Occult Experiments in the Home

I was at my parents’ house with K— and she, like me, was wondering how we should spend the day. We were sitting in my old bedroom. It was summer, warm, and all the windows in the house were open.

A staring match with a Minotaur.

In the sky a man was floating; a man in the form of an elongated Friesian cow. He split into two, and the half with the head drifted down and through the window. Once the cow-man was inside he changed in a black demonic creature with the head and horns of a bull. The black Minotaur stood on the carpet and stared at me with orange eyes.

This is fine. It’s okay, I reassured myself, aware that I was having a nightmare, that the figure represented a shadow aspect, and that I could control my fear. But such strong waves of weirdness radiated from the thing that I lost my cool. The silence of its penetrating stare spooked me and I woke up, frightened.

Later, Rudolf Steiner came to address a spiritual community I was visiting. Steiner was very busy, but I pulled him aside and roused myself into the lucid state so we could have a proper chat.

We walked together briskly, both aware there wasn’t much time before he had to give his talk or I lost lucidity. We spoke quickly, but I noticed the words made little sense. He asked: ‘How’s Bill?’ (Even at the time it seemed very unlikely Steiner would actually say this.)

Rudolf Steiner. I caught up with him for a quick chat...

I asked him for a way I could make contact whenever I wanted to. He showed me a black onyx wand and said, ‘This will easily do the job.’ He was surprised that I should need a physical object, so I told him, ‘In the world I come from you’re not available to people any more.’ This surprised him. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, as if it were something that hadn’t occurred to him.

Then the dream unravelled.

I didn’t deal with the nightmare as successfully as on previous occasions, but I’ve noticed a pattern where facing down a nightmare can lead to a subsequent dream, which seems to reward with an insight or numinous message.

To assume that because Steiner’s words were senseless then the message makes no sense is probably to misunderstand the level on which the dream communicates. ‘Bill’ was the name of the person who first introduced me to Steiner’s work. The words ‘How’s Bill?’ make little sense taken literally, but taken as ‘How’s your connection with my work developing?’ it starts to mean something more.

I realised there was no need to feel frustrated if I couldn’t remember the details of the conversation, because the feeling of walking with Steiner and enjoying his presence remained. We depend on words for conveying meaning when we are awake. We need to learn to look elsewhere when we’re dreaming to discover the meaning of the experience.