A Dream Quest for Starry Wisdom My life was not very different from others.

I enjoyed and feared the same things as other men did. I used to experience the daily trivialities and the infantile bickering among mankind as important. At times I allowed myself to sink into fantastic speculations, but my understanding of the worlds mysteries where limited. Sometimes I may have given a thought to the nameless worlds that glimmer on the night sky above our heads. Occasionally I wondered what invisible vistas might be hidden close at hand, just outside the range of our senses. But it was never anything else than playful speculations. It all changed last autumn when I was haunted by a series of strikingly phantasmagorical nightmares and outr visions. At first I only recalled dim glimpses of alien landscapes and cyclopean structures towering towards unknown stars, but soon the dreams became increasingly vivid and convincing until they almost paled my waken time. We want to believe that the voices and images that rise from our innermost depths are our own and that the messages that they carry are less important then what our senses tell us. That is however not always the case, and for you who are willing to open your minds I leave a map to the point where inner and outer spaces meet. Each night I found myself walking through the empty streets of a strange city of titanic proportions. I was surrounded by the ruined remnants of buildings so immensely huge they dwarfed me to the size of an ant. My path was often blocked by debris and fallen pillars, themselves large enough to be human towers. The steps of the enormous ziggurats, and the long, winding stairs where like naked cliff walls. The entire city was trapped in a polar cold, all buildings covered with frost. Everything was still and silent as the grave. It was always night in this weird realm I had entered, but in the eerie shine from unknown star constellations I could make out the details of my surroundings. All buildings where made of the same green, semi translucent material, reminiscent of both glass and steel. Towers, citadels, ziggurats and pyramids, the city was alien and besides general appearance the buildings left me no clue to their purpose. Every space was totally void of all decorations, naked and smooth, and to my frustration there seemed to be no way to enter any of the buildings. No tower, no citadel and not one of the ziggurats had anything resembling doors or gateways. Not even the ruins left an entrance or as much as a crack through which I might perceive their interior. At first I found the dreams interesting and exciting, even though the experience itself was unsettling. Being lost and alone in a

mysterious city of such inhuman proportions made me feel vulnerable and alienated. Yet, in pace with the visions accelerating sense of life like clarity I became more and more obsessed with them during my waking hours as well as while asleep. With each night my dreams achieved a greater sense of lucidity, thus enabling me to travel by free will. I felt a growing attraction to the unknown, the great darkness outside the small circle of light that blind our senses. Excitement grew to compulsiveness and what had been unsettling became intimidating, but also tempting. * * * After having walked the empty streets of this titan metropolis many nights I began to catch glimpses of something moving. It might be someone watching me from high atop a distant monument, or something moving further down a street, but always only in the corner of my eye and always gone when I turned to look. At first I thought it might be flickering shadows and reflections caused by the glowing northern lights that often raged across the sky. As these incidents steadily became more frequent I realised something was crossing the threshold of my dreams, each night approaching me and gaining in substance. When I finally stood face to face with the presence I found myself on an avenue flanked by towering monoliths. It was clad in ceremonial clothing of ochre fabric, with many billowing layers of richly adorned shrouds that also veiled its face. Carrying an ebon staff and crowned with a golden mitre, the ghostly shape advanced relentlessly towards me. At the sight of this being I was awe struck and so filled with terror I could hardly breathe. The apparition seemed to radiate with such a convincing and vivid sense of reality it made myself and everything in my previous life seem vague and shadowy. I threw myself to the ground, huddled close to the slightly slanted foundation of the nearest monolith, eagerly wishing to awake. With every heartbeat seeming like forever the being passed alongside me, so close the shrouds almost touched my skin. When I finally dared raise my glance the apparition had moved to the end of the avenue, descending a set of broad stairs into the dark waters of a brooding ocean stretching towards the distant horizon. Eager to discover from what hidden source my own nightly visions flowed I walked down the stairs, step by step into the murky depths. As the cold water rose above my head I made an attempt at holding my breath but soon found that I actually did not have to breath in this land of dreams. The stairs were hewn into the cliff wall that sloped down towards the sea bed. My mysterious guide walked the titanic steps with ease while I had to climb down each shelf with great difficulties. For each step our distance increased and soon I could hardly see it any longer. Afraid of being left alone in the darkness below the surface I climbed down

