A Dream of Death at Sea

The night before last I awoke from a strange dream which had many different parts to it, or should I say scenes which appear disconnected. It would be helpful if I broke the dream into its various 'scenes':

Scene one 

I have a roofer who has carried out a lot of work for me over the last 3 years and indeed fitted a new roof for me 2 year ago. He has become somewhat of a friend despite the fact that he is a born again Christian! However he seems very traditional in his world views and they do align somewhat with mine. I found myself in his house, a guest among many others, seated around a dining table when a cat stole the food in front of me. I have interpreted this part of the scene but it has no relevance to the rest of this post. I did not see my friend but I knew that he was somewhere in the house and his wife gave me a bag of sweets and gifts which were given to everyone else present as well. To receive a gift in a dream may be interpreted that you are viewed with esteem by others.

Scene two

I leave the house on a bicycle but I recognise that it is not mine. In waking life I do not own a bicycle. I notice that it has no wheels but in their place are ceramic objects resembling chamber pots! I attempt to return the bicycle to the house. The riding of a bicycle in a dream may signify the need to spend more time relaxing and to achieve balance in one's life.

Scene three

The dream abruptly moves on to this third scene where I find myself along a seashore which on waking I feel is the French coast. The sea resembles sand rather than water. I see a man throw himself into this 'sea'. I am watching him and there is a female by my side. I do not know who she is. The man gradually drowns or sinks below the surface of the sand which now has become water. The sea of course represents the unconscious and the drowning may be interpreted as my sinking into my own subconscious and this comes with a risk-the loss of one's own identity in the process. I gradually come to realise in the dream that the drowned man is me. The unknown female may in Jungian terms represent my 'anima', particularly as this is a death scene. The Odian term would be 'Hamingja'.

Scene four

The scene abruptly moves on to another location close by the one in scene three. There is a shelter by the shore and I notice from the accents that there are a lot of foreigners present but I hear someone speaking in German, an old man. I decide to approach him and I ask him in German whether he spoke German or English. It turns out that he is English and we have a short discussion, the content of which I cannot fully recall. I conclude from the accents of the other people that we are on the French coast and I sense that it was on the opposite side of the English Channel. The old man in Jungian terms may be the 'wise old man' or 'sage'.

Scene five

Again the scene changes abruptly and I am still close by the location in scene four. I am looking out over the sea from the edge of the shore when I notice that in the ground are memorial stones to the dead. With shock I see my own memorial stone. I use the term 'memorial stone' because these were not graves but seemed to signify that they were memorials to people lost at sea. The strange thing is my real name in waking life was not on the stone but an entirely different one: 'Peter Birke'. I came to the realisation that I was dead and the drowning man was me. I look around and shout at the others saying that this cannot be true for I am not dead but alive. I then awoke.

This dream is only one of two where I dreamed that I was either dead or in the abode of the dead. I refer my readers to the following post: A Dream of Valhalla/Folkvangr and Freyja A third dream that I had of the dead (though I was clearly alive) came to me in late 2019 and may be a prophecy: A Dream From Late 2019 Concerning Mass Deaths In all my six decades I have never dreamed of death before-or at least not anything that I can consciously recall on waking. The dream from 2019 took place BEFORE the advent of the Coronavirus epidemic/pandemic and the piles of dead bodies, neatly stacked up were NOT the result of misadventure but a plague. The government helicopters could symbolise the drones that the Police in many countries are using to police the population during this crisis. At the time the dream did not make any sense to me.

This latest dream I am interpreting in psychological terms. I do not at this stage regard it as a personal premonition although I would say that both my late mother and brother did receive premonitions just days before they left this realm and in my mother's case she saw her name on her gravestone just four or five days before she died. She was a spiritualist medium with finely tuned psychic powers.

I have never encountered the name 'Peter Birke' before and the spelling of the surname is exactly the same as I recall from the dream and I believe that there is some significance attached to that. I have researched the name 'Birke' and it appears to be German in origin but despite my maternal German ancestry I was totally oblivious to this fact until I carried out a Google search of the name. I would ordinarily spell the surname with a 'u' which is the English spelling of the name so I must conclude that there was a specific reason for me to see this German spelling in my dream. The forename 'Peter' is common in both England and in Germany.

A Dream From Late 2019 Concerning Mass Deaths

Late in 2019-I cannot recall the exact month I awoke from a most vivid dream. On this occasion I did not write it down for it was so clear but at the time it lacked any genuine meaning for me but only in the last day or two did it come back to the fore of my mind.

In the dream I was living in a bungalow that once was owned by my late parents from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. It is extremely rare for me to dream about this house as it is now so long ago since I lived there so I believe that aspect of the dream has some personal significance for me. I looked out of the living room window beyond the front garden to the street and I could see rows and rows of piles of dead bodies. I was flabbergasted as I could not understand why these people died and how there was such a multitude of corpses. At first I thought that there may have been a massacre but I dismissed this as I could not hear any commotion from within the house. I then looked up into the sky and I could see what were clearly government or police helicopters who were observing the scene.

With the succession of months since I had this dream we have witnessed the onward progression of the Grim Reaper as this mediaeval like plague COVID-19 ravages the countries of the world, leaving thousands stricken, dead and many whose lungs will be scarred for life. It is now clear to me that this was a premonition granted to me to see the effects of the virus. Let my readers be clear about one thing: millions will die-probably even within this small country. Like World War One every household will know someone who will have died from this virus. We are living now in very uncertain times.

