THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF DUSK

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MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF DUSK

Dreamed 1994/10/10 by Chris Wayan

Silhouette of a house in a pass at dusk; a strange blurry squidlike thing in the clouds overhead.

I'm standing in front of a gray house set in a windy pass: the House of Dusk.

Legend says the pass is haunted by a flying ghostly thing, part squid, part radar-dish, with three wires or legs converging at its focus, becoming one strand/tail. It swoops around the pass when it's windy and foggy.

The House of Dusk is near my parents' home, but it's another world. I see auras, and this house has one. Muscular, yang, smoky and dark, where my family's is inward, convoluted, hidden, yin. This house is opaque--too strong for me to penetrate.

The door opens. The Master of the House challenges me. A big man with a black beard, his aura shouting intelligence. I fear him vaguely, because his technomagic has such force--greater than mine. And he plays rough--plays for keeps.

He sets me a riddle. "What haunts this pass? You get one guess." He asks anyone who seeks to enter his house. If I guess wrong, the rumors say I'll still enter the House... just never come out again.

I say, "It's like a kite or windsock... YOU are flying it!" He laughs ruefully, and I know I've won. "True enough." He says. "Though I'm teaching my son to fly it, these days."

I may have won the riddle, but I don't really understand. Clearly it's an antenna, held up by wind-power. But an antenna for what frequencies? Short radio waves I guess, since the dish isn't solid, just a wire mesh. What messages are they picking up? It's clearly a source of his technomagical powers. I may find out, now that I get to enter the House of Dusk. I cross the threshold... reluctantly.

I should be enthusiastic. It's a triumph, a privilege hard-earned... but I don't really want to enter this House. Such a gloomy place, such a tough, grim guy! Oh, I'll go in, and learn what I must to go on... but I can't savor this particular shamanic victory.

Not every House, no matter what its Power, feels like home.

NOTES ON WAKING UP

Dusk, spooky spiky kite thing = in the dream Twelve Diurnal and Nocturnal Lands, I met my Jungian shadow, a cyborg/kite/dragon/vampire bat, all sticks and membranes. It was wary, cynical, skittish, and loathed my need for approval, sex, attention, love. Anorexic hermit incarnated!
The kite is a shortwave antenna = ESP? Intuition?
The Master of the House = Tarn Ryth, in THE NORTHERN GIRL by Elizabeth Lynn, which I just reread. Ryth, a self-made man, means power, ambition, and unapologetic masculinity. The refined matriarchs of the ruling council in the capital disdained and underestimated him both for his provinciality and his gender. Their mistake! And I better learn not to make it too.

So the Master is a Jungian animus! The ambition and strength I suppressed out of feminist guilt, as if strength of character is male privilege. Not! It's my own power--my brains, my will, my magic! I won't repress it out of guilt, any more.

But the dream warns me there's another reason I've avoided this step into my power. Not guilt or fear, exactly--I just don't like the tough side of me. And taste, too, may have to be set aside, a while.

LISTS AND LINKS: dream houses - shamanic dreams - fear - initiations - tests - riddles - animus, anima, guides - Jungian Shadow - kites - a related figure, the Hedge King - a related dream-quest through the Twelve Diurnal and Nocturnal Lands. We even meet the kite. Yes, it's sentient. And... well, you'll see.

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