alonewiththemoon | dreams of self-immolation (Reply)

The night before last I dreamed that I was intending to throw myself into a fire and be burnt into ashes. Then my mother was going to come by in a month and put me back together and I would be alive again. This was some ritual in our culture that I discovered I knew all about, even though I hadn't known anything about it before. I went to the place where the fire was and watched the flames leaping in an iron brazier. They were hungry and I could hear them crackle, feel the heat, and I began to be afraid. The man who was in charge of the fire told me that they would give me a drug and I wouldn't feel a thing, but I was skeptical, because if he hadn't done it before, then how would he know that it didn't hurt? (my brain at this point gave me the information that this was something that only women did.) Perhaps you just lay there unable to move or cry out as the flames engulfed you. Perhaps it hurt tremendously. And I began to doubt what I was doing. If my mother was just going to bring me back to life later, then what was the point of going through the ritual at all? The fire seemed hungrier and it seemed like it wanted to hurt me. But it was important that I do this ritual, and I felt anguished over my doubt.

I woke up sweating under too many covers and crying slightly.