Tag Archives: visions

Sakura Dream

14 Jul

Sakura Dream Seal

It is the ghost hour. Outside it has been raining all night. Window tilted, I am sitting on my desk, listening to the rain drops, hitting summer green leaves, the warm asphalt of the road, the stone of my window bench. The air smells of chlorophyll. In front of me is an empty glass bowl and a half-filled bottle, which emits an intoxicating scent, when opened. I should be in bed, as I have slept little, but instead my mind is on fire. I had to compose this incense blend, inspired by a dream I once had…

In this dream I am flying on a magic carpet. It is a warm sunny day. Using the upwind, I can speed up my flight, enjoying the slopes and turns, as tender petals of cherry blossoms softly brush my face. Mesmerized, I am riding through a cloud of white and pink and I want to freeze this moment. For the break of a second it becomes eternity, only to be carried away and onward. I can steer the carpet momentarily, but I cannot influence, where the journey is heading. We go higher, over hills and I observe the landscape from a bird’s eye view. In front of me are unfolding endless fields of blue lavender bushes. Then I am taken to an abandoned landscape garden, filled with fragrant roses. Someone is here, but before I can find out what is happening, I am gone. Then I find myself in an urban surrounding, my feet on the ground. I recognize the place, it is close to where I lived and regularly walked up and down the road, on which is bordering a graveyard. Just seconds before, I had been chasing down that steep hill with my magic carpet. Now I am at this noisy street. Here I meet the dead. A satisfied expression, a pile of documents in hands, a smiling face, communicate all I need to know. And that is it.

Sometimes the dead are very busy people. Other times all that is left of their souls are the tender sakura blossoms… For me remains the memory of a most wondrous dream flight.

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Sacred Space

10 Jul

A space, empty. A place for contemplation. A prayer room, a modern “church” if you will. The human is confronted with the present, the past, the future – ultimately the inevitable end of it all – and what will be left. There is a black figure of death, a red candle and behind the figure is a large painted canvas. The painting has a vertical format. The colors are merely shades of dim grays on a muted white. Forms dissolve in white mist. A thorn tree is barely visible in the distance. To the right of the statue is a small potted tree. The statue carries a rosary made of seeds and is mounted on a small reliquary box made of dark wood. There is a censer for burning copal, frankincense and aloeswood. The walls to the left, right and in the back are empty. The individual enters to face himself and the inevitable.

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Fingers II

9 Apr

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This time it is not about a surreal dream and also not about the fennel. But it is about another plant’s “fingers”. In folklore the male fern’s “hand” is a lucky charm, meant to bestow fortunes and the power over the souls of the dead to it’s owner. In order to obtain it, the sorcerer must harvest the male fern’s root on the Eve of St. John. Then he must roast the root in the fire. The hand is made in such manner as to bind five strands of the fronds together: the root base of the stem is left attached and the rest of the frond’s foliage is removed. The result resembles a “hand”, with tendons (hairy stems) and fingers (stipe bases). Frankly, I never made such “hand” in this manner. But I’ve gathered plenty of male fern roots and had the most magical experiences granted through working with these roots in various ways, always discovering new aspects to this wondrous plant. Above is another version of this “lucky hand”, formed by the stipe bases and a single frond.

Btw., the stipe bases of the male fern’s fronds are green and spongy towards the center, whereas as the outer (old) parts turn black and rot. So if you were to use the root, make sure you actually use the parts that still have juices in them. Below is a close-up of how that should look:

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Male Fern stipe base, light green in color and of a spongy texture

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Male fern root: in the bowl are the vital parts, to the left are the rotten parts

More about the male fern

Male fern inspired art:

Dead Man's Eve, 2010

“Dead Man’s Eve”, pencil drawing, 2010

Wurmfarn Siegel

Male Fern plant sigil, 2010

 

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Fingers

5 Apr

I woke up many times last night. The documentary I had watched about the Panama papers, followed me into sleep and seemed to occupy my mind for no good reason, other than that I felt betrayed and somehow sharing into the fears and worries of those people that risk their life and well-being for exposing the truth. So my sleep was already restless and my emotional state was not, what one would consider “sunny”. I got some rest after all, but the dream that woke me up again, was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced… I say experienced, because in dream it’s always real.

