Tag: Blood

A Discovery of Witches – Thread

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Whilst I was in hospital I came upon this UK TV series on Netflix. It seemed that I had already started watching it according to Netflix. I did not recall this.  So I started to watch again. So far it is enjoyable.

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A Discovery of Witches is a British fantasy television series based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, named after the first book in the trilogy.

Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch, unexpectedly discovers a bewitched manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. This discovery forces her back into the world of magic in order to unravel the secrets it holds about magical beings. She is offered help by a mysterious biochemist and vampire Matthew Clairmont. Despite a long-held mistrust between witches and vampires, they form an alliance and set out to protect the book and solve the mysteries hidden within while dodging threats from the creature world.

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Discovery of Witches is a 2011 historical-fantasy novel and the debut novel by American scholar Deborah Harkness. It follows Diana Bishop, a history of science professor at Yale University, as she embraces her magical blood after finding a long-thought-lost manuscript and engages in a forbidden romance with a charming vampire, Matthew Clairmont.

When Diana Bishop returns to Oxford University, her life is flipped upside down. While researching in the library, Diana requests a book called Ashmole 782. This manuscript, also known as the Book of Life, has been missing for over 150 years. As soon as Diana touches the ancient manuscript, her powers are activated. Frightened by her clear cosmic connection to Ashmole 782, Diana returns the book. It appears, however, that her discovery had already caught the attention of other creatures, which results in a series of events that slowly brings her witch heritage and family back into her life.

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Diana is  cast as a young academic investigating Alchemy partly autobiographically inspired on behalf of the author. The first few episodes are very good for Oxford university tourism. The photography is top notch.

Ashmole was a founder member of The Royal Society and this is his coat of arms.

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Note Hermes bearing the golden Caduceus top right. Note also the Breton symbol around the lower central panel.

Aside from founding the Ashmolean museum he is famous for collecting things like this:

Theatrvm chemicvm britannicum : containing severall poeticall pieces of our famous English philosophers, who have written the hermetique mysteries in their owne ancient language

by Ashmole, Elias, 1617-1692; Cross, Thomas, fl. 1632-1682; Vaughan, Robert, 17th cent; Goddard, John, fl. 1645-1671

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Given where I did my Ph.D. and my interest in things witchy and Alchemy related I have found something to look into a bit while I recuperate.

A new thread to explore?

Dog – Blood – Pine Marten – Putin Dream 21-07-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream, of note is the marked vivid nature of the blood early on. I have not had one like this.

The dream starts in a very British holiday camp setting like a Butlins of old. It is dank and damp outside and I am in communal area with British holiday makers, mostly families. We are waiting for a break in the weather. A TV is playing in the corner high up on the wall. Some people are gathered around Formica tables playing cards. There are children and adolescents on their technology. It seems old-school, old-fashioned, 1970s even.

I go up some stairs to a common room area on the upper level. This leads to chalet rooms. People are sat around and I note a door which has a cardboard box placed in front of it holding it shut. I ask a woman why. She says that it is there to keep them in. I can take a look if I would like but she advises against it. If I do, I should close the door behind me.

I am like others slightly bored by the confinement indoors. I go over to the room and enter closing the door behind me. A medium sized black dog tries to get out as I go in. I shoe it with my foot and enter. I look down and notice that it is badly injured. There are lacerations and cuts. In the dream I know that it is dying and unwell.

Out of nowhere, it seems, a pine marten like animal starts to chase the dog around the room trying to kill it, to bite it on the back of the neck to administer a coup de grâce. The animals chase each other around the room at high speed. The pine marten bites the dog and the dog tries to bite it.

The dog runs into an open cupboard. The pine marten stops in front of me and stands up on its hind legs, it looks me quizzically in the eye. Both the pine marten and I know that it is best for the dog to die. The wounds it received when being hit by a car are not going to heal and will ultimately prove fatal. It is better that the marten quickly finishes the job. I can hear people outside saying that I should trap the marten and let the dog out. The marten knows me and trusts me.

The chase continues. By now the room is filled with vivid bright red blood sprayed everywhere. It comes mostly from the dog. There is more blood than makes sense and it has squirted across my face and arms. The dog gets cornered by the marten and bitten again. The chase continues helter-skelter. Finally the marten has the dog at the back of the neck and holds it until the dog is still. The marten is limping a little after it lets go.

I go out through the door and into a palatine Kremlin like room. Sat at a table in a meeting is Putin. There are Russian politburo members around the table. I go over and say, “Vladimir I need you to summon the vet. Your pine marten is injured next door.” Putin gets up from the table after making a call. We are joined by a vet in a white coat.  I open the door and the marten comes to me. I explain to both Putin and the vet, in Imperial French, that the marten has a problem with its his legs and a lump on its tail. The vet asks me to hold the marten which I do whilst it is examined. The vet find a boiled sweet lozenge entangled in the hair of the marten’s tail. During the process all the marten’s fur has become whiter more like a winter pelt. The vet cuts the lozenge out with some scissors. He shows it to me and throws it into a bin. The vet then wipes the fur of the marten with a cloth soaked in vodka. Putin is beaming with happiness. When I let go the clean marten climbs up my legs and into my arms. It is only slightly hurt. I know in the dream that the pine marten is more than a pine marten, some kind of rare totem.

