Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: For this week we look into two excerpts presenting insight into the more practical aspects of Oneiromancy. In this second text, we explore nightmares and their taxonomy, and how their origins shape the differences between them.
First, then, we have the smallest of nightmares. Self-propagating memes, like viruses, propagate themselves from mind to mind, existing in the upper reaches of the dream, near the surface, where human thoughts resonate the strongest. They are not necessarily malicious, as they possess no agency of their own, yet even so, they can be a detriment to a human’s mental health, or worse. Sparse cases of suicide memes and ones spread by more dangerous entities are known. The latter, if encountered, should be treated with the greatest care.
A rare, much more nuanced type of nightmare similar to self-propagating memes exists as well — self-thinking thought — the simplest of all perpetual dream-entities, those that do not need but may still seek a host. They hang as fractal structures in the shallow dream, repeating themselves over and over. The causes of such errant thoughts are many and nuanced and best left for a more in-depth discussion elsewhere.
Then, after that, are the man-made nightmares, the simple things that haunt the dreams of the Norma. Though they lack proper agency, bound to another mind and its expectations, they act with malice, reciprocating the mind’s expectation for the malice to exist. The monsters of our nightmares are reflections of our own mind, in particular our fears, lashing out against us. They are the unfortunate side effect of an imperfect mind given causal agency over the dreaming world. They are barely a threat for mages, but they may be the cause of dangerous psychological feedback loops for the Norma. Nightmares may be shared among people as well. Such instances become far more potent and unpredictable, with perhaps the most prominent among them being our brethren upon the Moon.
Rarely, we encounter nightmares spawned from the minds of alien beings, and their nature is often impossible for us to fully grasp. Due to the vastness of some alien minds, the nightmares they spawn may exist on a similar scale, taking in the form of stable pseudo-realities within the dreaming. Our minds will cloak them with new Masks, twisting and altering them to hide their nature before us. Such is the unfortunate curse of subjective qualia.
These nightmares have one thing in common: they come from a different mind, often a quite understandable mind. Indeed, the processes of these nightmares forming and operating are understood by modern magic. To go further, however, is to delve into a world of danger and mystery. And that is because we do not know how a thought becomes truly conscious and self-sustaining. A self-thinking idea is merely an echo; a self-conscious idea is not discernible from a soul. And yet, one that never had a body exists only as an idea within the world of ideas.
These entities are gods, and they are nightmares, and among the latter, they are those with the most power and malice among the ones we encounter. Some potent enough to bleed into the waking world. Like ghosts of things that never existed or manifestations of paradoxical forces, ontological causality beyond the scope of the physical realm.
Some theorise that such entities arise ex-nihilo from the endless, infinite chaos that is the deep dream. That they emanate from the furthest reaches of those depths, where the ousic pressure falls to such low values the ambient existence spews forth innumerable souls. Most of these entities dissipate just as quickly. Others are consumed by the Leviathans of the deep. And others still breaking free to more stable depths where they can exist unimpeded.
We encounter them as they breach into our dream-time locality and intertwine with our dreams. We cloak them in masks and give them names. But their true nature remains that of thoughts never thought and dreams never dreamt.
Perhaps we should think of them as lesser Leviathans, as they are second only to them.
These entities pose the most danger to humanity. Traces of our encounters with them still remain in our many myths and legends, just as the presence of the entities that were not hostile to us, the ones we’ve come to call gods. Yet, there is no difference between the two, apart from our own perspective, just like all nightmares are ultimately dreams that evoked unpleasant feelings.
Esoteric Musings... 