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 irrati

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. First operation is the entry of light Into dark, of dead limbs Galvanized by the sun’s power; The second is of vast dreams cut short By a harsh & loud noise, Like a fire alarm at the cinema – Enfolded in stillful bliss no longer, Soul, body and mind sit up blinking, Grudgingly resurrected – Otherwise known as waking up.

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 the same last night And the night before. When at night the conscious mind Retires to its Monastic cell, and my senses are Asleep, the dreaming mind yokes together Heterogeneous shapes that Derive from the remembrance of Things seen in daytime. And not only that. It dredges up past deeds, produces Strange ideas that Run together in the Form of a

Sky 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 in an oven. I am outside again, Near the church entrance. A whirlwind spins me round. I fall on my knees, drag Myself along the damp ground Towards my own grave. Is this the path I should take? What of thinking? I awake but I am still Sleeping. What did The thunder say? What? Can geometry put Flesh on the bone? Can it save the soul? I cannot

The Sleepers and the Dreams Dreams like girls in private rooms beckon from windows the souls of sleepers who move shadelike through night’s dark parade, eyeless and unspeaking. Will-less and confused, some continue adrift, but most consent – if only dimly – to partake of something strange, a drugging of the body and the brain. And if the sleeper is changed, so too is the dream, so that it may be very much altered by morning’s light unable to regain its initial face. But thos

Credit: Ahmed Abdul Rahman The Octopus and the Fisherman A lobster paralysed by venom makes a fine meal for the octopus, whose cephalopod beak pierces clean the lobster’s shell, splitting carapace from meat. And still the sea sings with foamy lips. If startled by shark or stingray, the octopus vanishes like magic — a puff of ink, or into coral colours it contorts, bonelessly alien. Still the sea sings with foamy lips. The fisherm