The Manti Temple, Warren Jeffs, and Other Bizarre Dream Content

Even in the light of day, the exterior alone is a bit eerie.

I was just awakened , and I  in turn awakened the entire house,  in the midst of a most bizarre and perplexing dream. It was the first of its nature in what I certainly hope will not become a series of dreams. The subject matter for my most recent nightmare was being entrapped in an LDS temple.

The temple in particular featured in my dream was the Manti Temple, possibly because it's the only LDS temple in which I've actually been. When I was twelve, through an odd combination of flukes and people not believing me when I told them I had never been baptized into the LDS church, I participated as a proxy in baptisms for the dead at that temple. I'm uncertain as to why the Manti Temple was the venue for our trip, as either the Provo temple or possibly the Draper temple should have been the assigned temple for the LDS stake of residence of those involved with the temple event. Members of the LDS church who hold temple recommends have carte blanche to enter the temples of their choice to perform ordinances, but baptisms for the dead are usually  done only as organized youth group trips, and only to the ward or stake's  assigned temple. A Mormon adolescent with or without the necessary provisional temple recommend wouldn't show up at a temple on any given day to be a proxy for baptisms for the dead, nor would organizers of temple trips for such a purpose -- as far as I know, anyway --  typically pick out another temple and say, "We're going to visit Temple X this time to do baptisms for the dead there." That seems, however, to have been just what happened in the particular case of the trip in which I was involved.

Perhaps because it was a slow day at the Manti Temple when I was there, or perhaps because our trip was unusual in terms of our group traveling out of our immediate geographical area, we were given a sort of tour of the temple, and were  shown parts of the temple that are not ordinarily seen by those attending the just for baptisms.  I didn't think much about it at the time, but I've since  been told by others who were in attendance that this was a highly unusual deviation from ordinary practice and by others who were not in attendance that I must either have hallucinated or must be lying about having seen various rooms in the Manti Temple.

In any event, the tour of much of the Manti Temple provided fodder for tonight's dream. In this dream, I had gone again to the Manti Temple to be baptized for the dead for some inexplicable reason, and after the necro-dunking, I was in the  locker room getting back into civilian clothing when a lady who looked so old that she might quite possibly have been already dead appeared and asked me to follow her.  In retrospect, it surprises me that even in a dream I would  actually have followed -- or even have remained in the same room with -- anyone who looked so cadaverous as the woman of my nightmare. Dreams, nevertheless,  are not always logical or realistic, and I obediently [and obedience is not a trait for which I'm known] followed the woman out the door, up a staircase, down a long corridor, and into a room where washings and annointings were taking place.

I was handed a white poncho and told to take off my clothing and put the poncho on over my nude body. This usually happens in a locker room, I assume, but there was no obvious nearby place to get undressed. I just stood there. Then appeared out of nowhere a cluster of girls around my own age. A closer look at the girls revealed that they had the faces of my female attackers from a restroom assault occurring in my last year of high school, but  looked to be straight out of Warren Jeffs' YFZ Ranch, dressed in white versions of the typical clothing style of the compound, and topped with the trademark freakish poofy hairstyles. The girls surrounded me, ripped off my clothing, threw the poncho or whatever it was over my head, and physically forced me into a cubicle where another deceased-looking old woman uttered bizarre incantations while dabbing my body in places it ought not to have been touched with ice water and oil.

I was then physically forced, still weaing just my poncho even though others were adorned in white temple robes, to an assembly room of the temple. I clutched the sides of my poncho in a vain attemot to keep it closed and keep my nude body covered. A hymn was being sung, but the organist was having much difficulty playing it, and consequently kept repeating the first line over and over. It eventually occurred to me to go to the organ and to play the hymn myself, which I did. In retrospect, that was very stupid, as if I had been concerned about what might happen later in the temple ceremony, my safest bet would have been to remain in tha assembly room hearing the same line of the hymn repeated over and over. As I mentioned earlier, however, common sense and dreams are often mutually exclusive. Beyond that, few musicians can resist the temptation to take over and play something themselves as opposed to hearing the continued bungling of a particular selection.

After the hymn and a few words by a man in a robe, the group moved on into what was called the Creation Room, which had murals of the Garden of Eden on the walls.  People portraying Adam and Eve ran all over the room buck-naked, playing a perverted game of tag. Eve had in her possession a basket of apples. Speaking and acting much like the Wicked Queen in Snow White, she tried to force me to eat one of her apples, which I assumed to be poisoned. I eventually took one and pretended to take a bite, but spit the piece into my hand.

We moved on through other rooms where various people enacted things, and the group was instructed in how to do the Macarena dance. Then we approached a curtain and were asked to to recite lines from MacBeth in order to proceed through the curtain. I said my lines ("Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts; Unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of dires cruelty! O make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious vistings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall, you mrurdering ministers . . .") after which a strong arm gripped my hand and pulled hard. I was afraid of the person attached to the hand discovering the piece of apple I had spit into my own hand, and I thought there might be repercussions for not having swallowed it, but the owner of the hand clutching mine appeared not to notice. I tried to break away, but the grip was too powerful. I was pulled through the curtain to face Warren Jeffs, who maintained his grip on me and pulled me into the next room, followed by the gaggle of females with the accoutrements of Warren's female followers but with the faces of my attackers.

