|
What follows is a modified dream fragment that I recalled upon awakening the morning of 11th April 1998.
In the dream I was with a woman showing me how to perform what appeared to be some kind of meditational technique. I was somewhat doubtful but nevertheless complied. All of a sudden my mind? thoughts? brain structure, vanished, became totally visible and translucent/transparent.
I was somehow floating in a vast ocean inside my own head like a deep
sea diver watcher! Next she projected what I can only describe as a kind of pulsed healing wave throughout the entirety of this oceanic volume-space of my mind
within which there were various floating 'bits' of flotsam and jetsam. I vaguely recall
hovering-floating and watching within this vast ocean even though
'twas my own mind! These 'bits' just vanished or disintegrated at the passing of this
'wave'. Either way they were all gone, all save for one large single
'fragment-entity'. I saw what I can best describe as an Onychophoran, an ancient annelid-type worm from the Cambrian era, swimming around inside my head unbeknownst to me, as a kind of parasite. This was all that now remained. She was herself surprised and perplexed by its survival. How could it possibly have survived what she had just
done she said, or seemed to say, and which I sensed or heard? She comments that it must be something extraordinarily deep and ancient for it to resist
what she has just done. I see that it somehow connects right back to the ancient Cambrian period of life's early evolution on planet Earth.
I observe an elongate annelid worm with many legs, somewhat like a millipede, and yet it was swimming, undulating, in the water, more like a ragworm. I was amazed and mesmerised by the scene and by the fact that this creature is supposed to be a land-dweller, but then the Ragworm is not, and it can swim in the sea. I don't feel at all happy about the presence of this worm in my head. I know it resembles an ancient yet still extant life-form found in Australia, the name of which I could not recollect initially, though I did so in the dream.
The previous evening I returned home soaked
due to a lack of buses and I therefore walked the 2 miles home from Hyde in the
pouring rain. Both the day before and the day after this dream I had been working sorting out
secondhand books. The night before I was exhausted, even too tired to read,
and so I mostly listened to music.
Of the many dreams I've recollected over the years only a relative few
would I consider being 'powerful' dreams, and this is one of
them.
On the 17th April 1998 I attached the following information to this dream fragment
shortly after browsing Stephen Jay Gould's - 'Wonderful Life' wherein I found sketches and references that fitted my dream.
"Aysheaia was perhaps the most famous and most widely discussed of Burgess organisms
-- for an interesting reason rooted in the two p's, 'primitive' and 'precursor.' Walcott (1911c) had described Aysheaia as an annelid worm, but colleagues soon pointed out with excitement that the creature could hardly be distinguished, at least superficially, from a small group of modern invertebrates called the Onychophora and represented primarily by a genus with the lovely name
Peripatus. The Onychophora possess a mixture of characteristics recalling both annelids and arthropods; many biologists therefore regard this group as one of the rare connecting forms ('non-missing links,' if you will) between two phyla. But modern Onychophora are terrestrial, while the actual transition from annelid to arthropod, or the derivation of both from a common ancestor must have occurred in the sea. In addition, modern Onychophora have undergone more than 550 million years of evolution since the supposed linkage of annelid and arthropod, and could not be used as direct models of the transition. A marine Onychophoran from the Cambrian would be a creature of supreme evolutionary importance - and
Aysheaia, generally so interpreted (Hutchinson 1931), became a hero of the Burgess [Shale]."
pp168, Harry Whittington quoted in Stephen Jay Gould - Wonderful Life:
The Burgess Shale And The Nature of History. Penguin pb 1991.
It is conceived that this particular Onychophoran ancestor walked underwater and fed upon sponges. The modern day representative now lives on land. The creature I envisaged in my dream was much more reminiscent of some kind of Polychaete-Annelid worm for it was swimming both by moving its many appendages as well as rhythmically twisting and undulating its entire elongated body. Yet the word Onychophoran came to mind, and also Peripatus, though upon waking I did not at first recall these names. The Onychophora, though classed as Arthropods, are a group of invertebrate life-forms that separated early in life's history from their Annelid ancestors. Though members of the Arthropoda they nevertheless have much in common with the Annelids. They refer back to an ancestral 'missing-link', though obviously not missing! Still the whole of the dream, and it was still vivid then and to a lesser degree even now (22nd June 2006) was of an annelid creature. It had legs and was not 'just' a worm, more like a sandworm Polychaete, but swimming freely in the water, and then of course there is the connection to the Cambrian period. Why dream of such a thing at all?
On the 1st May 1999 I opened a book and saw a picture of the Ragworm (Nereis diversicolor). It reminded me very much of the worm I saw in this dream. Hence this addition! I was already familiar with the Ragworm from my university days but had not made the connection. Nereis swims by moving the 'paddles'
or parapodia located in pairs on either side of each body segment throughout its entire length
and by undulating its entire body. They serve as respiratory organs and
look very much like legs. This image and the description given of its manner of swimming fits very closely my
dream recollection. Yet if this is so why did I perceive it as an Onychophoran at all, the distant fossil ancestor of which is called
peripatus? The Onychophora are still alive today in in various parts
of the world.
And today 21st June 2006 I append a beautiful image of an Onychopharan found in
a National Geographic magazine.
Starlord
|
|
The Cambrian Period
Explosion of Life
by Rick
Gore
photographs by O. Louis Mazzatenta
pp136, National Geographic, October 1993
Living fossils hint at the antiquity of complex behaviors
Still thriving after all
these years, four onychophorans (above), mysterious hold-overs of the Cambrian explosion, intertwine their multilegged bodies. Related to such Burgess Shale oddballs as Aysheaia (top), these animals - also known as velvet worms - became land dwellers some 250 million years ago but survive today only in dark, moist habitats such as the leaf litter blanketing the floor of a Costa Rican forest.
Their probable ancestor Aysheaia may have clung to sponges with its tiny, branching claws. Sharp protuberances around its mouth probably punctured those sponges, letting Aysheaia suck their juices.
Modern onychophorans have evolved strong jaws but still use variations on the stab-and-suck strategy. Before dining,
however, they spit immobilizing glue at their prey.
Onychophorans are among the few animals other than mammals with placentas. Most species, including Epiperipatus biolleyi, give live birth (below).
"Onychophorans keep their secrets well," says specialist Hilke Ruhberg of the University of Hamburg in Germany. Still, their secrets - like those of their Cambrian cousins - are being lifted from dark places into the light.
|
|
written 23rd June 2006
I don't know why but as a child I found the
Aysheaia-peripatus-onychophorans fascinating, perhaps because of my obsession-fascination-interest in Natural History, especially biology generally and more especially that of the invertebrates, and particularly as it concerned evolution. And thence down via the Arthopoda to the Insecta where my greatest interest then lay, which is not to say that the rest did not hold a fascination for me, such as the octopus, the spiralled nautilus, eye-tentacled slugs, multi-legged starfish, spiders, trilobites, etc.
I find it interesting that the fossil Onychophoran is called Aysheaia and
that this name has for a long time been connected in my mind with the name 'Ayesha', 'SHE who must be obeyed,' the powerful immortal feminine fictional character created by H. Rider Haggard, immortalised onscreen by the beautiful Ursula Andress, in the film version of the book "She", if I recall correctly. I
therefore wonder if this woman in my dream was, through the Onychophoran Aysheaia-Ayshea connection, a manifestation of my own feminine anima or
soul!
Starlord
|
%20on%20Black%20(orig%20light)1%20tinyb.gif)
%20on%20Black%20(orig%20light)1%20tinya.gif)
