The Nightmare Accompanied by the Katechon

I have nightmares sometimes, and sometimes, if they’re vivid enough, I write about them. I actually draw a lot out of my dreams for my writings. The last really terrifying nightmare I had, some of the MR community members had the chance to experience, because I woke up in the middle of the night and starting babbling about it on-line, since I couldn’t think of another way to shake the fear off.

Not to go into depths about what my nightmare was about, let’s just say it was vivid and it involved lucid dreaming and false awakenings. If you experienced any of these phenomena, you know that having a nightmare while you’re lucid dreaming and falsely awakening is some scary shit right there, dudes.

When you deal with scary stuff, i.e. when you experience it, you will, more often than not, also deal with post-traumatic stress. It can last for a day, it can last for a week, or, if you’ve been fucked good, you just might need therapy. I had a small trauma from this nightmare I’m rambling on about, and was kinda hoping for the next few nights that I will not have the same occurrences again, ‘cause a girl really needs her sleep. And, after about a week, it wore off. More specifically, the fear had worn off, other “side-effects”, however, came into light…

Now I know a little bit about dreaming from some of my studies of Freud and Lacan, and I know about how images in dreams are a latent representation of one’s subconscious, but I have become strangely fascinated with this dream, with the false awakenings and the whole lucid aspect of it. I started to research and read about it, and came to realize that there is more, so much more about my dream than meets the eye. I’ve learned that by peeling off the layers of the dream, one by one, you can come to torrents of meanings, symbols, latent messages and the exploring could go on forever. It was a process. From the night the nightmare had occurred to the sensation that there are things there that require close examination, that possess depth that can stretch above and beyond, and that I will keep on discovering as long as I have the will, well, it was an overwhelming feeling.

There was just one other time that I encountered that exact same feeling and the same process of realization, and it was when I first heard Deathspell Omega’s EP Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeternum: Chaining the Katechon.

The first time I listened to it, I thought to myself, now this is some scary shit. It had that sinister undertone to it, the same kind a nightmare leaves as an aftertaste of its messing with you when you’re not prepared, and while I didn’t need therapy, I was kinda hoping for the next few days that I wouldn’t hear it because a girl really needs her non-scary-shit music. And then, after about a week, the side-effects kicked in. Yep, I became strangely fascinated with the Katechon, with its layers, its philosophy that can stretch above and beyond, its symbolism and its meanings.

At this point, I couldn’t stop listening to it, trying to decipher the enigmatic feeling that arouse every time I was hearing it, at the same time being overwhelmed with the fact that my dream, my nightmare, something that came from inside of me, provoked the same feeling as a piece of music, something that was coming from the exterior and had nothing to do with me. I was/am captivated with that music that allowed me to be scared by its seriousness and, at the same time, allowed me to consider it beautiful, and worthy of much thought. It allowed me to sit and ponder about how it transcends genre classification and how music can serve as a vessel for philosophy simultaneously being glorious while it’s doing it… Much like a nightmare does.

The two became synonyms, the Katechon and my nightmare, I couldn’t think about the one without thinking about the other, and I am still spellbound by both, equally.

So, folks, enjoy my nightmare.