Hey Trennie, here's another dream for your collection. :)

I was in a very large, ornate mansion with some of my friends. Part of the mansion was a public restaurant, and the rest of it was where we lived. The mansion also was haunted by some extremely malevolent spirits. (It was like in that movie with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, I think it was called The Haunting) The situation with the ghosts was growing very dangerous, so we decided that we needed to do a ritual to banish them to the underworld. For some reason that wasn't explained in the dream, I was the only one that could properly do this ritual. I was very afraid of the ghosts and unsure about my abilities and just didn't want to do it. I thought that another one of my friends should do it because she was older and more experienced. She told me how to do the ritual but she insisted that I was the only one who could do it. So we made all the preparations and I did the ceremony, but the whole time I was thinking to myself that I wasn't good enough and that I was too scared of what might happen. I was so nervous that at one point the sleeve of my robe brushed up against the candles and I almost caught on fire. There were all sorts of cool dream special effects in this part, basically I had a bunch of candles lit in front of the fireplace and I was using the light from the flames to "catch" the ghosts and then I would send them up the chimney.

Well, the ritual did work, sort of. If I had done the ceremony with the full force of my power the banishing would have been permanent, but since I had all of those self-doubts in my mind while doing the ritual the banishing was only temporary. The candles were supposed to stay lit while I was catching the ghosts but instead each time I sent a ghost up the chimney it put out a candle. By the time I banished all the ghosts all the candles were out, and there wasn't any of the magic light left to block them from coming back down the chimney again. I was supposed to have just used the candles as a focus for my power, but since I doubted in myself I drew too much energy from the candles and they couldn't stay lit.

The evil ghosts were gone for a while but we knew that they would be back and we would have to do the banishing again. We also knew that each time the ghosts came back it would be harder to send them away again. Some of the candles had been destroyed in the ceremony, and as long as I kept doubting myself more candles would be destroyed each time until we finally got to a point where there were more ghosts than candles to catch them with. At that point there would be no way to permanently banish them and they would take over. If I could learn how to use my power instead of relying on the candle's power then it wouldn't matter how many candles we had and we would be safe.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

Answers

Oh My gosh Sherri , Thank you! I loved it! I'm printing it out and reading it later, where I can linger with it. I have a hard time curling up with the computer! All good stroies get printed out. this is just too good! Alot of messages! alot happening! And here is something wild. When I read the first paragraph of your dream, the dream that I had last night, came back to me. They seem somehow related.

I was shipwreaked on some large island, I was a student who was studying to become a Dr.(Me!?) Yes, it was me, a different me. But there had been some big tragedy and the leader was wounded and needed a Dr. I was the closest thing to a Dr. around so they were taking me up like into an airplane to help this leader guy, I was looking back over my shoulder at myself, as I walked through the doorway. I was very unsure of myself and wondering if maybe there wasn't someone more qualitfied around.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

Sherri, your dream story made me cry, it's so beautiful, it should be embossed with Gold, as it seems from heaven.

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

Wow, cool dream Sherri. So much symbolism and power!!

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2001

It's funny how your mind can take the day's events and weave them into your dreams. When I went to bed the night that I had this dream I was very upset with my friend Oz. I was mad at him because I thought that he had committed our Grove to do the Opening Ritual for Pagan Pride Day next month without asking any of the rest of us first. Our group is still very small and we've been working together for less than a year so I know that none of us would have felt comfortable doing a public ritual. Thankfully it just turned out to be a miscommunication between him and the local PPD co-ordinator.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001