One thing that I have discovered in the past few days are the measures which some governments are taking and will take in the battle to fight this virus and these will entail an even greater degree of surveillance over our individual lives and a  loss of personal freedom. It may even hasten on the cashless society which I discussed many times on my former Aryan Myth and Metahistory blog. Many shops concerned by the dangers that handling coins and bank notes pose are recommending or even insisting that customers use a bank card. This is a natural fear and it is understandable that they should wish to protect their staff from potential contamination but the end result is an enslaved society for that is exactly what faces us if cash is allowed to disappear in favour of electronic 'money'.

I wish safety for all my readers and trust that everyone will take the measures that are necessary for their personal survival and that of their families.

A Dream of Valhalla/Folkvangr and Freyja

I do not often discuss my dreams on my blogs but on occasion I feel that there is a pressing need to do so and this is one of those occasions. Last night I woke up at about 3.00 am following a very vivid dream. In my dream I saw a procession of warriors and they were led by a female who I sensed was a deity but not a Valkyrie. She rode on a horse. I do not recall if the warriors she led were on horseback or not as everything in my dream was indistinct and the whole dream lacked colour. It was entirely monochrome in nature, consisting of various shades of grey. There was no light in the dream but it was not entirely dark either but resembled twilight. The female at the head of the procession also carried a very large round shield in front of her. I instinctively realised that this was a Goddess and was Freyja Herself.

Freyja led the warriors through a gateway, the details of which I could not make out. I was not part of the procession but watched it from the side. There was no interaction between them and I. Then immediately after this I found myself inside a very large enclosure with thousands of people. I could not discern their features but I knew that these were all dead people and the enclosure was indeed the fields around Valhalla. I found that not only was I in Valhalla but I was positioned upon a hill and started 'preaching' to the masses. Please excuse my use of a Christian term but I cannot think of a more appropriate alternative! I started to tell the masses in front of me that Odin was the father of all the Gods, that He was the father of great heroes that bear His blood in their veins and that He is the father of all our people whether they can claim direct descent from Him or not. In essence I was publicly proclaiming my faith in Him. I make no apology for using the Norse version of His name as 1/4 of my ancestry can be traced back to the original Norwegian colonisers of a hitherto deserted area of western Lancashire in the 10th century. Of course my ancestors also knew Him by the name of Woden, Wodan and indeed Gwydion too. At this point I woke up. I did not see Odin within the dream, only Freyja. Of course the fact that it was Freyja who led the host of dead warriors and it was a field that I found myself in would lend to a better interpretation that this was Folkvang ('field of the host') that I visited rather than Valhalla but both are equally worthy places to spend eternity!

I have had a few mystical dreams over the years, all of which I have been able to interpret and I do hold a qualification in Dream Analysis but do not claim to be any kind of expert in the field and the interpretation of dreams is by necessity a personal one. Not all dreams have a 'meaning' but are merely the actions of the subconscious playing through and rerunning thoughts encountered in the  conscious mind during the daytime. However this dream stands out as one which merits a spiritual interpretation. I am not going to attempt an interpretation here because my intention is to initially make the dream publicly known. In addition to a spiritual or mystical interpretation it should be noted that the ancients believed that via the dream state they could encounter other entities including Gods. This is the first time that I have ever encountered a deity within a dream and the first time that I have dreamed about Valhalla or the afterlife. Whilst I was aware of being in Valhalla I had no awareness of whether I was dead or still a living, breathing human being.

My late mother who has been dead 31 years this year was a spiritualist medium and she often told me of her out of body encounters in the dream state where she engaged in astral travelling and encountered the spirits of the dead and angelic beings. This was her belief and I am not in a position to judge that belief as beliefs are inherently personal things. As an aside on one occasion she told me that she had left her body in order to minister healing to my half sister in Germany. Many years later my half sister related to me the experience of her being seriously ill and seeing the spirit or form of my mother by her bed. They had fallen out with each other before this encounter and never spoke to each other again and yet both parties related to me the very same experience which I cannot explain through rational or scientific means.

The dream could be interpreted as an example of astral travelling to a different realm and there are a few examples of this in the saga literature of northern Europe so it is a belief that was held by our pre-Christian ancestors. A third interpretation may be that of a premonition. This is partly why I am making known this dream today on my blog, in order to strengthen the faith of my fellow heathens in the reality of our Gods, the afterlife and the existence of worlds outside of along side of Midgarth if indeed it is a premonition. A few weeks ago I discussed with my partner how both my mother and my late brother had premonitions in the form of dreams of their impending demise and speculated whether this would be my experience as well.

On Sunday 2nd of July 1989 my mother told my late former first wife of a dream that she had a few days previously in which she saw her gravestone. My wife told me about the dream after we returned home that evening. I was rather sceptical and dismissed the dream straight away. I was at the time a fundamentalist Bible-believing Christian. However 4 days later on Thursday 6th of July she was dead. She had a heart attack which she could not possibly have predicted by any rational means. My late father pointed out the rather unusual date: 6/7/89!

In 2009 I received a telephone call from my brother who likewise told me of a dream in which he had received a premonition of impending death. 10 days later he died suddenly and again there is no rational explanation for how he could have predicted this. My German grandfather who died in 1933 was taken ill and shortly before his death he sat up in bed and told my grandmother of seeing a crowd of dead relatives at his bed who had come to greet him. Shortly after this experience he died. This was not a dream that he had but a vision whilst awake. The appearance of dead relatives prior to death is a form or function of the psychopomp. Odin, Freyja and the valkyries all performed the function of a psychopomp. The Grim Reaper is the best known form of the psychopomp in western Europe since the middle ages and I have already speculated on the association between Him and Odin in another article: The Grim Reaper, an Aspect of Grimnir the Hooded One

We will see what this dream actually means with the passing of time and thus I dare not venture an interpretation.