Arcane rituals

This dream, one of the darkest I can recall having, came on the night of a full moon, and the midst of a 10yr relationship dissolving into nothing.

Starting from when I can remember, I was in the back room of what appeared to be some kind of shop.  It was night time and I was with 2 other people.  We were there to conduct a ritual to summon an entity for protection, but I don't know why.  The ritual had 3 stages, and I appeared to be the only one doing all the work (the others stood around talking and getting in the way).

For the first stage, I had to use a small brush to paint a symbol on a panel on the wall in front of me with some unknown translucent substance.  As I did this, I could hear tribal drumming coming from inside the main area of the shop.  For the second part, I had to use a stopwatch and count exactly one minute before continuing with part 3, which involved painting another symbol on the same panel.

As I was trying to use the stopwatch, one of the people with me kept on interrupting and ended up derailing my efforts, so I had to start the timer again.  Unfortunately, as I was doing this, I became aware of the fact that there was only a single minute window in which to perform the stopwatch part and I had now missed it, which meant the ritual could not be completed.  As a result, the entity we intended to summon for protection ended up attacking us.

I saw a formless, shadowy creature swiftly emerge from the shop and grabbed one of the people with me before pulling him back into the shop area.  I panicked as I realised we were in serious trouble, and as I prepared to leave, I found I was suddenly naked.  I tried to run through the shop past the entity and my now consumed companion (as there was only one door) but ran back to grab my clothes.  I grabbed them and made a start for the door before I suddenly woke up.  I don't know what happened to the last guy.

As I drifted back off to sleep, the dream continued, only this time I was on a street corner with about 4 women who were talking to me about characters in a story I'm writing in real life, which suggests I'd somehow managed to escape the shop before.  One of the women was standing by an alcove and her shadow was projected onto the wall behind her from the streetlights.  However, as she went to move, her shadow remained.  The shadow then walked over to me and everything quickly went black.  I then found myself in what looked like a small walk-in closet and was sitting on the ground.  There were some other people there with me and they were talking but I can't remember what they said.  I then heard some creepy chanting which immediately disturbed me.

I tend to have a measure of lucidity in my dreams and have often escaped undesirable situations by simply taking off and flying away, and this is what I attempted to do here as I sensed something malevolent was near.  I shot up towards the ceiling but couldn't go any further.  I heard a snap then woke up again.

As I lay in my bed, I felt as if I was being dragged back into the dream, so I had to fight to keep myself awake, knowing that if I 'd returned to the dream, the outcome would not have been good.  As I lay on that threshold between waking and dreaming, I remember seeing luminous geometric patterns forming on the ceiling, something I often see when I abruptly wake from a dream.

Recurring dream: The presence

For the last year or so, I've had a theme that has recurred in a number of my dreams.

In these dreams, I might be in someone's house, in a building (say a hotel or office) and there is an area of that building where I just don't go.  At some point in the dream, I pass the area but don't enter it, feeling an intense sense of dread.  In this no-go area, I perceive some kind of "presence", as though it were haunted.

In this dream, I was staying at a house on an unknown street in an unknown town.  I had popped out and was walking along the street and it was sunny.  For some reason, there was some confusion about where I needed to go, so I headed back to where I came from, but ended up in what seemed to be a block of flats and started wandering around.  I passed a staircase that leads up to the second floor and felt that presence I mentioned earlier, and just continued walking away.

However, this time, something told me not to run from the presence but to confront it, so I went back to the staircase and steeled myself.  I summoned the courage and climbed the stairs, determined to face whatever this thing was.  In spite of my brave intentions, as I made my ascent, an invisible force lifted me off the ground and sent me crashing back down the stairs again, and I immediately woke up.

And I know what this dream signifies.

From reading some of my earlier entries, you may be aware that I have been in a relationship with a woman for the last 10 years.  We were engaged, broke up for a while and got back together.  Things appeared to be on track for a number of years but have recently veered off for reasons I won't go into here.  Anyway, for some time, there has been something of an elephant in the room of our relationship borne of an unfulfilled, and wholly unrealistic desire.  I, therefore, dread when the topic is approached and have previously tried to deflect it or calmly steer the discussion away though it hasn't been easy, and it has been slowly earing away at our relationship.  The day before this dream, I decided to confront this issue head-on and say what was really on my mind.  As expected, this has pretty much dissolved the relationship, but it's been a long time coming and needed to happen.  The presence symbolised this growing tension and me walking up those stairs to confront it mirrored my actions in the real world.  What awaits me on the other side of this remains to be seen, but things can only get better from here on in.