The dream ends.

On writing this up I think of this…

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Myeloid Bone Biopsy – Charlie Chaplin Cars – Elephant – Blood Tests Dream 22-06-2025

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Here are last night’s dreaming segments.

The dream starts in a hospital operating theatre. There are people dressed in blue medical scrubs and with face masks and gloves on. On the screen is an X-ray like image of my right hip joint. They are using the apparatus to guide the placement of a long needle like structure into the ball of my femur and what remains of the gap between. I am awake and partially sat up. I am watching the procedure. A nurse is assisting the man doing the procedure others are monitoring vital signs.

He is saying to me that he is taking a tissue and bone sample for a Myeloid biopsy. The word is specific. They are going inside the bone to take this biopsy. It is important that they do this. This Myeloid sample will be sent off to the labs so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on. The scene is in colour and I can sense the cool air-conditioning in the “operating theatre”.

The scene changes and I am now in a black and white film in an urban setting. I am being chased by people driving black old school Charlie Chapin style cars. It is all very slapstick and the film being projected has a few flaws. The chase is semi frantic on the part of the pursuers. It is keystone cops and farcical. There is much skidding around corners. Although they are pursuing me, I am not interested. I am waiting for the results of my Myeloid biopsy. They will not leave me alone even though I am unwell. They are foolish.

The scene changes and, back in colour, I am at the edge of a field. Along the edge of the field is a fence. The other side of the field is a wood / jungle. The field has just been harvested. In the distance the gap between the wood and the field increases. I can see a small baby elephant. It is standing next to some saplings which are waist height to me. As I move towards him he moves, unhurried, off into the jungle. I arrive and there are two short rows of these saplings with green leaves. They are in a line and each row has several plants. I understand that these saplings are medicinal.

I am now on a Caribbean island; there is a sense of windward. The care home / hospital buts up against a white sandy bay and has a promenade. It is tropical. On one side to the left is the ocean and on the other a well-kept dark green lawn. There are water sprinklers going on the lawn. There are coconut palms. I am a little late for my appointment. I enter the building and there are two women dressed in starchy crisp 1950s style nurses uniforms with little hats. They woman on reception welcomes me very warmly. I am a regular and they like me, care for me. One tall nurse who is white welcomes me in a strong Jamaican patois. I respond in a like dialect only mine is play. She says that even though it is her lunch hour she will see me her “favourite” patient. She is teasing me playfully. She takes blood from the vein in my left elbow joint and from the artery on my right hand. She injects the arterial blood into a gas chromatograph. She says that even though I am something of a pin cushion these days she can always find a blood vessel. There is a sense that these blood tests are a very regular occurrence.

The dream ends.

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Notes:

Myeloid tissue, in the bone marrow sense of the word myeloid (myelo- + -oid), is tissue of bone marrow, of bone marrow cell lineage, or resembling bone marrow, and myelogenous tissue (myelo- + -genous) is any tissue of, or arising from, bone marrow; in these senses the terms are usually used synonymously, as for example with chronic myeloid/myelogenous leukemia.

Chemical Leak – Surgery – Padmasambhava – Floods – Drinks – Dream 18-03-2025

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This dream comes after many days with very unsettled sleep due to intensely painful gout(?) in my right knee. I had 60mg of Codeine in co-codamol in order to get off to sleep.

The dream starts in a very modern building used for chemistry and science. The building is unknown to me. It is in London. On an upper floor where there are chemistry laboratories with fume hoods there has been a major incident. There are youngish people lying on the floor wearing white lab coats. Some of them have safety spectacles and purple nitryl plastic gloves on. They are not moving and are dead. There has been a leak of gas a chemical leak. The gas is an organometallic tin compound, a stanyl. It is volatile. Apart from being dead they look well. I am alone on the floor and immune to the leak. Slowly I drag the bodies out on to the landing and start to pile them into a heap ready for collection. From the landing I can see the entrance atrium which is rather grand. There is a glass banister topped with a hand rail. The bodies are both female and male. They are still warm to the touch yet floppy and lifeless. The work is easy and they do not feel heavy. There are well over a dozen bodies. I pile them up easily.

The scene changes and I am with G, R and T all of whom were / are academic chemists. We are waiting in turn to be operated on. We are to have sebaceus cysts removed from our faces. The man doing the operating is completely naked and devoid of any bodily hair. His genitals are visible. He is wearing blue plastic surgical gloves and nothing else. It is my turn to be operated on. I ask him why he is naked. He replies that it is a lot easier to clean up, the blood washes off. I understand the logic. He starts to cut out two cysts from my face. One of them is deeper than the other and he makes a slight mistake. He is worried that I am angry. I say that I am not in the slightest concerned with my appearance and that a scar of the right side of my face will match the one from the basal cell carcinoma removal on the left side. I suggest that he stitches away. This he does with a dark-black thread of a thicker than usual thickness. I get out of the operating chair and leave. The others are waiting nervously.

