The funny thing about me is that I hardly ever remember my dreams. But when I do, they are powerful, prophetic, or visionary dreams. It has been this way since I was a kid. I have learned to listen to my dreams because they are telling me things I could never, ever in my waking life consciously understand or even conceive. I had one dream in particular during the super moon about the time of the solstice, December 2015, that really blew me away. Here I am just over one year later and still gathering insights from it. It’s long and detailed, but relevant to rewilding, so here goes!
I’m walking through the woods and I see off in the distance a barren hill poking up above the landscape. It’s a beautiful, but oddly-placed hill with a perfect convex shape like an upside-down saucer. It has a big old barn on top of it, right in the center. Anyone from Pennsylvania would know the type I’m talking about! There is something about this hill and barn though, I can’t quite place it. In my dream I’m carrying a 35mm film camera with me, so I whip it out and snap a picture of the barn upon the hill. I continue my hike, walking towards the barn.
I approach and enter. It is spacious inside, and has a high open-vaulted ceiling several stories up. In the ground level of the barn are all these parked armored vehicles. They have tank treads but are more advanced than tanks and look futuristic. Inexplicably, as I’m looking around the space, I stumble upon an enormous, medieval style book. The kind with gilded pages, fancy gothic calligraphy, and iconographic artwork. I begin flipping through the pages.
Before me are images of knights in shining armor, riding upon their horses. And peering out from beneath the horse, is the figure of a little person. Maybe two feet tall, with large, peering eyes staring out with an emptiness that is eerie and unsettling. The next artwork shows a tree, and a leopard, and leaning out from behind a tree is another of these little people with the large probing eyes. A story is told to me. The story goes, that these little people used to be tiny but nowadays they are the same size as you or I. It is told that their purpose was to sing to sleep the Old Fathers. They sing sweet, beautiful music and it lures the Old Fathers to sleep. And as they go to sleep, the world falls into a state of disrepair. In the dream I am given the name of this race of little people: Moira. (Of course, in my dream there was a mutable or changing quality to their name which I cannot precisely put my tongue on, but within the dream and upon waking the name was clear and day and spelled out in letters M-O-I-R-A.) These Moira, they sing to sleep the Old Fathers, the world falls into a state of disarray, and thus they gain control of the earth for their own purposes. At this point, I have chills. I keep looking through the book. There’s an image of a medieval king upon his thrown, with vassals prostrate before him. But the face of the king is one of these Moira, pale, ashen white, with large, peering, empty eyes. I close the book. I understand that the Moira live here in this barn, and these armored vehicles belong to them. But they aren’t home, for whatever reason. They are journeying around outside somewhere. I leave the barn.
I return to the town where I live and the people whom I know. I am telling people this story I have learned. I am very distraught, as I perceive what the Moira are doing as bad. But no one seems to really understand me or take what I’m saying seriously. Meanwhile, I get my film developed from the camera roll where I shot a picture of the barn upon the hill. When I see the developed photo, I know for sure something is going on and wrong here. There’s the barn, but encircling it in the photo is a vortex of white ghost-like objects flying around the building like flags in the wind. I resolve to go back.
I make again the trek through the forest back to the barn upon the barren hill. Again, the Moira are not home, but I am cautious, knowing they could return at any moment. I enter into the barn again and begin to poke around. I am standing under the high vaulted ceiling of the barn and I see that around the inside edge of the building is a rickety scaffold-like staircase, winding around in a spiral. I begin climbing up the steps. Eventually, I make it all the way to the top. There a little hidden chamber up here. Inside, I find hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny quartz effigies. It is a scene like looking at the Chinese terracotta army but these are milky white quartz and have large, gaping eyes and barely a mouth to speak of. All are depictions of Moira. I recognize among all these figures, in a place of prominence, a King and a Queen figure.
This chamber, it is like an open loft, and I look down over the balcony to the armored vehicles far down below. The floor of the barn is concrete. In a wild urge, I grab at once with my left and my right hand the King and the Queen Moira effigy. Zzzzzzzzzz! Electricity is coursing through my arms and my body. I cannot let go of them and struggle against the currents. Somehow, I manage to overcome these forces and I hurl the King and the Queen over the edge of the balcony and watch as they fall to the hard ground below. They hit and shatter into a thousand pieces…
At that very moment, rain begins to storm down and fierce winds begin to blow. I know within an instant through the pit of my stomach, that the Moira know what I have done and they are coming for me to kill me. There is a side hatch up here in the side of the barn, and I look out upon the forest that surrounds the hill. The winds are so fierce that they are ripping trees right out of the ground by their roots, and the trees are flying through the air in a spinning vortex around the barn. One passes by the open hatch and I see the smooth white bark of a sycamore tree. Then it hits me that THIS is the scene that was recorded on film by my camera earlier! The white sycamores are the white banner-like objects. I see the Moira coming back across the distance. Of course, they are inside their vehicles. I never once see one as a being alone. But though they are cloaked within their machinery I know it is them. They are driving their armored vehicle things, which are so powerful that they just mow over the trees along their way in the forest, making a beeline to find me.
I jump out the hatch and run into the forest. Running, running, desperately running. Dusk is falling and the rains are pouring. The Moira are gaining on me in their vehicles. I duck behind a bush. They see me and I run out again, desperately seeking an escape. I grab onto branches and sticks and try to disguise myself as a shrub. But it is no use. They are right up against me and as I am still running, a side hatch opens on what of their vehicles and it latches onto me like a tractor beam. I’m helpless at this point and held in the night air. A shower of golden light pours out of me like water from a hose emptying upon the ground. It’s my life energy, and they are dissolving me into nothingness. I feel myself being torn apart into the tiniest pieces. I have been defeated. And I die.
But the dream isn’t over. The next thing I know I have an awareness of existing in some far off void, like in starry space, and I still feel a growing sense of discontent. I know that I am dead but I am discontented because I am disturbed by these Moira and how they have sung to sleep the Old Fathers. I am not happy to remain within this void, peaceful though it be. Next thing I know, my attention is drawn to a place where I witness many different human couples having sex. I am drawn further in the direction of one particular couple fucking.
Whoosh! I am born as their child. And here in my dream I’m watching this baby now, this bubbly, bumbling infant, and I’m recognizing that inborn within the child is a near unquenchable love for all living things. The animals, the trees, the wildflowers, all of it. And I realize that this child has been born as part of a resistance force against the Moira, and has been given protection against the powers of the Moira’s song of numbing sleep. This child will grow to sing a new song. A song of awakening of the Old Fathers and Old Mothers. A song to rearrange and repair the world through the wakefulness of those old Fathers and Mothers.
Then I wake up from my dream.
