Vivid dreams in which a full-formed mythology springs out of your subconscious - ever had them?

[Ogre]

First of all, I know nobody cares about dreams. Bear with me here.

I’ve written about this before, and a few people have responded. Sampiro in particular has shared one of his extremely compelling nightmares.

I’m talking about a very particular class of nightmare that I’ve always been a “victim” of. They happen once or twice a year, and they differ from my usual dreams in a few respects:

1. They are extremely vivid in terms of color. I wake up remembering entire landscapes and scenes in an almost cinematic manner.

2. They are usually extremely dark and outre. They deal with demons, ghosts, dark magic, hell, murder, etc.

3. Many of them feature a totally novel mythology or system of magic that springs completely full-formed out of my subconscious. This is not a mythology that is shared between dreams. Each one seems to have a unique system. It’s often quite detailed, and even after I awake, it’s internally consistent.

4. They are disturbing, but I never find them scary. In fact, I find them immensely interesting and would like to experience more of them.

So, I had one last night. It’s been a long time since I had one. I’ve missed 'em.

This one was not one in which an entire mythology sprang into being (if this thread garners any interest at all, I’ll come back and rehash one of those), but it shared all of the other traits: vivid, cinematic, dark theme, disturbing.

I was meeting a friend of mine at a music festival. It was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere rural Alabama. We got there and were having a good time, but eventually, it started to get tiresome. It was hot and muddy, people were everywhere. I couldn’t get to the restroom because of the lines, fights were breaking out. No fun.

So I found my buddy, gave my apologies, and bowed out. I got in my car to leave, and traffic was awful, as these things tend to be.

Eventually, I got far enough away that the traffic loosened up a bit, and I came to a 4-way stop. To my left is a pick-up truck that had stopped before me, and as I pulled up to the sign, it started across the intersection. Suddenly, it swerved off to its left, and instead of crossing, it crashed headlong into a ravine off the side of the road.

In a panic, I crossed the road to see if I could help. The ravine was more like a narrow, rock-lined defile. Sort of a narrow canyon. To my horror, I saw that the truck was not alone, but that the canyon had several vehicles in it, all nose-down, and all occupied.

I was looking down on a series of rear windows, each with people scrabbling at them and pawing at them, trying to get out, all about 20 feet below me.

“Are you OK? How many of you are there?”, I yelled.

“There are ten of us! Help!”

About that time, I noticed that the canyon was actually on someone’s private property, and the land-owner was coming down from the nearby house to investigate.

“Help me,” I said, “There are people trapped down there!”

We walked over to the edge and looked down together. There was nothing there. Just a ravine with a little stream way down in the bottom.

The property owner shook his head and walked away, muttering, no doubt, about kids these days.

I’m very confused, but I walked back to the ravine and peered in. Once again, it was lined with crashed vehicles. Occupied crashed vehicles. Desperate faces looked out of blood-smeared windows. Many suffering voices were moaning and screaming.

“Help!”

I had to do something.

“I’ll go get help!”

Suddenly, it was completely silent. No voices, no moaning. All of the occupants were staring at me, making eye contact, their heads all crowded next to each other in the rear windows.

“No,” said a new voice. It was a voice of reason. A persuading voice. It sounded rational, but there was something menacing about it.

“No. Don’t go get help. Come down here. Come to us and help.”

Then I saw who was speaking. Crawling out of a side window came an infant. It seemed to be an infant at first, anyway. But then it stretched and became…attenuated. Pale and yellowish and corpselike, and naked, it looked into my eyes and tried to look innocent.

It was a ghastly parody of innocence. Its mouth kept changing shape. At one moment, it was impossibly large and toothless. At the next, it was like a real baby’s mouth, except that it was lined with black teeth. Its eyes were huge and blank, with no pupils or iris. Just a pale, custardy yellow.

“Come down. Come to us.” It had the voice of an adult.

I backed away from the edge and ran for my car. I drove off, trying to forget, but I kept seeing that awful “baby” everywhere - in my side-view mirrors, on the sidewalk, on billboards, in family photos.

This is where I woke up. Ick. Fairly nasty, but interesting.

How about you?

[Wakinyan]

I’ve been interested in dreams my whole life and been writing them down for twenty years now (about 1500 at this point). From time to time there are dreams like the one you share (when I was younger I used to think of them as “adventure dreams” – long dreams with a more or less easy to follow story in its own little universe so to speak); for people who remembers his/her dreams I don’t think it’s unusual at all, judging not only from my own experience bu from the literature and internet forums I’ve read too.

