It would definitely not be obvious by how often I refer to them on this blog, but dreams (and deriving meaning from them) was not really a thing for me prior to 2019.
I can probably count on one hand the number of dreams I remember from before 2019. It was not until the period of time immediately preceding, and then obviously during, the 'words' that dreams became a dominant (and in some time periods, overwhelming) aspect of my life. And it has remained that way - like a switch went on.
I should note that two of those very few dreams from before 2019, both from very early childhood, are actually quite relevant to this whole 'thing', and very likely at least part of the reason that I found myself relating to certain aspects of the story, or at least giving it all a chance. I will maybe at some point in the future relate at least one of them.
However, I mentioned some things about Gandalf in my last post, in referring to dreams and experiences related to his story and character, and wanted to use this post to relate one of them.
This dream in particular, as I look back on this ever expanding library, came at a time and was conveyed in such a way as to be extremely helpful on multiple fronts.
As I mentioned in my post "Calling out (fictional) demons", by the end of July 2021 I was no longer actively writing on various topics after having returned to it a bit earlier that year. In that post, I relayed a phrase I had written on July 20 that included "She is gone. The other. No more tricks." This was a confusing phrase, but I did associate it with that female voice that had introduced themselves to me just a few days earlier, as if they were on their way out and were saying goodbye. I just didn't know who that was, or what the 'tricks' were all about. Today, I associate that Being as a Balrog - an ancient Demon - and their tricks as being what was mixed in with my mind and writing. At that time back in 2021 at the end of July, however, I had no notion of these things.
It would be this dream, from the perspective of Gandalf, that would spark this developing storyline, that a Balrog had been involved in my mind during that year, and also that Balrogs had been involved, in some fashion, at Sawtooth, most notably the "Son of Baal-Ox" whom Asenath confronted there was one of these Beings. Prior to the dream, I had not connected those dots or placed Balrogs in the story.
This dream came very soon after the "No more tricks" commentary - it looks like approximately 2 weeks later.
On Aug. 3, 2021 I took my two youngest kids for a one-night camping trip at nearby Wild River State Park. The week earlier, I had taken their older brother and his friend up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) up on the northern Minnesota/ Canadian border. My other two kids felt left out, so I took them on this other little overnight camping trip, which was much more their speed.
That night is when I had this particular dream.
In the dream, I found myself in a some manner of room that was made out of stone. Along one wall of the room, was a stone staircase and standing on the stairs were 4 young men, all in a line. The young man standing at the rear of this line was, oddly, carrying a golf bag full of clubs on his back, which looked ridiculously out of place.
As I looked at this person, I thought "Golf clubs in Moria?! What a fool!" In saying this, I got my bearings and realized I was in Moria, and the 4 young men I was looking at were hobbits (they didn't look like the actors from the movies).
Suddenly, I felt a great force or presence on the other side of a large set of doors I only now just noticed. Whatever was on the other side of the door was of almost overwhelming power, and I felt a great struggle in my mind. As this struggle happened, I was trying to figure out just what it was that was 'attacking' me in this way. The struggle ended, finally, and I was still OK, but bewildered at what had just happened and what could have attacked me. My mind became focused on this - of figuring out what it was. I then saw 'it'. There was a Being of dark fire that was now running down a set of stone stairs somewhere else. I was seeing it in my mind's vision, but I could see it very clearly as if with my physical eyes.
This Being looked nothing really like Peter Jackson's movie-Balrog, which to me is this huge, brute, dumb looking animal. Rather, the Being that I saw, both its appearance and the manner in which it was moving, brought one phrase to my mind "How tricky!". In thinking this, I woke up.
First off, there is the obvious tie of the phrase I had written down of "No more tricks" and to my thought at seeing the Balrog of "How tricky!". This is actually the seed that was planted in my mind that would grow in the following days about naming the Being who had snuck into my writing of that time period - this 'other' Being that was full of tricks.
The story then spread to what happened to me during 2020. The mental onslaught that I felt in the dream as I (from Gandalf's perspective) was facing off against this unseen power from the other side of the door felt very similar, in many real ways, to my own struggle during that time, particularly the very acute phase of the time around May 7. It was rapid, overpowering, confusing, and almost totally destroyed me. So, right or wrong, I began to take that dream and apply its meaning to what had happened.
Further, I then also completed the tale of these Balrogs in naming or identifying Baal-Ox, Asenath's foe, as one of these Balrogs.
With the dream as the catalyst or spark, this story that grew in my thoughts made sense, even if there wasn't a whole lot of other things in my own words that screamed "Balrog". Yes, there was something that Asenath confronted, but it wasn't clearly named. I would go back and notice the mention of a horned creature with phantom or dark magic, and put two and two together that this was likely an oblique reference to the Balrog, but other than that, there wasn't a whole lot that seemed to call out these Beings. Despite this, again, the story made sense and I adopted it going forward.
