The “Wolves” Dream

(Photo from LivingWithWolves)

Its 4.37am, and I’ve just been woken up by a dream. A dream unlike others I usually have, which are either extremely bizarre ones (faces and arms coming out of the walls of long, thin corridors, and me trying to desperately to walk down them without the hands grabbing me – and that’s a small example of the weird and strange landscapes that inhabit my dream world) or those where I come face to face either other people both known and unknown or with archetypal/psychological things within (I once met my “demoniac self” in a dream, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post folks)……but this one……..this one had a sense of purity I’ve never had in a dreamscape before, and as I sat smoking a hastily assembled ciggie, I sat and pondered on it, lying in the dark as I could hear the rain and wind howling down outside, glad and thankful that I was in the warmth and not out there.  And it started all so simple as well………..

Cold, very cold, I'm lying in the depths of a snowdrift, and the temperatures are plummeting.  I'm in the middle of a large area of what seems like a forest, and in front of me about 40 odd feet away are trees, more trees and other menacing shapes I cant quite make out.  There is no shelter or houses near by, it looks like a huge expanse of forest I'm crawling alone in and the tiredness and a form of physical despair is overcoming me…….the hunger is bad and I can feel each mental movement, each physical movement I try to make becoming heavier and heavier, and I can feel my will, my strength going down the tubes.  I can feel a slight moment of anger, of rage at me and pondering on how I came to be in this position, I have no idea of how I ended up here but I know somewhere along the line I should have prepared and didn’t.  And as my self-berating becomes more and more heavier there’s movements up ahead, there are shadows crawling slowly amongst the trees, and I freeze…………a quick flash, a picture if you will of myself on my knees and looking towards the treeline which before was merely menacing but now its what's amongst the tree’s that has my eyes wide, and my mouth parted in cautious fear, long plumes of breath emanating from cold bloodless looking lips.

And then they appear…………….not all at once, one appears moving slowly towards me, and at the left and right I see others coming out of the darkness behind it, watching me, studying me, cautious and moving with slow, languid movements as if to say “we have time, no rush, no need to hurry, she’s not going anywhere”…………a wolf pack.  I can feel my head turning to the left, and then the right doing a count (my brain is numb, and it takes me ages before I can get to the point where I've assessed that there’s at least 9 of them with what I'm assuming must be the leader moving slightly ahead of the others as if leading them).  And then it hits me hard, like a smack into the my brain and my heart panics as my mind is tumbling around with the fact that this is it, the end.  I've no energy left, and I slowly let it go, I'm about to be devoured by predators, I can feel it, and somewhere amongst the tiredness, the exhaustion, and the hunger I let it go……….”This is it Alannah, this is how your show goes down” and I try to stifle a laugh, a small acerbic laugh as I realise that this is never in my wildest dreams how I envisioned the end of myself - old-age yes, heart-attack or a stroke yes, fuck it even cancer of something-or-other yes, but this? Wow, this is original, at least my ending was be a little more interesting than how most people die……………not that its giving me any comfort, nor by this point do I even care, I'm just ready to sink into it all and let it come. But it doesn’t happen like that…………

The first one whom I'm assuming is the leader comes up and I can smell its fur, a deep almost musky animalistic smell mixed with pine (?) that is strangely natural and not off-putting.  I'm confused, not just about the smell (although I'm not sure how a Wolf should smell) but also that the leader is up against me now sniffing me and moving its head around my neck area, continually sniffing as the other one’s approach towards me…………..I'm frozen with cold but I'm also frozen in a small amount of fear, but somehow not as much as I was before………cautious, I'm reacting with caution. Slowly I move my head towards the leader who has now stopped sniffing my neck area and is now nuzzling its nose upon the side of my neck, its cold and I cant help but stifle a small almost childish giggle, the sort of giggle a child has when a dog puts its wet nose into the child's face.  I don't know why, it seems somehow instinctive, but I brush my neck against the side of the wolfs head and feel warm fur brushing along my neck.  By this time the others have encircled me and start moving closer……..and closer, and I feel the fear slipping away, something else has slowly pushed the fear aside and I can feel something sliding into its place, a closeness, a warmth, an emotional letting go………something slips aside and inside I can feel some sort of “shift” aligning into place.  No explanation comes forth in my head but I recognise the fact that I’m letting it happen, no intellectual dissections are taking place as I let this take over, and my mind is shifted away from this focus inside as the I feel bodies closing around mine, hugging me in, encircling me and settling its self comfortably.  The other wolves have snuggled into me, and a few are adjusting their positions to become more comfortable, one (a large male one, a real dominant one – but no fear just a recognition of its power of silent strength, a power that has no need to show off just a quietude of robustness mixed with a potent beauty and virtue) has laid his head alongside the back of my neck and I rub my neck against him gently.  In front of me, one of the others has laid her head against my thigh and is looking up at me, pondering, watching, her eyes bright as she studies me as if if watching closely to see how I'm adjusting to this turn of events.  I bow my head down and kiss her gently on the head almost reverently, and she snuggles closer into my thigh, a small nudge in my back from the other wolf behind me as if to say “Hey, give me your neck back”, and I straighten up as his head nudges me gently in the neck and I can feel him snuggling into the nape of my neck……..the others have wrapped themselves around me, the entire wolf pack now has surrounded me completely and all I can feel is a warmth, not just a physical warmth but another warmth, a belonging, as if something has slipped into place and I cant explain what…………there’s a weird merging taking place, a merging that I'm slowly allowing to happen, as I allow myself to become them and in turn they’re becoming me…………..its as if instead of one human surrounded by a gang of wolves we have all became one mass…………instinct, deep instinct has become stronger, my intellect feels slightly quietened  and physically I can feel strength and fortitude flowing through me but with a wildness, a strong deep wildness inside me that feels like instead of being separated from nature by the human has instead become immersed with it so completely I begin to lose sight of what it was to have even been enmeshed in human affairs, such silly affairs of the material world, of stupendously human worries - it all flows away and a strange questioning begins within me.  So warm, so warm, I feel guttural sounds moaning from my throat (my throats has choked up and I'm struggling to remember language, the human language, but its ok, they will understand me nonetheless, a growl, a wild almost sensual growl is emanating from my throat) and I ask “Has it always been this way?”…………..

It’s dark, and I’d woken up to recognise the shape of the doorway, and the beds warmth………..an instantaneous “no!” burnt through my mind, and I  turned over quickly to see what time it is.  By this time Id slowly awakened and my hand (automatically I might add) reached out for my cigarettes on the bedside table and the light got switched on…………..and all I was left with was a feeling and a small hopeful pleading in my head “Please, don’t let that be the last time I have that dream”.

I know nothing about the archetypes or even much of the symbology of wolves except for some thing's I find admirable in them like the ability to either strike out on their own or to hang around in a pack and their loyalty to pack members, and that on the whole they’ve always struck me as very noble creatures, but wolves have never been a particularly big part of my psychological explorations either occult/ritual wise or anything else.  Whilst exploring psychological symbols and archetypes within occult based forms of self-exploration its always predominantly humanistic figures and none so much say the animal world (although I'm well aware of the say the Owl symbology of Lilith, the serpent of knowledge or the goat headed figure of the gnostic Baphomet) but animals have never particularly played a huge part in these self-explorations so I was surprised that this dream should have manifested to be honest.  But all in all I do feel much the richer for it somehow…………