21 nights of increasingly intense nightmares after accidentally creating a runic formula. Ended with killing my own double in what looked like an ancient African setting. What does Jungian psychology make of this?
(This text was translated with the help of AI, as English is not my native language. The experience and words are entirely my own.)
I want to tell you the truth about runes — the most important thing. The secret that revealed itself to me gives me no peace: I constantly want to share it, but life keeps throwing obstacles in my way, and I keep getting distracted from what matters most.
I was drawn to runes. I drew them. Maybe by chance, maybe not — but I drew them almost every night before sleep, in a journal, and placed the journal under my pillow. I was searching for something. Secret knowledge, probably. And then I stumbled upon a formula — and the dreams began.
I don’t know what to call this world. Maybe it was my subconscious reacting to the runic formula I’d written on a scrap of paper and placed under my pillow before sleep.
This world was full of danger. I was constantly walking, running, hiding. Monsters and fear were chasing me. I ran through swamps, I killed a green monster. One night I dreamed I was digging a grave — and when my shovel hit the coffin lid, something woke up inside. An old couple, sorcerers, stood above me near a pile of fresh earth. They had placed a green idol there and were whispering something. When I understood what they wanted, I screamed until my voice broke. They wanted me to dig out the corpse and lie down in its place. They wanted to swap my soul. I screamed and screamed until I heard a wolf howl. And then I woke up.
The next night I was afraid to sleep. I removed the formula from under my pillow. When I finally fell asleep, I saw two little twin sisters who looked at me with hope and sadness. I understood they had come to help me — and were asking me to continue, because I was so close.
The following night I put the formula back and lay down with one desperate thought: whatever happens, happens. This time no one chased me. I simply walked on water. A wolf walked beside me — the same one whose howl had saved me. I walked on water, then bathed, and watched the dirt wash off me.
On the 21st night I reached wherever those 20 nights had been leading me. A city. I walked its streets looking for something. Two little twin sisters were saying something I can’t remember. I walked along the dry bed of a river. A woman in white was walking ahead, leading two children by the hands. I knew somehow that this was wrong — that you can’t take children there. But it was too late. They were approaching the entrance of a truncated pyramid.
Inside — a vast hall with a well in the center. The woman stood at its , holding the children, ready to jump. I screamed again. She stepped forward and they fell in.
A voice beside my ear told me the well was a passage — jump in one side, emerge on the other. Complete cleansing of the soul. I found myself standing at the edge without noticing how I got there. The well glowed with a soft pink light. Something moved on its walls. I saw the woman’s outline — just the contours of a skeleton, falling deeper and deeper. The walls were covered in moving hooks.
I stepped forward. I didn’t fall — I sank slowly. The voice kept whispering something in an unknown language. When I saw the edge of the well level with my eyes, I panicked, jerked — and froze in the void.
Then everything disappeared.
A breeze moved a curtain through an open window. I was standing barefoot on a red clay floor, talking to a friend. We were leaning on spears, guarding the well. My friend was Black, like me.
Then something shifted. I looked past my friend’s shoulder and saw a pale white woman — the same one I had chased along the dry riverbed. But now I knew she was evil. Her movements were impossibly fast. She touched my friend and was gone.
I turned back. My friend was gasping for air, infected. I didn’t think. I struck him in the stomach with the blunt end of my spear. He looked at me — and as his face began to turn grey, I saw that it was my face. I screamed. He swung his arm at me. I ducked, stepped behind him, and drove the spear through his back under the left shoulder blade, aiming for the heart. I heard bones crack. He fell to his knees and collapsed.
I stood over his body. Or my body. His, I think.
The wind moved the curtain through the open window. And I knew — I had won.”
What do you think this was?