I am inside a foreign room. Beside me on the table, is standing one of those plastic bowls, inside of which I usually gather my herb harvest. I am holding a pair of scissors and one by one, I am chopping off fingers from a hand, and placing them inside the bowl. It occurs to be the most natural thing to do. The hand, it turns out, is my own. I have grown it, similar to how the comic character Deadpool is able to regenerate hands and other body parts. So, I am standing there, chopping off fingers from my own, self-grown hands, of which there are about half a dozen, and collecting the fingers inside the bowl. When I am out of hands, I continue cutting the fingers of my left hand – the one that’s still attached to my arm and body! I sense no pain, as I cut through the knuckle joints and observe myself doing this with a scientific sort of fascination. The fingers don’t bleed as I cut through them. Instead there is immediately skin overgrowing the cut off part. I wonder if or when the fingers will grow back on my hand. When I realize that this may take some time or not happen at all, I stop and begin to worry. What have I done? I look at my hand: of the index and ring finger are only stumps left. In this moment my mother enters the room. Ashamed I hide my hand from her. But at the table is still standing the bowl full of fingers. Some of them are dirty, as if they had just been digging in soil. Worried, that she may see the bowl any second, I wake up.

The first thing I do, is check my hands and fingers upon waking. They are still there. Then I remember, how I had been chopping off and through the hollow stalks of fennel plants, left from last year. I had been cutting them right at the joint, where once the leaves and sheath grew out of the stem. It was already getting dark and with the sun gone, the temperatures went down as well. But I was standing beside the compost, hypnotized, cutting one fennel stalk after another, until I was done with all. I placed the stem segments inside plastic bowls, just like the one in my dream, and then put them up for drying beside my bed. My plan is to fill the hollow stems with a special incense blend for inducing vision and second sight. Well, it looks like I just have been given but a taste of their potency.

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Fish Dream

2 Jul

I am in a small town with average middle class, one family houses. (The place reminds me of Pforzheim.) I am inside one of these houses, first downstairs, in the living room and then upstairs, in the attic. The attic is a single long room flooded with light. It is a warm and friendly atmosphere, sunlight illuminates the walls and floor. It is almost as if the roof was missing but then I see it is made of glass and held by a slender steel construction. I look at the wall to my left and see an old shower head, which looks as if it had been out of use for a long time. Around the shower the wall looks run down and the plaster has come off. Beneath the barren stone is covered in green moss or algae. The scene looks like a photo. Sunlight is shining on the spot, water drips from the shower in slow motion and the green is a nice contrast to the warm rust-colored wall. I am thinking how beautiful it is up here and that it would be worth to do some construction work and renew the room. But then I see at other the end of the roof that it is somehow merged with the town’s modern library building. The latter has ten stories but oddly it feels I am at the same level. Either way, for some reason it would make any construction work in here complicated. I turn around. And there I see at the back of the long room – which seems to have gotten even longer – right there, where I had stood before, a couple of fishes. I am not wondering how these may have gotten here nor how it was possible for them to float around in the room. I remember how I had observed them before from the corner of my eye: a mother with her siblings. The mother is about 1,20 m long and has a pattern similar to those of zebra sharks. Her back and large dorsal fin are a dark brown, which runs down her sides in a few wide bands that become narrower towards the belly. Her lateral fins are also dark brown whilst the belly is a bright white. Her young ones are smaller, about 30-40 cm long and of a lighter color, but already sporting a similar pattern. They will probably become darker with age. I remember how I had been watching them up-close, when kneeling beside a small ditch, holding my hand in the cool running water, the fishes however floating around me in the air. It feels like I am in a vacuum. Time seems to stand still. Only the fish and water from the shower head are moving. The former in what seems to be their natural tempo, the latter in slow motion. Then I remember there was another big fish and I am now holding this fish in both arms. I am actually embracing and cuddling it. I feel a great joy and the fish seems to enjoy it too. I look at its beautiful scales and form: the entire body and fins are a matte black with only subtle hues of blue or grey-brown. It has an almost perfect round shape in profile but is otherwise a slender specimen with a peculiar serrated dorsal fin, the edge of which is elegantly rounded off and flowing straight into the tailfin. The pectoral fins are rather small and the ventral fin is similar to the dorsal one. I think how beautiful this fish is. Then I am back in the living room. I don’t remember what I had just experienced. Instead I am worried. Looking outside through the windows, I am expecting a volley of gunfire to hit any second. Then I am somewhere out of town and looking at the houses my last thought is how vulnerable this beautiful place was. Then I wake up

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