I'm kissed by the Holy Aardvark, but my bond with my dad is strained by ESP he can't accept...
Sarashina dreams (again) she needs to leave court life and a spiritual path. Her skeptical mom sends a
priest to the temple to dream for her! But he too dreams the Goddess shows two life-choices--happy or sad...
Guan Xiu, a painter in the late Tang Dynasty, dreamt that sixteen arhats
or luohans (Buddhist sort-of-saints) asked him to paint their portraits--
not their earthly forms but their (rather peculiar) astral forms. He did...
I'm a priestess from an island of women; I meet an angel
who charges me to harvest all the dreams of the world...
Anselm dreams God orders King William's death by an arrow of fire; the
King dreams his blood covers the sun. Waking, he mocks a third man's ominous
dream, goes hunting, and dies bloodily at sunset, an arrow in his heart...
DREAM: a great bird carries me to Mecca, Yemen, India, the south sea islands, China, the snowy north...
AWAKE: My host says it means I'll travel the world--but he adds "in India, my brother will save your life"...
I was trapped inside a boulder, but as I chanted it melted around me until it resembled a discarded skin...
Our gods demand sacrifices. I let Mother mutilate me so I'd be unfit. But the priests turn out to be blind...
CAUTION: YOU CAN FEEL PAIN IN DREAMS
A Holy Cardinal enters my bedroom and demands I kiss his ring. I suggest something he can kiss, and...
CAUTION: CHRISTIAN MEGALOMANIA, PAGAN RUDENESS
That broccoli business made the new pope controversial, but when he goes off to find his girlfriend...
CAUTION: CATHOLIC SACRILEGE I'M SURE
I dreamt a friend poisoned me. I "woke" and slew him in fury. But guilt gnawed me. I confessed and was due to hang...
CAUTION: NOT A CALM GUY
A nun-like figure shows me three arcs; two are forms of direct power,
but the third, innermost arc can lead to secrecy and manipulation...
The sparrow died in the ashes, but the dove in my hands became a blue cloud.
I drank it, thinking "This will benefit us all"...
Egbert decides to go convert the Germans. A brother monk dreams twice that God wants Egbert in Scotland, but he
sails--and nearly drowns. At last he gives in. Another monk sails to Germany. Two years later he returns defeated...
CAUTION: STUBBORN MONK, DEITY, AND GERMANS
The hero Gilgamesh troubles his city till he dreams the gods will send him a best friend & lover, Enkidu...
CAUTION: SEX
While my body expels a kidney stone, weird scenes happen on the astral plane. At least I get to dip the pope.
CAUTION: PAIN, PEE, POPE
I'm in medieval England on a mission from God, but I meet a Priestess on a mission from...well, we argue.
Fursa the preacher, sick, dreams flaming devils & angels are trying his case; one
failure to coax a deathbed repentance gets him scorched. He wakes with burns...
CAUTION: DREAM HAS PHYSICAL EFFECTS
Gopa dreams the earth shakes, stars and meteors fall. She's naked, her marriage bed is broken, her husband
Siddhartha's treasures lie scattered. He says "How auspicious!"--and prepares to abandon her and their son...
CAUTION: SEXISM
I'm a girl in a desert who God tells to preach a new gospel. But the locals, unlike ancient Rome, have guns...
CAUTION: VIOLENT MARTYRDOM
I'm a priestess standing on a stone terrace, holding a ritual axe. Before me kneels a sacrifice to the Goddess...
Time-travel the Navaho way! But our bread-pipe gets hijacked, so we call the Bird. Who shows up, all right...
CAUTION: NON-STANDARD SAVIOR, EVIL DREAM PUNS
I get bored with crime, and then I die. So I take a workshop: How to Find your Guardian Angel. But things go strange...
CAUTION: UNEXPECTED ANGELS
You know angels feud over regional underfunding of Divine Grace. But you don't know how low they'll go...
My friend Dawn drags me to a cultish workshop. But I fall asleep! Or is
that bad? The Financial Guru awards me $1250 for spiritual napping...
CAUTION: RIDICULOUS UNTIL...
In the park, long lines of worshipers wait to meet a guru. But I'm naked, so I hide in the reeds...
