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.