Signs And Symbols

Back in March, I posted about an unnerving dream I'd had. Most of what I wrote then concerned my rather fraught relationship with an old schoolmate who'd appeared in the dream, but in the months since, other elements of the dream have gained prominence. Below, I've excerpted the parts concerning the dream itself. The original post is here.

...


March 31, 2018 

Last night's dream was an unsettling one. Not a nightmare really, but unnerving somehow. I am still unsure what it means.

A winter storm was coming, a blizzard the likes of which we'd never seen. It hadn't arrived yet, but everyone was warned to be prepared. I was at home, alone. Where everyone else had gone I've no idea - it didn't seem to matter. You know how it is in dreams.

I looked around - the house was dark, and not warm, but the walls were sturdy and I figured I'd be all right if I chose to stay. At the same time, I'd had an offer - who knows how it came - from a group of hippies who had set up a tent site on the edge of town. They were nice tents - more like yurts, really, specially insulated and heated - in which to ride out the storm.  There were 200 tents, the hippies said, and they had one for me if I wanted it.

I was doubtful at first. I didn't even know these people, and maybe it was best to keep to myself, but the hippies convinced me it was better not to be alone, especially in a storm like this.

The tents were set up in a field below mission hill, all of them bright white. All the people were dressed in white as well, although there was no obvious reason for this. It occurred to me that when the snow came we'd all be camouflaged, invisible to any predatory eye, though whether this was intentional or not, there is no way to know.

I was shown to my tent, which was indeed very nice, and put on my warm white clothes. I then went out to wander among the people in the field. All of them were strangers, and as usual I was feeling shy. Starting conversations has never been my strong point.

After making a few nodding acquaintances, I was surprised to be introduced to someone I already knew, a woman named Lori.

[...]

I shook [...] Lori's hand and said "I don't know if you remember me." She said, "oh, of course I do" and I replied "well, we have known each other since the age of 7."

Just then, though, my hand began to bleed, ghastly red dripping all over our clean white clothes. I apologized, although I couldn't quite explain it. "It's no problem" Lori was saying, but by then I had noticed that the blood had run into the lines of my palm - the left palm, the lines that mark the potential with which you were born.

That's when I woke up.


...


It was in April that the parent/child separation policy went into effect for migrants on the border, and June when the first tent city/children's detention camp went up in Tornillo, Texas. This has caused an immense amount of distress in the state as well as the country. Indeed, I've had a sick headache just about every day since then. All the same, when I saw the pictures of the tents, I couldn't help but recall the dream. The scenario was different, but the imagery was strikingly similar. 

I found this similarity interesting, but not necessarily relevant, until I learned of all the protest marches being planned. The marchers are requested to wear white. That spooked me a bit. White clothes - was this only a coincidence? Considering this, I became concerned about the final disturbing image in the dream, my spontaneously bleeding palm. 

Today, there was a protest at the capitol, and i happened to see the news footage on TV. There was a banner being carried by some of the marchers - it's the one at the top of the page. It wasn't evident at first glance that it was a small red hand print inside a larger yellow one - it first looked to me like a bleeding palm, outlining the fate lines of the left hand.

I still don't know what to make of this. As a coincidence, it seems vanishingly unlikely. Perhaps these are images that happened to filter back to my psyche from the future, and my dreaming mind folded them into a story. I can't pretend to know. but I confess I am concerned. 

In any case, I expect the road ahead will require courage of us all.

My Prophecy

 Mount Nemrut, Turkey

[Note::This is a repost from another site: I wrote it some time ago, but it still feels relevant now]

I've hesitated to write this for many years because it's so strange, but feel it's time to get this out there for posterity. Make of it what you will. Maybe it's nonsense, maybe it's not, but it's the only time I've had what seemed to be a "Biblical" type prophecy. Perhaps some will find it interesting, at least.

On August 31, 2005, I had stopped at a convenience store to buy a few gallons of gas. I'd parked my car at the pump and was about to head inside to pay. I looked up at the sign to double check the price and...something happened.

