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   Wind blasted crags lined the foreshore and sitting above them was a castle – the Secret Castle.   It was a relic of the long lost days of the forgotten empire of Nuemthia and it was known as the Secret Castle because anyone who entered it vanished.   The intrepid me wished to find out the secret of the Secret Castle. So I ventured forth into it.   One moment I was stepping over the threshold of the castle, the next I was frozen  as a small figurine in the collection of the arch wizard Deimios.   Occasionally I was given life when he released the spell that kept my life at bay.   During these times I was treated as one of his slaves and made to do menial tasks.   But I found solace in the company of another slave – Arimia, with whom I found love.   Vainly we plotted our escape until the day we managed to switch a sleeping elixir for one of our master's drinks.   As he lay sleeping we unlocked our shackles and searched the room for some means of escape.   We found a small replica figurine of the Secret Castle and placed it under a magnifying device.   It swelled up  around us and we found ourselves on the outside of the original Secret Castle.   We rejoiced and settled down to live our lives out together as husband and wife.

My Idea 

My idea was to try

And then to hope I would never die

Live to fight another day

And then have more to say

But in my head I was free

To see me as I used to be

Not some fancy fool dressed in finery

Or some fop who owns a winery

But a true and honest man

Who lives and walks on the land

With his head held high

Eternity in his grasp

And a grin wide enough to bask

Upon the whole world at large

   The Secrets of the Universe were kept hidden from the eyes of the world by the Homunculi sages deep in the vaults of their castle Quixiaz.   It was the task of the sages to collect and disseminate these secrets and to make manifest their puissant power in the oracular devices they made and sold to the known universe at large.   The homunculi sages were adept at imbuing their devices with future potential so that their foretelling ability was undiminished.   The secrets themselves were kept in metal cylinders and studied for long hours until the seed of their knowledge was discovered and captured in a pristine way.   Once each secret had been categorised they formulated methods of utilizing it to create great works.   They were only circumscribed by the necessity and fate of events that remained constant eternities in God.   As their efforts progressed each and every device added to the sum total of future potentials that existed everywhere in the Universe and created a better Utopia for all to live in.   People who were wary of unforseen circumstances were able to create a better future and to avoid misfortune.   Eventually the Cosmos enjoyed the largesse and equanimity of the very best luck as the best future that was available eventuated and remained unsurpassed hereafter.

   We are the product of all the hopes and dreams that have stayed with us all our lives. But we also carry around our nightmares. The fear that comes when least expected and tries to strangle you in your sleep.   This is what was happened to me. A lifetime of success had finally brought its own malaise – nightmares.   What success I had I owed to the Dreamlore I had acquired but recently instead of assuaging dreams terrifying nightmares plagued me like a flock of ravens hovering over my grave.   Instead of floating in Dreamspace I was subjected to visions of cackling witches and pernicious demons who were prepared to hound me to an early grave.   These devils of the subconscious imagination were everywhere, taking on a life of  their own; following me wherever I went. I couldn’t shake them off.   So I started to envisage a castle within my dreams; a bastion of light that could withstand any devilish onslaught.   It was a place of laughter and play, where minstrels played lilting songs and ladies strolled in hanging gardens and waterfalls cascaded into deep pools.   We had banquets and revelry to last a lifetime. Eventually the demons and devils of my nightmares were banished to a secondary existence by my Dream Castle and had to content themselves with a subsidiary role in my life.   In time they faded completely and I took up residence in my Dream Castle, forever quitting my real life to be the prince of that Dream Castle, forevermore, evermore.

   Huge brooding clouds hung over the forest and in-between the trees a road wound its way to some far distant destination.   Along it there drove a family car, alone in this dark night. Headlights shining forwards as it sped through the darkness.   Inside, two children were watching the forest go by as their parents conversed up front. Their father was at the wheel and he was concentrated on the way ahead.   Crystal exclaimed a bat which flew overhead and Daffyd likewise did so at a Raven.   As they drove further and further into the forest they saw more animals; a stag and a couple of hares.   The two children were looking out the back window at the night swallowing up their way and following them when they noticed the shapes of black dogs starting to overtake the car. They were being pursued by Shadow Dogs.   “Mum, Dad, look at the dogs.”   Their parents turned to look and then their father stepped on the accelerator to outdistance the black shadows. But they were relentless and continued their pursuit at incredible speed. One of them passed through the car, his dog’s head and body appearing out of the back seat and moving through the middle of the car until his hindquarters exited.   The children shrieked and their father stepped on the brakes but he hadn’t stopped because of the dog. There was a lone figure atop a coal black steed in the centre of the road.   The pack of hounds flowed around him as he gave the family in the car a searching look.   “Be grateful mortals that ye behold me of I am Herin, God of Night and this night I spare thee.”   And like mist he and his dog pack became insubstantial before their eyes.   The family drove on and finally exited the forest glad to be rid of it and its dark gods.   Maybe they were blessed or cursed by the night, who knows, that is for you to judge. And you can still find that family on dark nights. Trying to drive their way beyond the shadows and their Lord

