Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Secret History of My Russians


I find myself quite frequently traveling and teaching in Russia in my dreams. I have yet to teach Active Dreaming in Russia, but perhaps the day is coming nearer, since I am teaching nearby, in the Baltic Republics, and three of my books on dreaming have now been published in the Russian language.

Then there is the latest riff of dream and synchronicity, playing out this week. Here's a summary of events so far:

1
The night before last (Jan 18-19) I dreamed that a charming and elegant Russian man invited me to give a very important lecture in Russia. His initials - or those of the sponsor organization - were "DEH".

2
Yesterday I chatted about this with a Russian friend in New York City. I remarked to her that with all my Russian dreams perhaps I should study Russian. She sent me some website links and I spent half an hour last night trying to master the Cyrillic alphabet.

3.
Also last night, I continued my depth research into Tolkien's dream life and his conviction that dreaming is the key to time travel (he was correct). I had occasion to reflect that, first and last, Tolkien was a philologist with an astounding command of ancient languages and those of his own invention. I noted that at one point he added Russian to his languages.

4
Just now I received a long and charming email letter from a professor of philology in Moscow. He has written three books in Russian on dreams in Russian literature and folklore. He wrote to me because he has just finished reading the Russian edition of The Secret History of Dreaming, of which he spoke with high appreciation. His email address is in Cyrillic. The first three letters are

Д.Не

or "DHE". Compare with "DEH" in my dream. Of course, I know now that the Cyrillic H translates as the letter N in English. But pretty darn close...

Jan 21 Postscript: Baltic dreaming
At my Dream Gates blog, I just posted an account of my experience of leading Active Dreaming workshops in Lithuania, and the deep cultural soul recovery that became available to us in these groups. You can read that article here and if you are not familiar with my Dream Gates blog, you may want to add it to your RSS feed.

The book jacket is from the Russian edition of The Secret History of Dreaming, published by Ves.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes. This has been happening to me too lately- with Russia. I picked up an unedited copy of a book called "Ghost Dance" by Susan Price months ago... and until a few days ago, it'd been sitting on my shelf unread.

It takes place in Russia, and begins with a young witch who's apprenticed to a shaman in the Northlands. These Northlands are in danger of being logged by the czar, and the reindeer people are looking for a shaman to help. The apprentice appears to hunters on skis and leads them to the dying shaman's hut in the woods. The hunters hesitate before entering. They had heard tales of Baba Yaga, and inspected the hut for chicken feet.

That night, I surfed over to an artist's blog I follow- and she updated showing her recent commission- an illustration of Baba Yaga for a Russian story book.

Back to Ghost Dance. The girl, the shaman's apprentice, shapeshifts into mainly two forms- that of a gyrfalcon and a bear. I had never heard of a gyrfalcon and had no idea what one looked like.. so I was having trouble imagining it, but didn't bother to look it up on the internet. The other night, flipping through the channels on tv- viola. A nature show about gyrfalcons nesting high in a cliff.

!

Good luck with Cyrillic! :)

Robert Moss said...

Meredithea - Thanks for this marvelous, looping account of how the creatures of the world-behind-the-world come into ours to play with us. You remind me that I used to dream, decades ago, of the gyrfalcon. Tolkien maintained that if we go deep enough into history it becomes myth - by which he meant that it becomes more, not less, real.

booker said...

Dear Colleague -

The 25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION of the most scandalous book in Russian
Literature has been just published:

Alexander S. Pushkin Secret Journal 1836-1837


ISBN 978-0-916201-28-9
see: http://www.mipco.com/english/push.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hero of the work, Alexander Pushkin, presents in an encapsulated form his various sexual relations, his complex thoughts on life, the nature of sin, love, and creativity, as well as the complicated path that led him to his tragic end.

The Secret Journal has incited and continues to incite the most contradictory responses reflected in three volumes of Parapushkinistika.
Now published in 25 countries (http://www.mipco.com/win/AllCovers.html), the Secret Journal deserves to be placed among the most scandalous works of Russian literature.
In spite of the international success of Pushkin's Secret Journal lasting now a quarter century, no major U.S. publisher has dared to publish it.

New French (http://www.belfond.fr) and Spanish (http://www.funambulista.net) editions of the Secret Journal are being published in 2011.

Robert Moss said...

Let's not be confused about this "scandalous work". Though Pushkin had a strong libido and a highly charged sexual imagination, this "Secret Journal" is not by him; not does the publisher claim that it is.

Diana said...

Yes, after three books -not 2 but 3! - , the door to the Russian people is opening - exciting times

Worldbridger said...

So what is with this Russian stuff?

I dreamt last night that I was visiting Russia with my son. It was very cold, even inside people were wearing layers of clothing and ear muffs. I was impressed that my son could speak some Russian and that he had arranged somewhere for me to stay.

booker said...

Disregarding of the authorship of the Secret Journal, it worth reading - it is an outstanding piece of literature