Monday, May 8, 2017

Dreaming True (#uncanny #imagination #magick)


Dream Window

By Lisabet Sarai

I’ve always believed in magic.

My dad may have had something to do with this. He used to concoct wild stories about monsters and ghosts, ogres and trolls. I remember sitting cross-legged next to my brother, on the floor by my father’s chair, held spellbound by his tales of heroes tasked with magical trials and elementals battling one another for control of the planet.

Maybe I inherited his imagination.

When I was in elementary school, I had a garnet birthstone ring that I believed could grant wishes. Mostly I remember asking for simple, silly things—like a blizzard, so we’d get the day off from school. Then my mom came down with pneumonia. She was so ill that at eight years old, I had to take over cooking for the family. I was terrified by the sudden helplessness of the woman who was at the center of my world, who could, and did, do everything. The ring got a workout during that period. My mother recovered fully, solidifying my faith in the unseen and the effectiveness of asking for one’s heart’s desire.

I’ve written many times here about the mystical quality of my first BDSMrelationship. At dinner on the night before my initiation, my soon-to-be Master told me he was descended from a family of sorcerers—that his Germanic ancestors had practiced the dark arts back in the old country. I’m still convinced I experienced true magick that night, though he often teased me about being suggestible.

Most of my life has been ordinary and mundane, of course, like everyone else’s. I’ve never been convinced I had any special powers. There’s one area, though, where I have experienced the uncanny, more than once. Every now and then, I have prescient dreams.

The first one I remember involved my Master. We didn’t see one another very often, since we lived on opposite coasts. After not having talked to him for several weeks, I had a deeply disturbing dream about him. In the dream, he was hospitalized, bandaged, unconscious and immobile on the bed. I recall everything being pale white, drained of color and life. I sat beside him, holding his hand, willing him to wake. He roused, at least enough to squeeze my fingers, but on his face was a look of absolute despair. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there, being with him, holding him, loving him the best I could.

I called him the next day, worried. He told me his father had hanged himself in the basement the night before. I didn’t tell him about my dream, not then. As I had in the dream, I held him in my thoughts, soothed him with my words, and hoped that he’d heal.

Another, later case involved a dear female friend, a woman I met on a ride board, with whom I drove halfway cross country in the dead of winter. Jeanie was the epitome of a free spirit—an author, artist, actress and musician, a fascinating creature who seemed to exist outside the boring realm of jobs and responsibilities. She married a guy as crazy as she was. They had wild parties, a rock and roll band, and a pet pig.

One night I dreamed that she told me she was going to have a baby. I was astounded. I tried to talk her out of it. “You’re not the motherly type,” I told her. “Think of all the responsibility! The constraints!” In the dream she just shook her head and smiled.

Two days later, I learned she actually was pregnant. (She turned out to be a fabulous, if unorthodox mom, by the way.)

These are two examples that stick with me, but I know they’re not the only ones. Indeed, I’ve had multiple less traumatic dreams about my Master that turned out to have elements of truth. “How did you know her name?” he asked me when I confided I’d dreamed of him with another woman. To be honest, I’m not sure he believes in magick, at least not the way I do.

Over the years I’ve published quite a bit of paranormal erotica, including my newest release Damned If You Do; Necessary Madness, my MM novel about the burden of seeing the future; my urban shifter romance The Eyes of Bast;, and my collection of dark paranormal tales Fourth World. My paranormal worlds are mostly ordinarymostly indistinguishable from our own. Every so often, however, bright power streaks through them, like lighting illuminating a thundercloud from within. That powerit’s easy for me to write. It feels natural, true. I hardly have to think about it.

In the realm of fiction, my dreams also shape reality.


9 comments:

  1. Yes, we all have these experiences that can't be explained by the more obvious laws of physics. At least not the ones we come to depend upon day-to-day. Perhaps there will come a day when humankind will learn to define (and refine) esoteric abilities that have been dismissed and replaced with dogma. Such as a rational sense of cause and effect.

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    1. One thing about all these prescient dreams... they were about people with whom I had a strong emotional connection. I definitely believe there's some sort of non-material realm - a spirit realm if you will - where currents of energy flow between supposedly separate humans.

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  2. Your dream stories are very interesting! I'm particularly struck, though, by the stuff you say about the garnet ring. It wasn't my birthstone, but I did have a garnet ring. My mother told me a wild story about how it came from a special large magical stone hidden somewhere in the mountains and represented the power of women. I was having a lot of trouble with major anxiety around school and she made me believe that the ring would somehow protect me or keep me safe there. I really did believe that, for years! I eventually lost the ring, or I might believe in it still. I hadn't thought of that for a long time, but your story reminded me.

    As kids in particular, when we are mostly powerless, I think we need something like that to believe in. Otherwise the world is just too scary.

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    1. What a coincidence, Annabeth. I also lost my ring, while I was swimming at summer camp if I remember correctly. I was devastated, as well as very concerned I'd lose my luck.

      I don't recall how I developed the notion that the ring was magical, though. Certainly my parents never suggested this.

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  3. I would go stark raving mad if I thought my dreams were prescient. I've wakened from terrible nightmares involving loss of loved ones, and could only calm down by reminding myself that I'm not in the least prescient in that way.

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    1. Fortunately this doesn't happen all that often.

      I have some pretty scary nightmares, too.

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  4. I can't prove it but I suspect that reality exists on many levels simultaneously. I think there's a part of us that knows what's coming, but we have trouble communicating with it.

    I'm always surprised by the dichotomy between master and slave in these relationships. It seems like the most intense love possible and yet it's not love in any coventional sense. You would submit to him as extremely as possible and yet this is not a man you would have married and partnered with. There is a mystery there.

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    1. Don't think that just because I didn't marry him, I didn't love him. And vice versa.

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  5. It's some different kind of love. It's still a mystery to me.

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