Human at last 

There in a coracle of hope

An oracle of dreams and destiny

Did meet the salty air and the brine sea

Where Poseidon was overlord, god of the ocean

And an albatross flew on with effortless motion

Its wingspan spanning and spinning a deft mystery

Of life and love and loss and dreams

Where both are kept under cover

Lest they bother an older brother

To whom the truth was sooth

And to whom humanity was a moot point

Best debated in circles

In ceaseless cycles

Of overarching infinity

There, human at last

We found ourselves

And God

And what it means to be me

The self of oneself

And a shelf to shelve in on

   For many years I had studied dreaming within my head; writing down my dreams, drawing pictures of them and telling people about them. Soon I got used to living in my dreams and living my dreams.   For I used to lucid dream taking control over the dream and creating my own dreamworld and from there I recreated stories that resembled my own dreams.   Now I am a famous fantasy writer and dream yogi and yet I still cling to the dream practices that made me what I am today.   Dreams are dangerous sometimes though, you never know what miasma you might call up from the past or what fears might beset one in the dreamworld.   In the end I faced my dreams and conquered them, and then I discovered something perplexing – the dream within a dream.   It goes like this you are in one dream then you are in another inside the previous dream and so on ad infinatum.   It is an involuted dream process by which infinite inner dreams open up. Each one is a separate whole holistic entity that contains the germ seed of its next dream.   You may think that I would forever remain lost within my own head a prisoner of my own dreams but no, it is like forever seeing into the distance, like the line of sight of everything that continues on behind a tree one is looking at, and then that line of sight aligns again as you move around that tree.   This unveiling mystery intrigued and beguiled me and I began playing with the unfolding adventure of my dreaming eye as it roamed inside and outside forever finding that extra vision of life which would lead me to more and more dreams.   These dreams transformed me as I began to reenvisage my life with them and a tranfigurative experience of holistic wellness awaited me as my yoga practice deepened and I attained the state of integrative wholeness that awaited each time it happened.   From there I became a dream master, a master of all neverending dreams that continue on forever, like the liquid melody of a beautiful song.

   In the cold wastelands of Arkor an ancient hermit invoked the seeing stone. From it there spread outwards a cold that covered the land and this became known as the cold age.   Trees became slivered with ice, lakes became frozen; instead of fields and hills of green a white sheet of ice crusted the earth.   In despair the peoples of the land turned to their wise ones who summoned the young mage Arion and entrusted him with the mission of restoring balance to the weather.   Arion ventured forth into the sleeting wind, heading for the seeing stone of Arkor from which the cold was spreading.   After many days of travel he reached a large crystal sphere that hung suspended above the ground by three shards of rock. Underneath the sphere an ancient hermit sat in meditation, his legs crossed in the lotus pose, his eyes shut and his mind elsewhere. A pool of light from the seeing stone fell upon him bathing him in an amber glow.   Arion lifted his mage staff and invoked its power. A beam of light contacted with the seeing stone and its power ceased. As the wind died down and the clouds opened to let in the light of the Sun the hermit stood up in fierce rage. He came at Arion like a madman and Arion had to use his staff again, he touched its tip to the hermit’s head, once again invoking its power and the hermit hell to the ground, stunned.   Later when he had trussed the hermit up he spoke to him about what he had done.   “Why did you invoke the seeing stone in this way?”   “I needed to create an eye in the storm around me so that I could attain enlightenment from the light of the seeing stone.”   “Why didn’t you consider the harm you were doing?”   “What harm, I live alone in the cold, why shouldn’t other people?”   Arion thought a while and then replied:   “If you live alone without consideration then so you shall remain and he embedded the mage inside the seeing stone where he can be found like a fly trapped in amber – a  testament to all of his own folly.

On a mountaintop, far from prying eyes, the Dream Sages worked their dream magic; constructing devices that would unveil the secrets of the Dreamworlds.   For hidden in every idea there exists that germ seed of creation that can unravel the mysteries that exist all around us and yet remain unseen.   They used multicoloured diamonds and silver dewdrops to fashion an ocular device to see where dreams are happening in the future. They spied on the secrets of the gods and recorded all the dream events that would eventually occur.   From their studies they were able to deduce when the most auspicious dream events would occur. They then made a calendar that had the dream days marked on it. There was one in every month around the middle of the month, when dreams reached their full power.   The Dream Sages then began observing the dreams on these days so they could find the secret of future existence. They found convergences of dream days that pointed to a revelation about each and quantity associated with the existence of the Dreamworlds.   With this knowledge they were able to construct a Celestial Dream Sphere that made travelling to the Dreamworlds possible.   This is where you will now find the Dream Sages – forever travelling in the Dreamworlds inside their Celestial Dream Sphere.