The sign above the gas station seemed to be wreathed in smoke. There were distant screams and an odd burning smell. The thought came to me, "they're burning the olive trees, they're burning the olive trees." This thought was horrifying, while at the same time I realized that there were no olive trees in the area and I had never smelled one burning before.The smoke was then replaced by what I can only call a "vision" - my eyes were open, but a disturbing mental picture blotted out reality.

I saw the face of an ancient god, who was the Earth. That is to say, God was the Earth and the Earth was God. The face was carved out of stone (which was the planet itself) and the size and age of it was impossible to comprehend. Just trying to contemplate the size and age made me feel helpless and insignificant, as if I simply did not have enough brain to understand.

The god/carving/planet unhinged its jaw with a ghastly roar. It seemed the whole planet would come apart. From the mouth, two demonic or devilish creatures - one red and one green - emerged and flew away. A Biblical-sounding phrase had come into my mind at the same time - "God opened his mouth and roared/And released two devils upon the surface of the Earth." A voice boomed the words "seven years". Then the vision faded and the sound of traffic returned, leaving me in the parking lot wondering what the heck just happened.

The overwhelming feeling from this vision was that God was enraged, he had given us human beings plenty of chances and now we'd done it, we'd really messed up this time. Now we would have these devils to contend with, and it was all our own fault. The Biblical overtones of this vision indicated something religious in nature, or at least having to do with the Middle East. Since there was a war on, this didn't seem too far-fetched.

After paying for the gas I rushed home. I wanted to check the news - I felt certain that something had happened in the Middle East. I also pondered the meaning of "seven years". I knew very well that the Tribulation was supposed to last seven years, but having gone to a Fundamentalist Christian school that predicted the Rapture daily, I was inclined to withhold judgment on that one. Instead, my feeling was that something had been set in motion, and we'd have no more than seven years to correct it.

At home, I turned on the news, and indeed, something had just happened. The Al-Aaimmah bridge in Baghdad had collapsed, killing hundreds of people. There had been a stampede because someone had thrown a bomb at the bridge. It was not due to military forces but IIRC the perpetrator was thought to be from another Muslim faction.

I figured this loss of life had somehow registered on my psyche, and years later I saw on the Global Consciousness Project website that there had been a significant spike on their devices that concurred with this event. I reasoned that I had picked up something, along with a lot of other people, and combined with high heat and feeling ill from traffic exhaust fumes had caused this crazy vision.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder about the seven years. Or the burning olive trees. Every so often I'd search Google for news of burning olives and see that Israeli forces would make incursions into Palestinian territory and burn their olive trees - so such things did happen, but nothing that specifically meshed with the date of my vision. Perhaps it was a metaphor, meaning there was no more hope for peace. Who knew? But I couldn't help but keep track of the time.

On August 31, 2012, the seven years were up. The day before, Mitt Romney had been nominated as the Republican candidate for president, but even I didn't think a sign of the apocalypse would be that dorky. Nothing else on my radar at that moment seemed especially meaningful as far as the vision was concerned. It wasn't until some months later that Islamic State began to make the news. As it happened, it was between July and September of 2012 that a series of jailbreaks occurred that allowed IS to become a terrifying force in the Middle East - right on the seven year mark.

I'm unsure if it's ever been confirmed, but the faction that bombed the Al-Aaimmah bridge might have been part of the faction that later called themselves IS.

Could this be the meaning of one of the forces in the vision?

What of the other devil "released upon the surface of the Earth"?

I can't be sure, but have my ideas. Looking at the state of the US and much of the world right now, it's more than a little worrying.

Hopefully, my "prophecy" really was no more than the result of toxic exhaust fumes. Regardless, I thought it was time to write it down anyway.
...

Notes:
I had written this last November and posted it to another site, but since things have continued to worsen since then, I felt I should post it here as well.

To be clear, despite my joke about the Apocalypse, the vision was not explicitly an "end of the world" scenario, but a punishment for our sins if we could not fix the harm we'd done within 7 years.

The photo of the statue on Mount Nemrut is the closest approximation to the god figure I saw in the vision.