[Ogre]

I know. I was hoping to get some folks to post some of their coherent, interesting ones.

But nobody likes to talk about dreams.

[Balance]

@Ogre

But nobody likes to talk about dreams.

In MPSIMS? Are you serious?

I posted one of my more linear dreams in a “Surreal Dreams” thread quite a while back. (Actually, I think I’ve posted that one more than once. It was quite vivid.)

As to mythologies…oh, yes. I have dreamt of worlds where gods war and stones sing. Where detectives stalk vampires and dragons lie sleepless in mazes of memory. Where dead madmen rave and mere ink on paper can twist the world to their whim.

[gallows_fodder]

I don’t know if this is quite what you’re looking for, but I often have dreams in which I “remember” things that never happened, or places I’ve never been to, or people I’ve never met. It seems like there’s pre-existing knowledge of another world that my dream is tapping into. Even little detail in the scheme of the dream, like I’ll dream about a city and at one point I’ll remember that around the corner is the house of a good friend of mine and the last time I visited her we did such and such a thing, and then continue with the rest of the dream unrelated to that…only when I wake up, I know that that city doesn’t exist, that friend doesn’t exist, I’ve never dreamt about that location before, etc. Where does that memory come from, I wonder? (More realistically, I suspect that my brain is going through the same kind of activity responsible for deja vu – the parts of the brain associated with memory are activating and creating the sensation of something being remembered. But that’s not nearly as fun.)
Here’s one particularly vivid example that I wrote down twelve(!) years ago and saved:

It starts in a room lined with bunk beds. There are young women in long white nightgowns in the beds, and I am their sister. They are all sick and/or dead and I have to nurse the sick ones and lay the dead ones out in their beds to prepare for their funerals.

The next thing I know, I’m walking down this hallway in what reminds me of a French palace. There are tapestries and gilded mirrors and wood paneling on all the walls. As I pass one of the mirrors, I see I am a very small young woman with a face that is not my own, and I’m in a long black dress that reminds me of an antique nun’s habit. I’m walking down the hall, looking into the open rooms, and I look into one room that resembles a locker room or a large bathroom. I remember that many years ago dozens of children were gassed to death in there and that the room was especially designed for that purpose…it has no ventilation. I continue walking until I reach a large room that is at the end of the corridor.

As I go into the room, I see that at the right is an amphitheater-type thing. (The room’s proportions are all out of whack.) The rest of the room is lined with gold curtains, and there are guards at intervals along the walls. There is a Mass going on in the amphitheater, but instead of the altar being above the congregation, the people are seated in the amphitheater rows and the altar is at the bottom. Three priests are officiating, and the two on each ends are in black robes and the one in the middle is in gold. He is a bishop.

I suddenly feel off-balance, and I stumble into the corner of the room and start saying Hail Marys. I do this for a while, and then I go and sit among the congregation. The Mass is in a different form than the usual, and at the end of the service, people start crossing themselves. But they do it very strangely…with both hands, and they keep standing up and sitting down over and over while they’re crossing themselves. I don’t know how to do this, so I look at the bishop for guidance.

I start leaving the room, and I get the feeling that many wealthy young women are following me. I suddenly become terrified – they can’t see me here! So I start running down the hallway from which I came, only now all the doors to the rooms are shut. I pull at all the doorknobs frantically, trying to find a door that’s unlocked so I can go and hide in the room.

I come upon a room that is lined with gold curtains, and I remember that behind the curtains is a secret doorway into another room. I enter that room and I find that it is a luxurious bedroom. I see a hallway branching off from this bedroom and remember that the hallway leads to a crown jewelry exhibit. I can hear footsteps behind me, and I dive under a small couch to hide. From my position, I can see into a large mirror, and I see the reflection of a maid running away. I realize that she has seen me and is going to tell someone that she’s found me.

Within seconds, the bishop appears. It is his bedroom. He tells me to stand up, and I do, knocking over the couch in the process. He walks over to the bed and tells me to come to him. He is very old and bald. He reminds me of a walrus. There are deep folds in his cheeks and jowls. His eyes are black and have dark shadows underneath them. I don’t want to come to him but he insists. I moan, “noooo,” but I walk over to the bed anyway.

I pick up one of the pillows and lightly touch it to his face. When I take the pillow away, I see that his face is different somehow. I realize he is in disguise. I touch the pillow to his face again, and when I take it away he has been transformed. Now he is a young man, with black hair and a black goatee, and he is dressed all in black. His eyes are the same, though.