However, in the course of this blog, I wrote the post "Diverse earthquakes: The Beloved Disciples of Bountiful and the quest for the Sawtooth Stone". In that post, I included the phrase I received on April 14, 2020 which went:
Sawtooth Mountains
eldil balin
I included the phrase because it is the first time that Sawtooth Mountains showed up, and in that post I would go on to talk about the mountains and completely leave aside the "Eldil Balin" part of the phrase (until I later added a note following this next sequence of events). This is because, at the time of that writing, I didn't really know what it meant. I had gone over it before, and did have the thought that "Balin" was a proper name, as in the dwarf who met his demise in Moria, and in whose tomb Gandalf's first confrontation with the Balrog came from. I did not have a good idea on "Eldil" and I had tried in the past to approach it as also an Elvish word. "Star-Friend" is basically what it would turn out as, so I wondered if Balin, a Star Friend or something, was involved at Sawtooth since Dwarves might be helpful.
There really wasn't a story to that, however, that I could follow, so I left it at that. I hadn't even really connected Balin with a Balrog, despite what happened in Moria in LOTR.
WJT, though, unknowingly solved the riddle, or at least gave me my missing clue. In the comments section, he asked the simple question:
Eldil — isn’t that a word from C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy?
When I read his question, I literally did a face palm about how I had completely overlooked that! Eldil is a word from the Space Trilogy, and it refers to a group of supernatural/ super-powerful Beings very much like angels or Gods. In Tolkien's world, they would be the equivalent of Ainur or Maia, likely. In the Space Trilogy, much as in Tolkien's world, there can be good or bad Eldil. In Tolkien's writings, Balrogs are bad or evil Maia, and would be an equivalent to the evil Eldil of Lewis' world.
I had my answer to that phrase. The "Eldil Balin" was a reference to the Balrog (and also a tie-in to Lewis' Space Trilogy), and one additional support to my notion or story that it was a Balrog that was indeed at the Sawtooth Mountains.
I actually responded by telling WJT in the comments:
Yes it is. I think you cracked the riddle of the "Eldil Balin".
He may not have understood how serious I was when I said he cracked the riddle (or again, gave me my missing piece of the puzzle).
In any case, I thought it was pretty remarkable, and again, just gave me a little more confidence that the meanings and stories that developed and grew from that initial dream and the subsequent thoughts were potentially correct, or at least something more than nonsense.
Anyway, back to the dream. Naming these Beings as Balrogs - both the one that Asenath had taken on, as well as the one(s) that infiltrated my own mind, felt like a relief, interestingly enough. As part of my therapy and psychiatric treatment for whatever it was that happened to me, I could very clearly name my issues and condition from that set of definitions. Things and terms like "Psychosis" and "Bipolar Disorder". Accepting these as realities was fairly well beat into me as part of that whole process.
As I have said (and clearly since I am writing this blog), I couldn't quite accept that this was all (or just) a mental health issue, or something that was completely imaginary. I didn't have a name for this other story though, in interpreting what happened from a more spiritual lens, other than some vague notion that some kind of real power had some impact over me. Without something to name and point to, however, it was just fuzzy in my mind.
So, it helped - putting a name to it. And I could hold out that story, as well as the one where I just had some sort of psychosis, and be OK in not knowing exactly which was right, but that each had a story that made sense. I like my stories to make some kind of sense, no matter where on the spectrum of crazy the fall. In any case, this helped, I think, in my ongoing process of healing, and it would be just a couple months later where I would have my last therapy session with Piper before she cut me loose.
The dream helped in one other, very critical way. It was through this dream that I realized that I sometimes (many times) can and do dream through the perspective of other Beings. I had not realized this before, and so up to this point I had tried to interpret everything as if through 'my' own perspective. This dream was very clearly through the eyes of Gandalf (whether actually from him, or just conveyed by another through his perspective), and so I was now able to go back and revisit so many of my other dreams and reassess their own potential meanings in this new light. This was a major breakthrough for me, and in my ability to make a better attempt to understanding what was going on.
The dream itself is funny for its inclusion of the golf clubs being carried by one of the hobbits. I had to look this one up. It turns out that Tolkien has the game of golf being invented by Bandobras Took, one of Pippin's ancestors. Thus, this was potentially a funny way of identifying that last hobbit in the line as Pippin, and also letting me (the dream observer through Gandalf's eyes) understand where I was and who I was looking at.
I like to think of that little touch as being a signature of Gandalf, or at least a Being that would be like him. Even the "What a fool!" obviously refers to Gandalf calling Pippin a "Fool of a Took". It is possible that I would have come across the golf fact sometime in my prior research (I did look at quite a few things), so I can't discount that, but I had no memory of seeing that before when I eventually found the golf reference.
Also, for the record, I had forgotten that Gandalf had that original confrontation with the Balrog while he was in Balin's tomb. I have read the books a few times, but I guess when there is a movie version sometimes you forget some of the details. The movie has the Balrog only at the Bridge where Gandalf fell, and omits the initial face off entirely. Thus, I had also forgotten about it and was curious about the door scene in my dream, until I went back and read that part and remembered.
Anyway, to summarize and conclude, it was this dream that helped me understand both a bit of the nature of Balrogs and how they potentially fit in my story, as well how to interpret some of these dreams and see them as coming from the mind and view of others.
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