Jacob Frank's Dreams of Profanation Many of the sayings in Jacob Frank's The Collection of the Words of the Lord  take the form of dreams or visions — modes of speech that resist verification and refuse the binary of true and false. By casting revelation in this indeterminate register, Frank unsettles the epistemic and nomian boundaries that ordinarily separate the holy from the profane. If, as Carl Jung suggests, the unconscious might produce a dream “which proposes an irrat

Dreams, Memories, Visions    Of life as a ‘story   of the self-realization   of the unconsciousness’ ... p. 17     Digging up bones   and a little light in fog ... pp. 104, 107     Walking through a valley   to hand a goddess an umbrella ... pp. 155, 161     § Of trees as the embodiments   of life’s incomprehensible meaning ... p. 86     The bitterness of Freud   and the analogy   with God ... pp. 75, 175     A white dove transformed   into the ghost   of a customs official .

The Beast Between the Marble and the Heap, Or: The Mammoth    Between the marble wall of City Hall   and the slow‑rotting heap   of broken crockery and dusty old books —   the beast stirred.     To think it once tore open the earth   with its tusks,   raising mountains,   or guarding the spirits of the underworld.     Now its fur rotted to a brittle husk —   the mammoth   preserved without reason —   the mammoth.     Among the first of God’s works,   it had been among us from

The Soul Moves       The soul moves & by small degrees   Of slow calculation   Actuates the two substances   That are body & mind.    ...

In the Dark, Dreaming (Inspired, in part, by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 5: 108-113) Tonight I am not in my right mind. It was...

It was at this point I stopped dreaming and looked at the sky and saw what seemed to me a mirage reflecting upon itself what it mirrored distinctly (the lake and the veiled mountain peaks) and descending, slowly, teasingly, as if desirous of making contact with the world it so perfectly expressed.

Descartes' Dream I was a lonely cripple Seeking shelter; I heard thunder, saw fire. Sleeping too much, Snow on the rise. My bones warm...

By Richard Mather Dreams like girls in private rooms beckon from windows the souls of sleepers who move shadelike through night’s dark...