At this point I wake up.

Needless to say, I had never dreamed of that palace before, so the memories of the gas chamber or the hidden rooms were not real memories. But they felt very real in the dream, like I was remembering something from a history lesson, or had visited the palace as a child.

[Kolga]

I don’t know if this fits your definition of mythology (if that mythology has to have demons or supernatural/religious stuff in it), but I once had a dream that subjectively lasted for years.

In it, I experienced the zombie apocalypse, complete with news coverage, the story of why it was happening, the collapse of civilization, the desperate hiding and surviving during the downfall (I was sometimes alone, sometimes with a group of fellow survivors, sometimes those survivors would all perish and I would be the only one left and would hook up with another group). Eventually, I met up with a large enough group of people that we were able to create a safe zone and begin to somewhat rebuild.

I woke up when we had started to plant the gardens that would be the first fresh food since the apocalypse started.

[kimera]

I have these often. When I get better at writing, I hope to turn them into books.

In one, I was a male warrior in a medieval setting. The son of a nobleman, I lead a rebellion against my former kingdom ever since the priests had killed my king and his son. I had barely managed to escape the initial purge of the monarchy’s supporters and had a very ragtag band of supporters, although we grew by the day. Most people secretly supported us, but the priests were powerful and controlled magic.

On one of our night missions we were ambushed and I was shot in the leg (I can feel pain and read in dreams, oddly enough). Unable to escape, I couldn’t avoid capture. Believing that I wasn’t the head of the rebel organization (I was young, in my early 20s), my captors decided to torture me for information. As they strung me up to whip me, I heard a familiar voice. I glanced over my shoulder to see the love of my life, a priest in training, standing next to the head priest. I had thought him killed during the purge and I’ll never forgot the mix of joy and pain I felt then. I was delighted to see that he lived, but horrified to see that he’d joined (apparently) the enemy. I’d always been madly in love with him, but never knew if he’d felt the same (and he couldn’t have given in, as those given in training to be priests weren’t permitted any type of sexual contact). When I looked at him, I had no idea what he felt for me, if anything at all.

[zoid]

Yep - in fact I have a dream world with a mythology that traces back to the beggining of the (well, my dream) universe. I visit it about 2-3 times a week and I’m often suprised to see what’s changed while I’ve been away.

[Larry_Mudd]

Yeah, I suppose so. Maybe not entirely original, but as complex ideas or digested interpretation of stuff that’s rattling around in the unconscious. (Probably a natural limitation of idea.)

Anyway, I died in a dream - I will omit all the craziness before that point although it was fairly epic. All was blackness, but eventually I couldn’t help noticing that consciousness persisted. I had no doubt that I had died, and was partly frightened and partly intrigued. Very slowly, I started to be aware that I had some dim perceptions.

The sound of water dripping and trickling, very gently. In dimness, forms which I eventually sussed out were vaguely human - but not flesh, Different coloured energy, but looking a lot like ice. I was prone, immobile, not able to see any of my “body” (which was not my body, but had human form.)

I was on some sort of terraced area, it seemed sort of crystalline. The dripping and trickling was liquid slowly dripping down the steps, and its source was other “bodies” like mine. There were only a few in my range of “vision,” but I had the impression the space I was in was vast, and that that there were many many beings in the same situation.

Looking closely at the one closest to me, I observed that they were all made up of variously coloured immiscible liquids in a solid state, some of which were slowly melting and running in little rivulets down the terraced surface. Others were growing, perfectly still - like crystals.

I came to realize (in the context of the dream, naturally) that this was some sort of other plane, a remote place where our consciousness literally resided, and was somehow simultaneously a reflection of and projected into the physical world.

I could make out that the different colours all had complex and self-evident significance. On the crudest level, they were an emotional/intellectual spectrum - red was anger, blue was love, etc - and they had varying intensity and specular qualities which added nuanced meaning which was immediately apparent. You could see at a glance what kind of person had developed and make inferences about they must be like walking around on the earth.

My interest was held for a long time looking at these forms and somehow intuitively decoding them, and it seemed important to me to understand as much as possible while I could, because I understood that I was already beginning to dissolve, and I know that slowly I would lose the ability to see and comprehend. The most striking of the colours was rare, a warm, radiant yellow - and I knew that this was a tangible form of what people generally call divinity. But I was particularly attracted to one particular colour - it was a brilliant green, luminous and shimmering. It was the most desirable colour - it had the strong influence of “divinity.” but it was tempered with that gorgeous aqua blue of love. If was compassion, mercy – wisdom. (I am well aware how trite this sounds, please forgive me for that. It’s just my dream.)

