A Deeply Impactful Dream

I dreamed this many, many years ago, and it is still quite lucid, and having an added depth and meaning given my recent studies.  I had commemorated it within a scifi novella titled “The Rise of Baphomet” from which the following is taken.

He crossed the castle’s courtyard.  Strewn about were massive obsidian statues and monoliths which towered over him, many of which were broken.  One seemed Egyptian; another was broken off at the waist. He thought of the body parts of Osiris.  His ruling emotions were awe and admiration mingled with a bit of fright.  He believed to be glimpsing the most recondite artifacts ever seen by human eyes.  Proceeding down the stone walkway alongside the castle walls, a corner was turned.  Within a large hall stood a large rectangular table covered with a black cloth.  Upon it was lain various magical paraphernalia.  There was a carved wand which had strange symbols burnt into it.  He intuited that it was made from a Buckeye tree.  Beside the wand was a small statue of a man, standing about a foot and a half tall.  It was Asclepius, also known as Ophiuchus, represented by the constellation Serpens.  Also on the table was a golden chalice filled with a dried herb, a small rusted blade, gold coins with geometrical shapes depicted on them, and several specimens of gemstones.

The scene changes to a township.

He noticed an irregularity in the hedge where its corners came together.  He walked over to take a closer look.  The fast moving shadows of clouds that swept by threw off his sense of balance.  He lurched, as if the ground had given.  Stooping down, he looked through a hole in the hedge which was just big enough for him to crawl through.  He could see a damp moss- covered descending grey stone passageway.  He made up his mind to explore it.

As he emerged from the bottom of the earthen staircase, he was met with entrance to a rectangular cavern.  Daylight pierced both ends of the cavern, illuminating four small sections which were terraced down to where he stood.  The right hand side of the cavern was lined with old rectangular wooden tables which were filled with various occult items.  He stood in wonder at hundreds, maybe even thousands of talismans, amulets, small idols made of wood, gold, jade, ivory, silver; a buffet of multi-colored gemstones, dried herbs, crystals, quartz points, quartz spheres, incenses, chalices, candles, bottled essential oils, wooden wands emblazoned with strange runic figures, pendants, daggers, leather drawstring bags, mortars and pestles, scattered bones, silver pentacles, wooden boxes carved with geometric shapes, colored silk cloths and various other magical implements.  Behind the tables, on the wall, were shelves filled with archaic grimoires and dusty leather-bound tomes.

The Cave of the Witch.  I must make haste, before she returns.

He very much wanted a few items for his pockets.  The lure of the mysterious cache of esotery was irresistible.  He picked up a crystal and fingered it.  He suspected that should he gaze deeply into it, he would descry something of importance.  The feeling of urgency and the need to hurry intensified.  He thought that he could quite have easily spent several days going through the magical items before him.  He climbed the terraces and moved towards the far end of the cavern, intensely surveying the tables as he passed by them for something that would catch his eye, and be easily pocketed.  He saw, at the top terrace, at the end of the last table, a small wooden hinged door, painted pea-green, with window.  H panicked at the sound of footsteps falling and clothes bristling.  Someone was coming down from the opposite end of the cavern, from whence he had come. 

The witch!  She comes!

He hurriedly made his exit through the green door, having only procured a single crystal.

The light hurt his eyes as he emerged from underground.  He looked around.  He was at a high vantage point.  Below, he could see a quaint village.  At his back was a small house.  He knew that he must make his way down and across a low road, to come up the opposite hill to the house across the way.  He must not be seen.  He tightly held the witch’s crystal.  She would be following him.  He must hurry.

As he quietly crept up to the porch of the house he must enter, he looked back.  Just across the way was the hole that he had emerged from next to the back wall of the little house.  The street below separated the way.  He turned and knocked on the door of the house which he had arrived at.  He knew that a beautiful girl was in that house.  The witch was also, somehow.  There must have been a secret underground passage that led up into the house.  The door to the modest abode slowly creaked open.

To his utmost horror, the enormous horned head of a Minotaur emerged from behind the door and gazed angrily down upon him.  The door was then flung open.  He could glimpse the beautiful girl and the witch behind the monster in the doorway.  The sight of the witch made his skin crawl.  The sight of a seven-feet-something black bovine humanoid with its nostrils flaring and muscles bulging paralyzed him.  It wasn’t just the size and enraged aspect of the Minotaur before him that made him tremble in fear.  He could feel evil emanating out from the thing.  He forgot the girl and fled from the porch as a madman, away from the witch, away from the gladiator with horned head of a black bull and the terrible eyes of a crazed wild beast.

He remembered.  Remembered King Minos, the Cretan labyrinth that Daedalus constructed, remembered Theseus.  He remembered the parallels between the Minotaur and Baal-Moloch, between the Sun god and the brazen bull.  He remembered that the Minotaur was said to be the fierce protector of occult secrets.  Most vividly, he remembered the enraged Minotaur of Dante’s Inferno.