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Correspondence from Marjorie Cameron to Jane Wolfe
[EXTRACT]
[6-12 July 1953]
I had a very powerful dream last night. Word came that I was to prepare a place of contest since God was to appear to me and accept my challenge. When he came—he was a beautiful man of splendid physique. I had the feeling that we were equally matched—indeed it was as if I were looking at the inner image of myself—but the image of desire—since he was male with ivory skin and beautiful dark hair. The place of contest was a temple of marble tile—white with a vaulted ceiling. Here we engaged in physical combat—like Greeks in a wrestling match. There was a great feeling of power and ease in this contest of strength—and the joy was not in winning—but in the duel itself. There was no sense of struggle. I won the contest by placing his shoulders to the floor three times—but the victory was his as well as mine—there was great pleasure in this. And then we boarded a train and crossed the river.
The train in Steckle's analysis is a death dream—and crossing the river is also the racial dream of the River Styx.—but death has a concept heretofore only guessed and in view of the way I feel I would interpret it as the death of ego. Then I was in Beaumont—I would awaken many mornings with the feeling that I had been somewhere wonderful—or that some one magnificent had just departed when I opened my eyes. Once I had a rapidly fleeting impression of great tides of flaming spheres surrounding me overhead. I did not even have the feeling that I had slept—but had stepped from one plane to another in opening my eyes. I had—and still have the absolute conviction that something magnificent had happened to me—which I was not allowed to remember when I awakened. The sense of magnitude and joy flowed over into the day time—but I would lie down at night with eagerness—since it seemed that what I learned in the daytime—was actually only a searching of my memory for the fantastic things divulged to me when I slept. That presence receded—and was replaced by terror when the physical pain and mental torment began to come—until it deserted me altogether—except for occasional glimpses when I left Beaumont—until finally—in these last months it became only a diminished memory.
I feel now—that this unnamed urging that I am following is the beckoning of this presence again—and that all I have experienced of late has been a necessary step before I could go on to that which awaits me.
I shall write.
Cameron.
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