CAUTION: NUDE SUNBATHING
Hilda, founder of two monasteries, dies in one. Begu, in the other, 13 miles away,
dreams Hilda's been taken to heaven. She tells her sisters. Messengers arrive...
From Hawaii to Wyoming, I fight for beauty, always waking to find I'm someone new...
A cranky nun wants fish. Ilarya, the monastery's cook, sets out to buy one--a long walk, and unsafe after dark.
So Ilarya asks the sun to halt! She buys her fish, cooks, feeds her patient, and forgets to tell it to set...
CAUTION: PETTY, GOOFY, COMMUNITY-BAFFLING MIRACLE
Saigon, 1973. Lost in a fabric maze. I find, wearing Buddhist robes, the skeleton of a dog.
Years later I write of Buddhist monks burning themselves, and build an ominous maze...
CAUTION: SUICIDES BY FIRE
Mistress Abbot dreams if she eats a jackfish her child will be great. Next morning one swims into her waterbucket...
Jacob dreams of angels climbing to heaven. He meets God, who promises
the Holy Land to him and his tribe. Jacob uncritically accepts...
I dreamt of a better translation of Nebuchadnezzar's name, since universally accepted...
I dreamt a priest of old Nippur told me two agate pieces, long separated, formed a pair...
A priestess guarding a Thai temple in the forest has a strange problem:
her breasts rebel, escape and scurry round like hamsters
under her skin; they don't like that Buddhist restraint...
CAUTION: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION
I was in a strange house. I met Mr Hall, a preacher from Alert Bay. He said he was different now, in the
world above. I woke and told the dream. Two months later a letter came saying he died February 27...
All my life, from age three or four, I've dreamed of being a young monk named Stefan
somewhere in southern Europe. And aspects of his short life have shaped my own...
CAUTION: SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
I sympathize with visionaries whose gift is so urgent and extreme, most would call it illness...
A creepy visit to the Leather Nuns: as fierce as Beorn in The Hobbit, but less hospitable...
I made my way through a great crowd to find my husband lying dead behind velvet curtains. Two years later...
I love a Naiad who's lost her God. Tragedy strikes us. I'm devastated till I meet the aliens who explain...
Natalius dreamed that angels whipped him for joining a heretic cult, and woke to find welts on his back...
I dream the new Dalai Lama's a kind woman who gives me startling health advice
AND shows me how to fly. The next day...
Jesus's disciples kvetch that Paul, who never knew Jesus, twisted his clean simplicity into a religion...
CAUTION: JARGON, HERESY (on one side or other)
I meet two Peacock Kings bigger than human beings, who chant blessings until I wake with tears drenching my pillow...
Frederick dreams a monk writes words on the door of Wittenburg’s church
with a pen so big it pokes the Pope. The next day...
The Pope spears our Inuit captain and the Mystic, who turns solitary--a prisoner of Zen. Can I free him?
Suddhodana dreams of great upheavals; no courtier can interpret the dream.
An ascetic claims the upheaval will be for the good, then... turns into an owl?!
CAUTION: PERHAPS NOT ENTIRELY ACCURATE
In our steamy future, after the cities drown, I'm hiking through Rainbow Tunnel, when I meet a holy man...
Night. A mirror-maze of contradictory preachings. But in the secret mermaid pool, I find love.
Then... sphinx-angels war in the air! A war of riddles. Can I, a batwinged devil, make peace?
CAUTION: SEX, NUDITY, MEAN ANGELS, AND ONE HAPPY DEVIL
I dreamed a tired soldier visited an oracle or priestess,
who hummed a simple tune and provided refuge...
I'm with friends in a cafe. A robot beggar scuttles in and says I must be a saint and give, give, give.
I eject the robo-nag. But it comes back in the form of an Old Testament prophet with the same spiel!
This time it takes fists. At last I give the nagging saint the old heave-ho, yelling "AND STAY OUT!"...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALIST BLASPHEMY
In a Scythian church, a painting says:
"Little St Bridget was bound so hard that when they released her she flew"...
Mrs C. dreamed she was the ascetic preacher Savonarola, who wanted to burn all vanities.
In her audience she saw... Mrs C! So she, Savonarola, aimed her barbs at all of C's flaws...
