Dream: The Mermaid Spell and the Cursed Gifts

Dream 20040624, 2:10 AM:
Begins with myself (girl?) and a sister. She has received some kind of powers to do with a sea-spell, and I have received something different, I remember a giant book, but don’t remember the specifics. There’s something to do with a hole in the ground, and casting a spell, and the sister is with a coven in the shallow water, and they are making her into a mermaid. I throw a net down on them, and run. There is a companion with me. I have to get away, and jump into the water; the beach is edged with these floating safety things like the edge of a life ring, but they stick out and keep you from walking up onto the beach; I eventually find a little ramp to walk up. I fly over a large crowd, hearing people sing (?) and some of them raise me upward. It’s as if I have an umbrella, and their respect or some other quality lifts me. The people are all around this complex of buildings that edges onto the ocean. They’re going into some competition, like American Idol, and they’re all grouped and lined up.

The girls of the coven have brought me gifts, but I know they’re cursed. First, I pick up my hat, which has feathers and pins on it, and I pull them all off, casting them to the ground. They are small spells, and they do things like explode in puffs of smoke, and some are pins with emblems on them from different people. I have made some kind of magick circle, and as they bring the gifts one by one, I repeat this little formula, saying, “(her name), the gift of a green candle is a good gift, but this gift is not given for a good reason, take it back,” and then the gift turns on the giver, releasing whatever curse they had put in it. I struggle with the name of one of the girls, and have to ask her to repeat it a few times; it’s something like Brythannia. I manage an approximation, and go on with the formula. One of the gifts has a lavender wax that would scald the user; she asks me to be kind, and not to hurt her too badly. I try to mediate it at least some by controlling the heat of my brazier fire. Someone (Andrea P. from school / my companion) steps in and shakes a powder over my fire, showing me how to slow it to keep the lavender oil from flashing up burning. Finally, having finished the spells, there are some items left; one is a broom with a handle-tip that is pinned together with metal brads, and flexible. It’s a gift from their head witch. Because of the disenchantment, these are now genuine gifts. I take the broom, and also see that there are several small devotional items. I arrange them into a small depression in the ground, and cover them with a little dome, and begin chanting, “Oak and Ash and Thorn is your god… Oak and Ash and Thorn.” As I get more into the energy of the chant, a bhodran drum appears, and I pick it up and play it with my hands as I chant. The image of a man appears, looking like a low-power hologram with lots of red lines, as if it is made of scanning red laser, and he tells me that I heard too many people, and he is damaged because I channeled fifteen hundred people, and many of them were untalented. He explains that I need to listen more selectively, as it affects him. We fly off, he’s taking me some place for education.