and refusing to look up, I began futilely trying to reignite once more with a flint and steel that the executioner shamefacedly dropped on the ground for me.
The second officer, my colleague, came down and suggested we switch the two men around so we could burn Jesus properly using separate fuel, while he would deal with the woman whose remaining punishment due was only to be flogged. While he took the woman behind a strange metal sound-proof door that suddenly appeared in mid-air, the changes were made and the other victim cut down...
...I then BECAME that other victim and was supported by a girl who came out of the crowd to help me. Suddenly Jesus was now suddenly replaced on his cross by my own father, who was filled with despair at the inevitability of his coming terrible demise. I stupidly tried to comfort him by saying that it would be alright, that he just needed to hold on, even though this was palpably nonsense. The girl and I agreed that it would be best and most honourable to simply accept that we must die and to do so fighting, with weapons in our hands, to get it over quickly and with ferocious dignity. She fetched a couple of spears and we lashed out at the troops, who immediately transfixed the girl with a dozen points like a pincushion and pierced my own ribcage and heart.
As the agony subsided and gentle death accepted me into its annihilating arms, my awareness moved beyond the sealed door and I perceived rhythmic sounds and movement. As my floating presence closed in, however, I saw that she was quite at ease and that he playing ‘Patticake-Patticake’ with her bottom-cheeks.
I have been concentrating on improving my physical fitness for the last month with the intention of applying for officer training with the British Army. It occurred to me that this would involve a personal abdication of responsibility for my own actions which my heart, perhaps, revolts against. If I were to be a soldier then might I not just as well be ordered to execute Jesus as the men posted in Judea were?
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