Midnight Sun, Agartha and a beheading - initiatic dream.
Excerpt from dream diary, circa 1993.
I am climbing an analog of Table Mountain, I get to the summit where in the nuts 'n bolts world would usually be the cableway station, instead there is a vibrant market with stalls with all sorts of wonders, Tibetan prayer flags streaming bright in the white snowed under landscape. I approach a table and there's an elderly monk in a yellow robe, he asks me to pick some of his wares at random, to feel my way around. I choose a crystal bulb that is fluted at both ends, some copper wires, a diamond shaped piece of quartz, some copper tubes that terminate in tridents. I tell him I have no idea what any of this is for, he winks, grins and replies that I will figure it out.
Scene changes and I am down in the City behind an old mansion, the city as it would've been hundreds of years in the past. I am dressed in black tactical gear, I have a companion with me and he is also dressed in a stealthy vanta black. I see a wall some 12 feet away, old sandstone blocks standing on a bright green lawn, we approach and examine the wall, I find a loose block and pull on it and the wall drops into the earth revealing a chasm. My mysterious companion turns to me and says it is time to use "the lamp", quickly now as the sun is about to set. I take the parts I had acquired out of a bag and assemble them: the wires go through the diamond shaped quartz and wrap around it, then that goes in the crystal bulb, now screw in in the copper tubes and run the wires to the tridents. I hold it up to the sun then to my head intoning: "I" (eeeeee), repeat at heart: "A" (ahhhhhhhhh) then naval:"O" (oooohhh). Back to heart and intone three Ahs, each time a golden orb get's stronger until it expands around my entire sensorium. "Now the lamp" - I focus the light into the diamond quartz and twist the copper tridents in opposite directions and the quartz "lamp" is now lit with this golden glow. My companion says we need this where we will be going..
We shimmy down the chasm and alight on a worn and winding path that goes deeper still until we come to small staircase carved out of stone, but to get to it we must pass a gatekeeper, my shadow turns to me and puts a finger to his lips making the sign of silence, the gatekeeper is a minotaur trapped in stone next to the stairs - I stop and gaze at it - just it's head is visible, it is alive and attempting to wrench itself out of the stone, we carefully pass and ascend the small stairs and behold an incredible sight - a massive subterranean city full of crystal spires and an emerald river winding through it, there is a green sun lighting everything at the zenith of a huge vaulted dome, truly spectacular. We move further up a corridor and my companion is gone, I am standing among pillars surrounding a large Temenos, in the center there is a King, he is standing up with a golden crown on his head, I start to approach and I see his head struck from his body by an invisible sword, the head and crown disappear and at the feet of the King there lays a hand sized shining green emerald. I walk up to the headless corpse and put the emerald in my bag.
Dream ends.
Notes:
I had zero familiarity with Tibetan magical tools, I had never seen one before. The device I used resembled a Vajra (obvious now).
I had been doing the Middle Pillar exercise and variations on it for some time, a favorite go to was just focusing on 3 points with the IAO formula.
I had no familiarity with beheadings (except from sharks as threshold guardians and the God Makara) and any of the "Headless One" material.
Rich symbolisms here for Anabasis and Katabasis and this dream (and what followed) occurred when I started properly withdrawing external projections and "going in". It marked a potent entry point - the Lapis Angularis.