A little before dinner this evening, I got really tired and said I needed to go lay down for maybe 30 minutes. I didn't mean to fall asleep, but I did briefly, just long enough to have a quick dream. I dreamed that the sun was rising over some mountains. Rather than our normal sun, however, what appeared was a Red Sun. I could look directly at it without it hurting my eyes. It also made the entire sky turn a kind of blood red. It felt very foreign. The mountains around me started to take on a jagged look as they appeared to grow and extend toward the sky, in an almost cartoonish sort of way. They turned black as in a silhouette. As I began to wake up, I found myself with this image set in my mind of a red sun set in a red sky, and feeling surrounded by these tall, black mountains.
Rising or setting? Were you sure in the dream?
ReplyDeleteMy mum often recites an old rhyme, "Red sky at night, shepherds' delight / Red sky at morning, shepherds' warning", at sight of such a sunset. I wasn't aware the phrase originally seems to have used "sailors" instead of "shepherds"; Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_sky_at_morning) cleared that up for me, along with why red sunrises are considered bad. In short, there's a storm ahead.
ReplyDelete(There's also this movie I found through the disambiguation pages. While it's not relevant to your story, I see some similarities in the wider scheme of things (and "gorilla" vs "guerilla" always amuses me): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn)
WJT:
ReplyDeleteI can't be exactly sure, but it seemed to me as if it was 'rising'. By rising, I mean almost something like I was expecting a normal sun to appear, but instead it was a red sun that made the entire sky look red.
Based on WG's comment, I think it was at least symbolically a sunrise (see my response to her). It wasn't intended to be a pleasant scene. I didn't feel frightened or have negative emotions during the scene, but it seemed or at least I thought of the imagery at the time as 'not good'.
WG:
ReplyDeleteYour comment was super helpful in helping me make some sense of the imagery of the dream. With some of my recent commentary around the Sawtooth Stone being potentially a Red Sun, I had been thinking that perhaps the dream had something to do with the appearance of that Stone. However, the imagery seemed unpleasant and not a good thing, perhaps, but I don't know sometimes.
I think you may have been on target with the "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning", and your comment made me think of Numenor. I think my dream may have been a Numenorean scene, which ties directly to your reference of sailors. Here is the description of the red sky that was manifested on the morning that Pharazon boarded his ship and launched the Numenorean armada (from the Silmarillion):
"Then the Eagles of the Lords of the West came up out of the dayfall, and they were arrayed as for battle, advancing in a line the end of which diminished beyond sight; and as they came their wings spread ever wider, grasping the sky. But the West burned red behind them and the glowed beneath, as though they lit with a flame of great anger, so that all Numenor was illumined as with a smouldering fire; and men looked upon the faces of their fellows, and it seemed to them that they were red with wrath.
"Then Ar-Pharazon hardened his heart, and he aboard his mighty ship, Alcarondas . . . and let raise his standard, and he gave the signal for the raising of the anchors; and in that hour the trumpets of Numenor outrang the thunder."
These sailors didn't come back, of course. So, this dream could have represented a past scene, and the sailors who were to take warning from this red sky were the Numenoreans who sailed off to their doom. This might also help explain the black mountain imagery that developed during the dream as well.
I might put this in a post just to make it searchable as a follow up to the dream, and thanks for the tip on the red sky and the sailors' warning.
That Numenorean scene is a red sky at night, though: “the West burned red behind them.”
ReplyDeleteIt seems to tie in with my dream of Byron riding into a storm in the east, with the late afternoon sun bright behind him.
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2024/07/lord-byron-on-motorcycle.html
Is 'dayfall' night then? For some reason I thought it meant morning, because 'nightfall' means the onset of night, and thus dayfall would be the onset of day. But I've never seen the word before outside of Tolkien's description here in the Silmarillion, so I don't know.
ReplyDeleteI did think about your Byron dream after posting these responses, so there could be a tie here. I'll have to do some more thinking.
If you Google “dayfall,” all you get are references to, ahem, a male reproductive health issue. The Tolkien text seems unambiguous, though, that the sun is in the west.
ReplyDeleteByron was a Norman, by the way. Possibly relevant.
In some cultures, a day starts at sunset (the Jewish Sabbath, for instance, I believe starts at sundown. Maybe that was the case with the Numenoreans, and why 'dayfall' could be at night, and thus the sun in the west. Which suggests the 'red sky at morning' may not be as applicable here as I initially thought.
ReplyDeleteCould be multiple layers of meaning here to my dream, but in thinking about it more, I think my dream may actually refer to Gondolin, in at least one of those layers. The mountains that surrounded me in the dream might be the clue here, since Gondolin was surrounded and hidden by mountains. The eerines of the dream, which was something that actually reminded me later of Fiver's vision in Watership Down when he saw the fields covered in blood, is another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eivdzovof3o
The evening Gondolin was destroyed, a red light came up over the mountains after the sun had already gone down, but to the north, rather than from the expected future sunrise to the East.
The light was caused by Morgoth's forces ascending over the mountains. In the Fall of Gondolin, Tolkien then states that the whole sky became red, and the snow about the mountains, and then everything in the city was saturated with this red glow.
The fact that Glorfindel has entered my story recently, and that he played such a prominent role in the story and defense of Gondolin, might further support this reading.
I found a few instances of "at dayfall" on Google Books. In every case it seems to refer to sunset -- for example, "the last of the light, at dayfall."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think it must refer to sunset.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting as I have looked a bit more into both the Numenorean story and the fall of Gondolin, both instances are punctuated with the notion of red skies and red light everywhere.
I am not sure that what I saw in my dream was even a red sun. That was on my mind with the red star-sun references from my earlier posts, but the fact that I could look directly at it comfortably, as I reflect more on the fact that I could do that, might indicate that it was a red moon.
Given the time-proximity of the red sky and Byron dreams (never mind the wider ongoing interplay between you two), I sense this isn't primarily about the past. Instead, it's an omen. Your May 2 words (from https://coatofskins.blogspot.com/2024/06/shall-indeed-see-signs-but-not-unto.html) include "a storm breaking", which I feel is relevant. We are in the storm, and it still worsens. If history rhymes instead of repeating, the fall of Numenor was the setup line.
ReplyDeleteWG:
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with you. I am interested in some of the past symbolism in the dream (and feel right now that both Gondolin and Numenor seem to be represented), but you are right in that those May 2 words reference a storm breaking, future tense, and part of the gathering that has and will happen seems to be as a result of or timed somehow with that storm.
And those words also reference the May 16 date, which I have thought alludes to the Sawtooth Stone, which may be red, so there may be something there also.
I still like the reference to the red sky as a warning in this sense, like you called out, irrespective of whether morning or evening. It was a good call out.
As an aside, as I was opening up my computer to respond to your comment, my kids had just started watching this show called "Baking Impossible". I wasn't tuned into what was going on, and suddenly I heard the host of the show say "Trust me - a storm is coming!". I then looked up to see what was going on, and the segment has bakers building edible boats in an attempt to sail across water.
That’s weird. Some 20 years ago I had a dream that my brother Joseph and I were making “a Loch Ness monster” (i.e. something similar to Pokelogan) out of bread.
ReplyDelete