Dream of Love 

Life like a living soul

A dream that will evolve

Into a flight of birds

A wonder too rare to behold

Thus we speak in tongues

Running words like liquid fun

There we find love

A dream of love

Too rare to absolve ourselves from

And to free our loves from

Because in this flight

This madcap melody

There is an energy

And a harmony

Of life beyond love

And love beyond life

Like a limping stag at bay

As the hounds close in on their prey

There is an ending

Right on nigh

Dreamt out of love

That dreaming eloping muse

Upon life and happenstance

The happening of mirth

And an agonizing birth

That leads to truth

And a soul search

To find that dream of love

And let it give birth

To more dreams of love

On this earth and in heaven

Where we are god’s children

And where god is our Lord

Beyond all the trees

And beyond all the skies

In heaven’s palace of light and dreams

Where that dream of love can alight

And find you and me

Together under a tree

Whose spreading bowers

Shelter us with their flowers

And sprinkle us with dew

The life of the gods

And their god

Who gave us this dream of love

To hold dear to our hearts

And make it our own

Dream Baby 

Dreams settle and turn to dust

As old dreams go out the door

Swept out by a broom of the poor

A dream baby is born

To greet and herald the new dawn

Crying out in timeless angst

Living life out of fetlock

Too strong to behold and resolve

The exigies of existence

The travails of wisdom and commonsense

Which are the blood we call God

Return to a semblance or norm

Of normality like a liquid resolve

To behold its own existence

And to be the dream baby once again

To gain the game of life

And play it to the end

Where lovers die

And turtledoves cry

Before they fly and turn to dust

In the wind and the dreams

Of life to fly forever free

“The cerebral cortex is the source of all human endeavour, all attainable achievements can be attributed to this paradigm of human existence.”   Thus began the discourse on the brain. But my mind was elsewhere, daydreaming in lands that no one knew existed.  These lands were populated by mythical beasts and powerful magic had dominion over all. It was the land of Endevon, the creation of my own powerful imagination that had recently awakened to take on a life of its own.   For it really existed, at least so I thought, for I was aware of it in a corner of my mind, encroaching upon the mainstay of human humdrum life that was called living. By some means, enchantment maybe I was part of the story of Endevon where I lived as Damondrel the finest swordsman in the land.   I had adventures that would curdle your brain if you had to live them. I fought battles that required every ounce of strength and skill I had.  And I was not alone; I had friends, the fleet of foot elf Damiel, and the wind mage Ecryss. Together we travelled the land in search of whatever adventure would come our way.   But in the human world I was locked in the body of a martyr, having to endure long-winded lectures about brain chemistry, I was stuck in no man’s land on my way to becoming a qualified brain surgeon.   My two lives began intruding upon each other; they spilled into my head with a furore that began disrupting my relations with others. I began believing I could get free of my path as a brain surgeon and continue to live the life Endevon offered.   In the end I began rebelling, my alter ego as Damondrel took over and I became a madman obsessed by fantasy madness.   Eventually I was locked up in a psychiatric institution for carrying a sword in public. This is where I am now, dreaming of Endevon and the possibilities life really has to offer, instead of the medication I have to take and the life I didn’t get to live.

Dream Aegis 

Soft and sultry like a dream

The Dream Aegis

Is becoming a melody of sages

Trying to fit in yet failing

It seeks the answer to importance

The potency of life and other remedies

That did travail a martyr at the cross

Because of what was

Why I know not why

I was born to die

And am yet to live

And believe in my self worth

I own the dreams that belong to me

A cupful of dreams to strong to believe

And too fierce to be told what to do

There I am where I stood

In a wood

Where I become food

For the dream aegis

And all it stood for

In the last wood of all

In a cold well of old

On a lost and lonely world

A lonely thing I did espy

Laid my head down, and died

There was an age, an age ago that was known as the age of fantasy. In this age the creations of god multiplied to exist as the Soul Sphere; in which there lived the sentient fantasy being called the Omagon.   This sentient being gave advice that would make personal dreams come true.    A certain lad, longing for a sweetheart, approached Omagon and asked for his advice.   The Omagon replied as follows:   “Seek out the wandering minstrels of Arcadion and ask to be trained by them.”   Aspen did as he was told and soon acquired a talent for music that would make a woman fall in love with him.   The particular woman who did fall in love with him was Emera, daughter of Count Emer, and she professed a longing to hear the minstrels of Arcadion play for her. They were invited and they came and they serenaded the entire court to lovely lilting melodies.   Aspen was with them and was smitten by the beautiful Emera.    Taking the initiative he stole out at night and played outside her window. She instantly fell in love with him and he was soon employed as court musician and just as soon married to the beautiful Emera.   And together they made music that would last a lifetime.