These Dreams ...

Very often, in the pursuit of Magic, dreams bring us information, herald changes, and explain processes that we are experiencing. The mantic state is very similar to a dreaming state in some ways, and this is - perhaps - why so many magical tales and mantic utterances take the form of dream sequences, have dream-like abrupt transitions from the familiar to the seemingly absurd, (Lleu Llaw Gyffes is struck by a spear, turns into an eagle and flies away ...)
A dream that I wish to examine occured last night. As a prelude, I want to say that Lena and I had just toured the Birthing Center of St. Joseph's Medical center (I was amazed by the place)previously yesterday evening.

In the dream, Lena and I repeated our tour of the birthing center, with seven or eight people whom Lena seemed to know, but who were completely unfamiliar to me. (Not members of the child birthing class we are attending.) We saw the room with the (Wow!) water-birthing tub - which I really thought was impressive - and the view out of the "sea monkey aquarium" bubble shaped windows and so on. As a group we stepped into the elevator to ride down to the post-partum ward on floor 12 and stepped out into a cabin in the woods. The same seven or eight people were present. One of our companions, a tall, almost-painfully thin brunette with sort of stringy, bobbed hair and a sharp nose, wanted to go into town, abruptly, for reasons she didn't explain. Nobody wanted to go and finally, after much "hemming and hawing around" Lena told me: "Just take her, please?"

We stepped out onto the back porch of the cabin, and looked up at the night sky, where heavy dark clouds were gathered, promising a respectable rainstorm. Across from us, the woods loomed, dark and dense. I asked: "Are you sure you want to go out in this? The roads are going to get bad around here when this rain hits." Nothing would do but our friend must get to town. So we stepped down off the porch to walk to my car.

No sooner had we stepped from planking to gravel than the weather broke and the rain came down in a torrent. We ran for the car. I unlocked the doors and we got in. Just as I was fastening my seatbelt and fitting the key into the ignition, a flash of lightning erupted directly overhead and a clap of thunder shook the car. I held up my hands to ward off the glare and saw, out of the corner of my eye, my companion sitting stiffly upright and pale, with her hands gripping the center divider (where my car's stick shift is) and the hand belt on the door on her side. Then a whistling and moaning filled the air, coming first from behind the car. I could hear voices on the wind. A funnel, too large to be a dust devil and too small to be an F-1 Tornado passed by the car on my side. It circled the car clockwise and then seemed to simply evaporate in front of the nose, in the middle of what would have been its second pass.

I threw the car into reverse and quickly backed up alongside the porch. At this point, our alarm clock went off and woke me.