I am now walking around London with Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche. The atmosphere between us is fraternal as if we go way back. He is in a dark royal blue manifestation. We get into a right hand drive old Mk3 Ford Cortina in white. I drive us down to the embankment then we get out. Rinpoche puts his right arm around my right shoulder. He points with his left hand at the Thames water level. He says that in due course it will flood London. The water level rises and as it rises, we retreat uphill. Soon large tracts of land near the embankment are flooded. We work our way up towards Victoria and then Kensington. As we get to the north side of Kensington High Street, he shows me how much of London has been inundated by the sea level rise. He comments that much of this might have been stopped but it was not. There is a feeling of bond between us as we survey.

The scene changes and I am in what once was the Norfolk Arms but now is a hotel. It is very late well after closing time. I am in the bar with G, R and T. There is a young woman decked out as a waitress with a white apron and a black waistcoat. She is drying glasses with a towel. T orders a round of drinks from her and brings them over to us. There is some conversation about the chemical leak. The time comes and it is my turn to buy a round. For some reason I forget G. He feigns upset. I buy him a drink and the woman asks if I have any change, loose coins. She says that we always run out. I pull out coins from my trousers pocket to pay for the round. Her colleague, a male comes over and counts them out. He adds them to a small metallic coin-change box. He gives me back three coins. These coins I/we know are antique, they have a patina of age upon them. The others then go off to bed in the hotel and I sit at the bar with the waitress and her senior colleague. The night is our time, we are creatures of the night.

The dream ends.

Zambia – Father – Royal Family – Golden Orb – Dreams – Dream 05-02-2025

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This dream came as a series of sleep-wake cycles.

The dream opens in Kabwe Zambia. I have come to reclaim the body of my father who is lying in the “mines” medical facility. He is on a morgue trolley under a blanket. I have to sign a chit for his release so that he can be repatriated. Once I have done this, I can take him away in a wheelchair. I do this and wheel him around town for a last look, during this he appears to be conscious and interacting with the environment. Kabwe is much more metropolitan and modern than I remember. I take him back to the facility so that he can be shipped.

I have a sudden realization that I must get to Lusaka, so I go to the now modern train station. The train leaves at 40 minutes past the hour. I have just missed one. I go into a coffee shop / bar to try to arrange a hotel for when I arrive in Lusaka. Unusually for me I get out a smartphone and look for hotels. I find one. I ask the owner of the bar if she has heard of it. She a white woman with a slight Afrikaans, Cape Town, accent says yes. It is her sister who runs “Tuskers” an elephant themed hotel / restaurant near the train station in Lusaka. It is a sister hotel. I say that I like elephants.  She arranges a booking and offers me curry from the buffet in her bar.

I awake.

A Google search reveals that there is a Tuskers Hotel at Butungwa Street PO Box 80942, Kabwe 60100 Zambia. It is near the Big Tree Monument, and I have been in that hotel as a child when it had another name.

I drift off.

I catch the train to Lusaka. It is modern and there are loads of young people on their devices. I arrive at my hotel and get installed. Prince William the Prince of Wales is there, and he wants me to accompany him on his tour of schools in the area and then to go with him to the Okavango Delta. He has very fond memories of his time in Africa before he had too much responsibility and it all got so complex. William is hyper enthusiastic and gets a great reception at the schools. He asks my opinion on each establishment after we have visited. He brings excitement into their lives. It is uplifting.

I wake up

I drift back off.

I am now in the UK if feels west country maybe Gloucestershire. We are walking along a private path / road on an estate. It is tree lined, and autumnal. William is introducing me to Catherine and George. George is a little intense and kicking leaves. I say that I used to have the nickname George when I was a teenager. He then relaxes slightly. William explains that George has many questions which he would like to ask me. I say that I am happy to try to answer. Back in a drawing room of sorts George goes off and comes back with something in his hands.

He shows me an aspherical golden orb. It is about the size of a large potato and it is like an elongated, squashed sphere. There is an inlay in a darker coloured gold wrapping it in a cross bottom and top and all around the long “circumference”. It is clearly hollow and there is something inside. He asks me to take a look at it and hands it to me to inspect. I know that there are other artefacts in the series and that he is not telling me any background information.

I say that we need to think carefully about how we approach this. He nods.

I awake

I drift off

William, Catherine and I are now once again outside on the path. William tells me that Catherine is still fragile after her ordeal and that her mood fluctuates.  He says that she would like to talk with me about her dreams which have been plentiful. They are linked to George, and she senses they are of the same puzzle. I say to them that I would be very happy to talk about dreaming and dreams, subjects close to my heart. Catherine smiles and sighs in relief. William says that he is very happy for me to do this, in private, but I must undertake to keep him updated on a regular and thorough basis. This is because there are many things pertaining to royalty about which I am unaware. He is more concerned about Catherine than George, because of the blood, implied royal in George.

The dream ends and I think WTF.