I expected to then pass into the Celestial Room, which I've seen in pictures as well as in the home of one of my paternal aunts, who has rather presumptiously decorated and designated such a room in her own house. Instead, we made our way into the school restroom that was the site of my assault. Warren's female posse tore the poncho from my otherwise nude body and forced me to the floor as Warren removed his clothing and descended upon me.

At that point my screams awakened everyone in my pseudorelatives' condo and in the one next door. A next-door neighbor telephoned to enquire about the screams. I heard my pseudouncle telling whomever it was on the other end of the line that he or she was more than welcome to come over to see for himself or herself that it was just a kid who'd had a bad dream. My pseudorelatives know the neighbors, so the neighbors presumably didn't genuinely believe anything truly nefarious was happening and were merely calling out of neighborly concern. No one showed up on the doorstep, so I suppose the caller was adequately reassured.

I feel both unsettled and, for some reason, dirty, but it's just a silly dream. Now I can't get back to sleep, so I'm entertaining myself with the Internet becasue it's quieter than the TV, and other people here aren't so sleep-impaired as I am.

Good morning and have a great day.

Half Mormon

My parents would argue that it makes no sense whatsoever to call oneself one-half of a religion based on having inherited it but not on half-practicing it.  I argue that (A) they're wrong on so many levels it's tough for me to know where to start a rebuttal and (B) by the time I've been both blessed and necro-dunked, I can say I  have practiced it

I've discussed the circumstances surrounding my brother and I having been blessed before. My grandparents wanted my brother and me to be considered LDS children of record, so they had us blessed in an LDS chapel during Fast & Testimony Meeting when we were two years old without bothering to enlighten my parents as to what had been done.

The necro-dunking incident -- more properly known among true-believing Mormons as "Baptism for the Dead"  was more an act of confusion. I was staying with relatives in Utah. A necro-dunking trip had been planned for the local LDS ward's youth. My aunt was going to be gone for the day with her four children who were too young to participate in necro-dunking, while the other three children were going along for the temple trip, and she didn't trust me alone in her house all day. (I was twelve at the time.)  In order to be allowed to participate in the necro-dunking activity,  had to pass through two worthiness interview checkpoints.

The first checkpoint was with the local bishop, who was my uncle. He genuinely thought I had been baptized and was officially LDS.  The next worthiness interview checkpoint was with a member of the stake presidency; an LDS stake is the rough equivalent of a Catholic diocese. The stake president in the area happened to be  another uncle by marriage, who also was laboring under the false assumption that I had been baptized Mormon and was officially LDS, and therefore eligible for necro-dunking.

I told both of these men I had not been baptized, but both thought I was lying in order to avoid attending the necro-dunking activity, and both signed off on my level of worthiness to be baptized on behalf of someone who had died in the distant or not-so-distant past. With all the lying I was supposedly doing in order to get out of participating in this activity, one would have thought my worthiness would have  been seriously compromised. The last I heard, bearing false witness was one of The Big Ten No-Nos agreed upon by both Mormonism and Catholicism. (It's one of the relatively few distinctions upon which the two religions agree, and even here they cannot agree upon which number of commandment it is, which is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of all things Catholic, Mormon, or anywhere in between.)

Anyway, I was necro-dunked in the Manti Temple a huge number of times because I was such a light-weight that dunking me didn't tire out the priesthood holder who was doing the dunking.  I finally got the man's attention and told him I needed to catch me breath, so he let me go.

The whole issue regarding my bona fide Mormon-ness concerns whether or not I was baptized for myself.    We all agree now that it never happened.  I think, however, that by the time a Mormon priesthood holder dunked me somewhere between thirty and one-hundred times (even among those of us present for the particular necro-dunking session, we cannot agree on how many times I was actually dunked; my relatives say one person would never be dunked close to one-hundred times, even though they acknowledge that I was dunked substantially more than is usual; i say I lost count at sixty-eight and that it went on considerably past the point where i lost count) some of it had to have spilled over the temple's "to infinity and beyond" territory and into the here and now, and that it counts. I have the right to consider myself  however much Mormon that I choose to consider myself.

The interesting thing is what happened in the eyes of the LDS church to the souls of those dear departed dead people (I acknowledge the redundancy of my description) on whose behalf I was necro-dunked. Must someone else be necro-dunked on their behalf, or are they considered good to go?  I would write the LDS church headquarters in Salt Lake City to ask The Big Boys, but they no longer entertain letters with questions from the masses.  If you write them with a question now, they send you in return a form letter telling you to consult and rely upon the counsel of your local LDS leaders. I would consider doing that except that relying upon the counsel of local LDS leaders was what got me possibly  invalidly necro-dunked in the first place.

My brother, too, is in a somewhat unique state of half-Mormon-ness.  He holds the Aaronic Priesthood of the LDS church without ever having been baptized, which is, if anything, even less probable than having been baptized for the dead without having been baptized for the alive.  I think my family is  just a bit special where Mormonism is concerned in such a way  that we can skip steps of Mormonism just as some people skip grades in school. We skipped a grade in school as well; it seems we're special in more ways than one.

I may be half Mormon, but I'm not yet half-finished with my work for the quarter, so I must return to the grindstone from whence I sprang.