The Hotel situated between life and death, Siamese twin Elephant Man, Shadow Entities and dead people... what could possibly go wrong?

In order for one to understand the symbolism of this dream, I have deemed it important to address a spiritual journey in which I had had previously. In this spiritual journey, I had descended into the depths of the underworld, a real place located in the depths of the human psyche, accessible to all of us, and populated by what Jung would term “self autonomous entities born of humanities collective trauma”. In this journey, the underworld was depicted as a vast underground facility, akin to something like London's Kings Cross underground train station, a labyrinth of huge corridors, doors and platforms, an epicentre of travel and journeying. In this facility one would see and find hoards of these self autonomous entities, born of humanities collective trauma, and I have come to define these entities by the term “shadow entities”. In the underworld, these huge vast doors would suddenly shoot open and hoards of these shadow entities would pile out and stomp through the vast labyrinth of the underworld, as they did this, some would notice my presence and stray from the herd that they were apart of. Stray into my vicinity, and before I knew it, I had a hoard of these entities around me, they seemed as cautious of me as I was of them, they could read my thoughts and act accordingly. They did not neither enjoy nor understand my presence and sought control of the situation. This experience was very intense, and I was extremely thankful to have a background of meditation techniques which allowed me to clear my mind and avoid their attempts to infiltrate it.

As a result of this spiritual journey and experience, I conducted a series of paintings, the shadow entity paintings, which can be found on the “paintings” section of the mirror hall, these paintings were obviously heavily inspired by my underworld experience, but also inspired by the text of the “Corpus Hemeticum” by Hermes Trismegistus, in which Hermes depicts a vision in which he saw the universe formed and all things that are. Most of these paintings were conducted in one session, a seven hour session I entertained from around 10pm – 5am one night, I could feel a real fire within me, a burning passion and it engulfed the very essence of my soul, and that had a consequent effect, most easily understood and expressed through the form of the dream that I will proceed in sharing!

The dream was situated in a hotel that was placed in a intermediary state between life and death, a place that you go to before you descend fully into death, releasing all your attachments that you held in your human form. I found myself in the depth of this hotel, which was massive, full of corridors full of rooms. I was in one of these corridors, with a load of the shadow entity paintings that I had painted; and I was in a state of general distress and panic. The lighting was gloomy ambient, slightly warm, but dim and stagnant and a cold stillness swept throughout the hotel. It was a quiet, still and gloomy place, but in a moment of swift transformation could envelope a chaotic and overwhelming presence.

I was in one of the corridors and I found myself in front of a door that was slightly ajar, inside the door, was darkness and a flickering light, you could tell that something was going on in there, but whatever that thing was, it was a mystery, and had a dark and disturbing presence about it. I was drawn to enter this room and reveal the mysteries that lay behind the ajar nature of the door. Upon entry, I saw the layout of the hotel apartment, as you entered, you were immediately faced with a doorway to another bedroom in front of you, a bedroom on the left and a door to the bathroom on the right. As I opened the door slowly, to reveal the doorway to the next bedroom inside. I was faced with this entity that is best described in parallel to a Siamese twin Joseph Merrick, also known as the elephant man, a human that had extreme and heavy physical deformations and tumours. As I opened the door, this Siamese twin elephant man figure sat on the edge of a bed located in the room in front of me, a general sense of despair and drained energy enveloped its being and I did not feel that this entity was neither in a good place or having a good time. It turned so slowly towards me, and with all four of its eyes, which were like black liquid, turned and gazed into the depths of my soul which invoked something of a disturbing feeling within me.

Before I know it, undefinable darkness had wrapped around me and was pulling me deeper into main bedroom left of the doorway into the apartment. The darkness was alive and full of intent, it wanted me to experience the things that had driven it into that state of being. It was a shadow entity, a dark shroud of energy that could envelope a multitude of form and energy, and pulled me onto the bed of the bedroom it was in, this dark shroud then penetrated the depths of my consciousness, seeping in through my eyes, nostrils and ears and into my conscious brain, which spiralled me into a unconscious state of being, unable to retain the experience and information into my conscious mind. When I woke from this state, I felt like I was being raped and entered a severe state of panic, I needed to leave, NOW! I sprinted out the room and I tried to pick up all my luggage, my canvases and bags, but I couldn't, it was too much and I was really panicking. I had to slow myself down, breath, and organise my life before it all went to hell. I achieved this, slowed myself down and accumulated my possessions and then started to leave the hotel.

On my way excavating out of this labyrinth of chaos and darkness, there was a man, and he was pushing the biggest pink plastic suitcase that I have ever seen, the suitcase must have been at least ten foot high, five foot wide and three foot deep. He couldnt do it, the volume of luggage that he had from his life, he was unable to take it with him into death, and he was really struggling trying. At this point we had eye contact with each other, he saw me and said “HELP, HELP ME”, I ran over and I said “what's wrong?” he looked me, dead in the eyes, and just shouted “IM DEAD”. It was at this point that I woke from the dream.