Anyway, I remember trying to focus on that green, and the feeling of revelation: “Oh, it’s wisdom!” Just like that. I felt like some veil had been lifted at and for the first time I could see everything that was underlying ordinary reality - and I felt that it was vitally important to understand as much as I could - because my crystal body was still growing and changing, even in its dissolution. I felt a strong drive to understand everything I could, both about this strange place I was in and how it worked, and also about my own form and what had contributed to the state that it was in at the moment of my death.

While I still had my perception and reason, I had to do my best to arrange things in my mind in order to transform my actual being into that green - and I had a time limit - my body was already dripping away from me. "Why is this part of me a sick looking, dark and mottled purple? Oh, it’s my resentment of my girlfriend for her legitimate complaints about my shortcomings! How stupid! Oh, it’s getting better - and it feels so good. God, this is almost the same colour - only it’s similar feelings I have about my mother. That’s weird, isn’t it? Better now, though. What’s this garish orange? Am I really that self-righteous about… " …and on like that for I don’t know how long. Hurry, hurry, make it green before it slips away and returns to the earth in its inferior state.

Then, the thought that came that startled me into wakefulness: “This is described in the Emerald Tablet!”

I have never had a dream that affected me quite like that dream - it was so surreal. I woke up and was flummoxed. “What the hell was that?” Well outside of the sort of stuff that usually rattles around in my head, so tangible, so complexly organized and self-consistent. It seems strange to say about something so clearly surreal, but it felt real.

The shock of connecting it with the Emerald Tablet was so startling, and the strange thing was that when I looked at it again it seemed to make sense in that context. I was familiar with the Emerald Tablet (of course) but I was looking at it totally rationally, as a document of some sort of allegory for a literally chemical process. (Yes, that’s probably just as wacky as my woo-woo dream’s suggested interpretation. Did I mention that at the time my hobby-horse was combining my crude knowledge of organic chemistry and growing interest in ancient alchemical scribbling to try to reverse-engineer the psychoactive substances I guessed that some of them might describe? This is the context of my dream, which probably makes all sorts of sense.)

The weird thing was what a long dream it was, and how in hindsight it the Emerald Tablet made much more sense than it did when I was trying (diligently) to shoehorn it into an allegory of chemical processes - and yet the only time that I consciously thought of it was in that last flash. How can something that springs from your own head startle you so much that you jump once you realize what it is?

Many, many years later and I still sometimes use the metaphor of this dream when I am contemplating my own self-improvement. (It’s not easy being green.)

I should also mention, as it may not be entirely clear: The above is the dream of a lifelong atheist.

[Gatopescado]

All the time. I often wake up, shaken, after a especially disturbing one (dream)and think I should write a screenplay. Had one just the other night about a small-town preacher vs. school teacher that didn’t go where you thought it might.

I have* a lot *of dreams about airplane crashes, ships sinking and train wrecks. Go figure!

Then I cook some bacon, eat, watch a little news.

Dream forgotten, for the most part. Can only remember the worst for a day or two.

I drink too much beer now and then.

[Alice_The_Goon]

I dreamed that my cats doubled as high-heeled shoes- there was a flap at the back of the head to slip your feet into. At first it was awesome, but after a while they’d just run when I went to put them on, and I ended up frustrated.

No mythology- sorry.

[pulykamell]

@gallows_fodder

I don’t know if this is quite what you’re looking for, but I often have dreams in which I “remember” things that never happened, or places I’ve never been to, or people I’ve never met.

Same here. I have “alternate life timeline” dreams. There’s several of these in my dreams, but the most common one is one that involves me going to grad school after moving back to the US instead of continuing to pursue photography. (The other common alternate timeline is one in which I remain an expat.) There’s a whole history that exists only in dreamworld, with friends that don’t exist in real life, places that don’t quite exist in reality (but are loose amalgamations and interpretations of real places) and that seem to retain continuity across dreams that are spaced months apart. When I’m in the dream, I know exactly where I am, what my history is, the geography of my surroundings, even though they don’t correspond to anything in real life. It’s really odd.

[Yumblie]

One dream I had I only remember bits and pieces of, but one part of its mythology would make an interesting concept for a fictional universe.

