the cursing of the scapegoat...the Crystal Spectre, part III

Strange the way confirmation You give confirmation to the conversations You have with Your people--confirmation that You really are a part of the dialogue.

After having had that last dream, the very same day in fact, I mentioned to a friend something I hoped she'd raise in prayer with me. She began to get a vision during that prayer, and she shared it with me. I hadn't told her about this Crystal Spectre series of dreams, but here is what she saw: she saw an ear of corn beautifully formed, but surrounded by a rotting dead husk. The rotting husk on it would fall away by the prayers of people who knew of it. When the dead husk was stripped away, what was underneath would be exposed: a golden ear of corn, fine and glowing--not a thing needing to be grown or developed like a seed, but fully formed and ready to be revealed. I spent the rest of the day stunned at the imagery parallels between her prayer vision and my morning's dream. Her vision was in response to my search for a practical application in my everyday life to the more fantastic elements of my dream, her vision lifted into that other realm to meet mine. While mine was literally in the air and full of rainbow-promises, hers was in the earth, growing grain--growing nourishment. What an amazing bridge of wisdom I see as I look for the cords that bind the vision and the reality together.

So I entered the last dream that felt related, although the Spectre made no appearance--this dream was, while fantastic, still in the realm of mankind. My memory of the early part is sketchy, only that things were chaotic for people but they got a handle on things and improved them a bit, bringing relief. But the relief was short-lived, and the second period of chaos and confusion did not get any better. People were running around in a panic everywhere. I moved through the crowd until I saw a church. I decided to go into it and pray. When I did, a priest saw me. He pointed me out, told everyone else in the church to think evil of me, and using something like a rosary that he wrapped around my head, he pushed me to the floor. He held me down by the cord he had wrapped around my head--and pressing my head into the floor, he began to curse me. As he cursed in a language I did not understand, I found myself beginning to spin, as if my head were attached to a spinner that swung my body around in a circle, fast enough that my feet left the floor--yet strangely he stayed positioned just above me, holding my head in place. As he cursed and I spun, I began to feel a strange trepidation and wonder--as if I had reached the apex of my reason for being human, and I wondered what the curse spoken over me would do to me. Somehow I knew it would not do me eternal damage, but I did know it would cause fundamental change. As he continued, I began to feel a sort of bloating happen to my body, until I could actually see the tissue beneath my eyes swell up enough for me to see a yellow puffiness just below by eyeballs. When he finished the cursing, I felt filled with a strange puss-like substance, and I panicked. I ran out of the church and milled about with the crowd just a bit--matching the common denominator of their confusion with my own. But soon, I calmed down and came to realize the pus was not damaging me and knowing again a sense of longing to be with Thee, I entered the church again--or tried.

The priest met me at the door, he barred the thresh hold with all the people behind him, looking over his shoulder. "You'll never be able to pray here again," he said.

I turned away from the church and immediately knew that although this pus could not hurt me, it could badly damage those around me--I'd become something of a Typhoid Mary in this respect. I did not want to bring harm to others, so I took ran into a wilderness area just to the right of the church. People didn't go there because there was none of life's basic requirements guaranteed there--no assurances of food and shelter. But my choice was between putting myself at risk that way and putting everyone else at risk of the pus-like substance that swelled my body. I chose to put myself at risk, and I ran into that unknown land, perceived to be forbidden because of its fiercely inhospitable nature.

The dream ended there as I woke up at the stress of it, but I woke with two things on my now-conscious mind. Revelation 12--and the woman flees into the wilderness that is prepared for her--and second stage of the Day of Atonement Ritual. In stage one, an animal dies for the sins of the people. But in stage two, a second animal is cursed for the guilt of the people. This animal is not killed but is taken into the wilderness and left there. It is the scapegoat.



Thankfully, the experience with K. and her vision is indeed like a tether to the growing earth. She helps me learn to detach personally from that world of the visions when the time comes for me to be "me" again. It is a detachment that grows harder the more these images overflow with portentious themes, the more "significant" they become in scope, for no longer are they simply about me being tested--a thing difficult enough, but at least comprehensible. Now they are about my fulfilling some slowly unveiled reason for being--not just being human, but being at all. In fear and trembling I feel called to explore the furthest boundaries of why I--why any of us--exists. To stay in the visionary realm could prove quite an abyss from that position; so to find a physical-world connection for expression, and to realize I may represent something larger than just myself in these dreams--these help to shield my sanity.