the stairs as fast as I could. Sometimes I thought I could suspect huge menacing shadows moving far away in the darkness but I told myself that perhaps it was only faint rays of light from above filtering down in the depths. Far below the distant surface I at last began to perceive light. For every step I ascended the lights grew stronger and finally I saw its source. Below me, at the foot of the stair, was the sprawling ruins of a sunken city glowing with a luminescence of their own. When I had climbed down the final step I stood in a mauve coloured radiance, almost stronger than the light above. At first the ruins looked the same as the ones on the surface, titanic structures towering far above me. Though as I approached the closest of them I saw that their surfaces where not naked and smooth but covered with intricate patterns softly winding in organic shapes. Abstract or figurative I knew not, the crawling patterns might be only decorations, depictions of amorphous sea creatures, or perhaps they were glyphs and scripture trying to communicate me a message in a dead and forgotten language. The patterns where not the only clues that seemed to hint at the meaning of my oneiric epiphanies. Standing in the streets or partly hidden in recesses in the walls were statues of weird creatures, chimeras and gargoyles constituting a menagerie of extra-terrestrial horrors, each one more unsettlingly bizarre than the other. Their single common feature was that their postures made a uniform impression of deep slumber. When I realised that the mysterious apparition I had followed down the depths was nowhere to be found I looked around to decide where to go. Since the ruined city seemed to have been built in terraces around a low hill I could easily see that the central ruins were dominated by a single large building, perhaps a citadel or temple. In hope of finding an answer to where I was and why I had been brought here I headed up the hill towards the great edifice. * * * The temple's pyramid like body ended abruptly in a flat top on which rested a glass dome. At the base of the pyramid there was an open gate which I hurried to enter to escape the statues who's shadows seemed to stretch out after me. The temple's interior was veiled in gloom, but I could vaguely discern a corridor which I followed past doors, crossing passages and stairs leading up and down and finally into the heart of the sanctum. A warm reddish glow radiated from the far end of the passageway and as I approached I could see the corridor opening up to a grand temple hall. The room was illumined by the crimson light of four braziers standing on tripods in the

cardinal directions. Only the ritual shrine was clearly visible as it stood mounted on a low stone foundation in the centre of the hall. The entire ceiling of the temple sanctum consisted of an enormous mechanical astrolabe. In its centre an intricate system of thin metal arms held many small crystal balls forming star constellations against the backdrop of the dark waters seen through a glass dome. Surrounding this was a circular construction of metal plates depicting a zodiac, whose alien shapes where mercifully concealed in shadows. Along the walls a complex machinery of wheels and pistons of brass, probably for moving the astrolabe, could be seen faintly gleaming in the red light. Except from the sparkling and flickering shadows made by the braziers everything was still and silent inside the temple. When I lowered my gaze I saw how something in the middle of the room reflected the reddish glow of the fire. In the floor there was a hatch with crude handles. I tried to lift it and despite its great weight I succeeded to force it open. At the same time a mechanical whining and clicking could be heard from above and there was a deep rumbling noise and a strong vibration shook the floor. The metal arms with the crystal balls had begun to move and shift their positions. The circle of metal plates rotated slowly around the dome. As the vibration in the floor grew to a forceful shaking I could no longer stand up. I lay on the floor and tried to no avail to convince myself that if the roof came tumbling down on me I would not be hurt because was this not a dream after all? As a light from above made me look up my fear was changed into wonder as I realised that the sunken city was being brought up towards the surface by enormous forces. Outside the glass dome the waters grew less murky until the pyramid at last rose to face the glittering stars on the night sky. Now I could see that the crystal balls hanging beneath the cupola was arranging themselves to depict the nameless constellations of these unearthly spheres. When the circle of metal plates stopped with the zodiacal pictures in their new positions everything was once more still and silent. * * * I got up on my feet and looked down into the opening in the floor. A stair led down to some kind of room from which there rose a mystical glow. Sensing that I might be close to the goal of my quest I stepped down and found a circle round chamber that was almost entirely occupied by a water basin with a shining aura rising from its surface. Reverently I approached the luminescent mirror of water. A nebulous apprehension filled me, as if I could sense that some deeply transforming knowledge was to be found in the depths of the water. I leaned out over the basin, my heart pounding excitedly and then

freezing with terror. A shape was floating in the blue green liquid. It seemed to be sleeping, surrounded by something slithering and waving as seaweed. Snakelike tentacles danced around its bloated, cephalopod like head. Enormous wings of bone and membranous skin stretched out from its back, lending it a dragon like appearance. Its ochre hue reminded me of the mystical guide that had led me down into the depths. I wished to run away and to escape this cave by wakening from the dream. But something within me pushed me closer, an invisible force, a nameless feeling that this was meant to be. I stepped into the water and sank beneath its surface. Weightless, embraced by the creatures ropy arms, I looked upon the terrible face of the dragon. As it opened its lids and I met its obsidian eyes everything I had believed to be myself was burned to cinders, but it mattered not. I knew I had found something older, deeper and truer. I laughed and cried. Panic and terror mingled with reverent joy into liberating ecstasy. Insights that had been hidden until then was revealed to me in all their terrible, wonderful majesty. I have been asleep and dreaming that I was human, but now I have awakened. I was a larvae, but now I can spread my wings and let them bear me out among the stars. * * *