I visit Shangri-La, the ancient Tibetan valley of refuge. Unicorns graze. We
drive around on car-sheep. Robin Hood rebels against the Priestess of Gloom.
Pilgrims in silly gauze robes arrive. Or are they just tourists? Oh, well. Toga party!
CAUTION: GAUZE ROBES, NUDE UNICORNS
A strange transforming thing appeared in the sky--a light, a sheep, a man. It told me to stop burning my head...
I’m the only one who can stop the plot to kill the Pope--but if he keeps shrinking like that, will it matter?
CAUTION: RECOVERING CATHOLIC
Silla Kristos angered Saint Walatta Petros, so she cursed him. He got sick and died. She knew she'd overdone it,
and asked the Virgin Mary to revive him. Mary grumbled, but did. While dead, Silla Kristos got wise angelic advice...
CAUTION: BRATTY SAINT, BRATTY MONK
My neurotic sister and I both lust for a girl named Sky; then I flee a gang of popes and lamas and mullahs...
I was a missionary in South Africa, staying overnight in a remote village high in the Drakensberg. A man rode up;
Six nights ago he was told in a dream to find me here in six days. He gave me a single gold coin, and left. Why?...
CAUTION: FAILURE OF IMAGINATION?
Half our religion-founders were just one guy, repeating till he got it right. Practice makes perfect!
True teachers and leaders do exist, with vision enough to make seeds (and people) sprout...
Inside a Renaissance reliquary, I see a dried-up head--but is it St. Sixtus really? Weeks later...
I dream I'm in a cafe joking with my mom's ghost. I say "If you meet a guy called St. Sixtus, tell him..."
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE
DAY: I have to read three academics who mock ancient, shamanic and modern amateur dreamwork as superstition.
DREAM: I'm learning to fly in the Temple of Dreamwork, next to a cute new colleague. NEXT DAY, I meet her...
CAUTION: APPARENT E.S.P.; DISSES ACADEMICS
I was a mermaid trying to find Count Coyote's stolen dreams, so I could marry my human girlfriend...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SEX, LESBIAN MARRIAGE, ANTI-FUNDAMENTALISM
I was shown what veils the God in us: Blood (violence), Idols (dogmatism), and the Curse of Eve (sexism)...
CAUTION: FUNDAMENTALISTS (OF ANY FAITH) WILL SEE RED
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
In a world where speech is in Mayan glyphs, comedian Tina Fey (dressed for prom night)
climbs a Tibetan peak to learn levitation. But the flying monks are scared of women...
CAUTION: COOTIES; ROWDY JESUS; MAY FLUNK THE BECHDEL TEST
My family home's invaded by ancient Egyptian architects. So
I put on my unicorn mask and eavesdrop on their plans...
A friend buys a frozen used Pope, to navigate her starship with Papal infallibility. Call me a Luddite, but..
CAUTION: SACRILEGIOUS PUN
In our cult, we lie in vats of goo till we grow wings. But we’re feared more than we knew...
CAUTION: SPECIST LYNCH MOB, NUDE IN SCHOOL, LESBIAN FEELINGS, OBSCENE CARROT
Half-mad with fear, I massacre a cult, till my gun manifests stigmata: a gory miracle.
Then I'm a cultist, resisting the Voice of God pushing all us mortals to murder in His name.
I woke up haunted, and wondered for weeks what this was about... until the Waco Massacre.
CAUTION: CREEPY VIOLENCE, CREEPY GOD, CREEPY PREDICTION
A job as the only priest on an island colony sounded perfect, only I’m the wrong religion...
CAUTION: DOGMATISTS AND DEAD BIRDS TALKING
I dreamed I was a whale swimming against a Christian ebb tide,
trying to lead humans to a cleaner spiritual current...
CAUTION: HARD ON AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY
God's my boss, but like a bratty little brother, he's Not Speaking To Me. It's slowing down our office...
CAUTION: CHRISTIANS WON'T WANT TO KNOW
Hiking, I come to a chapel where a yogi is meditating--on me. Creating me! And when he stops...
A doll sent from China breaks into tears over her exile here in Japan. I reassure her and she becomes real...