Dreaming Underworld

Do not fear the underworld, it is neither the Hell of religion nor the place of vampires, it is where the imagination makes love to the soul. To go down to hell as Dante did! To travel with a poet with a light-bearing name! --Machado

   Over and over the same information of where I am and where I wish to go. Comparing myself this time to last time. Maybe twenty five years was hell and I am afraid of having to reamain here. Perhaps it is hell to live without a self. It makes everything have so much effort. I know I don't have enough energy for hell left. F/47:2.7.93

The dream speaks with such a clear voice that saying anything about living in hell would be redundant. Going over and over something, comparing this time to last time. Isn't that hell?

   A Jules Verne bathosphere vehicle complete with brass portholes and attachments was sitting with its oval door open in a labrynth of caverns, smoking.. I climbed into the orb, battened down the hatches and it took off upward quickly. Soon it reached the surface and rolled out onto a spring flower filled meadow. I opened the hatch and smelled the fresh air's fragrance. (I realized upon awakening that I had entered the bathosphere in another dream ten years earlier and had gone down into the earth...) M/37:10.86

Dream cycles pay no attention to dayworld time. How long was he gone and what did he see during that time that he can't remember but that has shaped his unconsciousness? Not long afterwards Hillman's book Dreams and the Underworld came to this dreamer's attention. I remember how the Mayan underworld gods smoke cigars.

   We are in a large Victorian house. We decide to go to a meeting with a military colonel. But first I want to continue my search. Even though the night with my husband was loving. I want to look one more time. So many places.
   I see another man guiding my husband from an attic outside to a narrow secret doorway leading underneath the house.
   I pretend to seach other places then go to the outside entrance. I open the door; an ironing board is blocking the stairway. The passage is narrow and dark. I remove it and go down the stairs into a dimly lit room.
   My husband is folding white sheets. Busted. I look at him expecting a reaction of embarrasment or shame. He gets a ``So" reaction. I look into his eyes and tell him what I see: that he's defensive and reactionary. F/44:3.95

The dreamer resists going down below but knows she must continue her search. The passage way down into what we already know, but is hidden from our daytime eyes, is narrow and dark. Let's go down and find out what is there.

   I'm told he did his work in the basement. ``Be careful when you go down it hasn't been used for years." A dark cellar that you enter from the outside. There are cobwebs and old jars. There are also body parts that I am looking for. I see a hand. It is made of plaster. He takes the body parts down there. And either coats or casts them.
   Here's the story: He had two children, both sons. He made them live their lives in a cellar on a farm. They could come out only for chores. The man lived in the house. One day a car was left out. The boys could see it from the cellar window. The older boy, 16, goes up and starts to drive the car. The younger boy is frightened of the father's finding out. The older boy steps on the gas pedal. (The car is skeletal, the pedal is a one foot piece of two by four.) He goes for a joy ride. The father comes out from the barn. ``What are you doing?" The older boy replies: ``we can't live in the basement all our lives." The father admits since the death of the mother, he has kept his children underground to keep them from harm. F/42:10.19.93

Stories come to us from down below. Grimm's Fairy Tales express similiar stories. This dreamer needed to bring the boys to the surface so they could go on a joyride. "Kept from harm" means no joy.

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