In this universe, when someone dies, their soul exits the body. Almost immediately, one or more grim reaper type creatures (floating rags that somehow carry a scythe) will “collect” the soul and take them to the afterlife. Usually the soul is so petrified that they don’t attempt to flee and are easily detained, but every once in a while one escapes and is continually hunted by these reapers. The souls and reapers are usually invisible to living people, but every so often one can catch fleeting glimpses of them, hence the inspiration for the image of the grim reaper.

In my dream, a friend of mine apparently was mistaken for dead, or for some other reason had these reapers after her, even though I apparently knew that it was a mistake. Since she wasn’t an incorporeal spirit but still a living person, the way the reapers tried to get her was to create a portal to the neitherworld. The portals were unstable though, and could close up if anything corporeal passed through it. So with some quick thinking, I threw an apple into the portal, which closed it up.

Shortly afterward, a limo pulled up. If the reapers were like cops, in the limo was the chief of police. Unexpectedly, the chief of the reapers was a middle aged blond woman in a pink business suit. She berated us for messing things up and causing this whole bureaucratic nightmare, then drove away.

[Balance]

After some thought, I’ve picked one to share. I’ve mentioned it in passing before, but never in detail.

It was dark and quiet, and I was empty. As always. I had seen and heard nothing since the Immortals changed me, drifting in a dream of peace. Now, I came alert. It must mean that the time had come to fulfill my purpose: to ensure that there was not another like me.

As I lay waiting, I remembered what the Second had said when he drew me from the river:
“Has it come to this? Children fight our battles now? He was only a boy!”
“And yet, a Champion, for lack of any other.” replied the First. “He has advanced our cause, and saved his people.”
“So much life cut short. Can we not…”
“No. If we gave back his life, another Champion would rise to face him, and another, until he fell, and all that he fought for would die with him.”

I did not understand then. I was only relieved to be free of pain. When the sorcerer fell, the broken power of his magic had burned us both, but I was whole again. Later, as the other Immortals gathered to argue over me, I learned in snatches of the Balance, which drew champions from Good and Evil alike, each holding the other forever in check. For every light, there is a shadow, and a mortal caught between them. I came to understand that this was why the Immortals had left the world; so long as they remained to battle Evil, equally powerful champions of Evil would rise against them, each ravaging the land before being defeated.

So they withdrew, subtly aiding and guiding lesser champions instead. Always they encouraged their charges to bind, rather than slay. No new champion would rise to replace an evil that was imprisoned, but not destroyed. Thus, the conflict diminished. In time, they hoped, only the evil in the hearts of mankind would remain free, and mortals could deal with that as they saw fit.

So it was: I could never again be what I had been. Instead, they offered me a new life. Should the Balance call another child to become a champion of Good, they would send me to be the child’s protector.

Suddenly, I felt breath rasping in lungs not my own, and saw a reeling glimpse of forest as someone ran. My charge was drawing near. The vision abruptly locked on the mouth of a cave: Shelter. A chance to hide and think. What…?

I saw myself, as I had become. A suit of silvery armor, just the size for the child whose eyes I shared, and a gleaming blade. A trembling hand reached out to touch me.

“Put me on,” I said, “and we will fight together.”

The whole history of that world was there in the flashback, in the form of a child’s understanding of legendary wars and heroes whose like had never been seen since. I knew, dream-fashion, the Immortals’ long-term plan, because they had already explained it to dream-me. I’m still not clear on why the First and Second were the First and Second. They had names, but I didn’t know them. First wasn’t exactly in charge; it was more of a “first among equals” thing. Second was the only one to speak to me after the flashback–he sometimes gave warnings or advice.

I have had other dreams in that setting since, each time as a different kind of armor being found by a different champion, and each time helping them trap the evil they were fighting, rather than kill it. (In the first dream, the boy who found the armor lured his demon into the cave and trapped it in a cave-in.)

[Wakinyan]

@Ogre

I know. I was hoping to get some folks to post some of their coherent, interesting ones.

I took the question “ever had them?” perhaps too literally (I think, English is not my first language) as in: “Every had a nightmare?” “Yes, and I think it is quite common too.” – Is this a non sequitur, by the way?

[Bites_When_Provoked]

Indeed! I had a fascinating dream wherein I was given Revelation… best part was that in it, I kept my own thoughts throughout.

I distinctly remember thinking (during the dream) with some irritation that if they wanted me to disseminate all this wisdom they really should have been smart enough to give me the short version on some stone tablets or something - or at the very least provided me a paper and pencil to write some of it down. In fact, I spent so much time being irked about the lack of recording implements and looking around for somethng to write on, that I missed a bit of the story.