Set Of Crystal Glasses
July 26, 2003

This a strange dream I had while taking an afternoon nap today:

<dream>
I arrived home from work to an unusually sunny apartment. All the blinds have been opened and the walls have turned yellow from the brightness entering.

I found Gramma there, puttering around. Never mind she's been dead since 1998, people forget they've died in your dreams. I went into the kitchen, looking for something to drink, when I noticed an opened package sitting on the top of the large freezer box that now just serves as a table top.

I saw four elaborately carved crystal glasses. They were quite beautiful. I noticed a narrow band wrapping the top of one, in graceful italics, distributed by the Temple of Set. Observant readers of this journal will know I've read much of their essays offered to the public on their website.

I thought, ''They must have had a fund-raiser, among which featured the sale of crystal glasses.'' I saw a small envelope containing a card, also opened by Gramma. The message read something like this:

Condolescences on the death of Laura. Enjoy these glasses while you drink to good memories of her.

I tried to notice who signed it, but this part was scribbled rather illegibly, possible a 'Stephen Somebody'. Underneath the opened card was an old letter of Laura which never got sent. This hadn't been opened, and I had to tear it open. The red envelope contained a request to someone she hoped would publish her cartoons.

I looked at it, not knowing if the organization even existed anymore.

Then the dream got even weirder, Gramma disappeared in the vaporizing way people do in dreams. Julia returned home from work and then suddenly our house was suddenly crowded with people. I had to shove some stuff off the bed before I could lay down to nap.
</dream>

Wow! Is this dream ever ripe with possible interpretations! Gramma is there, as the watchful suspicious eye looking over me from beyond. She never opened my mail when I lived with her, but she did warn me about the unsavory quality of items sent in plain brown wrappers. She DID, however, once toss a sterling silver necklace out, because she feared the strange hieroglyphics it bore.

I was so angry. I told her it was only my name in Egyptian hieroglyphics. She said she feared it was something devilish. She knew my mother had given it to me, and she feared my mother being into the 'occult'. So in the afterlife, she must figure she has the right to open my dream-mail.

I was quite surprised she hadn't smashed the glasses, when she saw the label claiming them as 'distributed by the Temple of Set', an organization devoted to occult Egyptian matters. Whether Gramma simply missed this observation or seeing it, thought nothing of it, isn't discernable.

There is another connection involved here. Members of that organization receive a publication called 'The Crystal TABLETS of Set'. I, not being a member, however received 'The Crystal GLASSES of Set'. This could be just one of the strange connections our dream-minds often make.

But I have no idea who a scribbly writer 'Stephen Somebody' would be. It would be a feat of the imagination to think someone in the world at large would send me packages in my dreams. Or COULD send such, although I have heard of astral travel. I may have experienced it once, twice or thrice, but I know little about such matters.

I 'attended' two funerals in such a way. My emotional energies were so with the grieving people, I felt I was really there. As an odd hint of possible evidence, my desert regions exchanged their weather with that of the place I 'visited'. Joliet, when my gramma died, experienced an odd heat wave, and we were uncharacteristically cool.

When Anne Rice's husband died in December 2002, having read so many of her books, thus feeling I was 'inside her head', I was in psychic contact with her. The day of the funeral, we had Louisiana style swampy humidity and gray skies. A journal entry I wrote the day he died, not knowing this news until later, further shows this, possibly offering truly objective proof: ''So death remains with me. It hisses at me, as it turns the corner, headed for its next victim.''

And then there was the odd day of the visit at work. I was busy concentrating on my task at hand, when I felt the energies of a customer looking at me. It took me a while to realize he was there waiting, as I can get lost in my work. When I looked up, there was only a gray cloudy impression of a man with long dark hair. The haze cleared, as I grew startled. I fully expected to see a man waiting there for a fitting. They often observe quietly until I notice them.

But 'poof', no one was there. Again, the weather transference occurred. The high for that day in Yuma in July, the hottest month, was only 92 F (33.34C). It NEVER is that 'cool' here in July, as the temp is nearly always over 100F (37.78C), and ususually is between 105F (40.56C) and 110F (43.34C).

So I have presented to you the mysterious elements.

Finding Laura's letter was like finding a bit of Laura's spirit. It reminded me of how she didn't want to leave but how truly sick she was.

The house full of people I can only relate to a matter of discussion we had with our gathering of friends this morning. We all had been talking of how fun it would be to live together in a commune. The house full of people reminded me, too, of how it was when Laura was alive. Quite often, she'd invite so many people to the house that it was full of people.

As I consider the dream anew, this is what our gathering of friends were doing, we were raising our glasses of Italian cream soda, coffee, juice and what not, remembering Laura as she was with us, an 'ascended master'. The Goddess Hekate as she, ''[dances] with dead souls the Bacchic rite'' (from an Orphic hymn) need not require the alcoholic fruit of Bacchus to be in our glasses, and perhaps better the glasses don't. So the set of crystal glasses invites us with Clarity (consciousness worshipping) to remember Laura as she was, assuring her the 'immortality' we humans can bestow upon great souls. As long as we remember her, she will not die.

So, all in all, it was a happy dream commemorating the one year anniversary of Laura's death. The next time we're out shopping, I might buy Julia and I some crystal glasses to use while toasting Laura's departed spirit.

May the 'mystery' be with you!

Proceed to New Word
Go to Archive - May 2003 to April 2004
Go Back to INDEX of Markings Of My Path
© JAL: