{A Dream of Three Chapels}[21st December 1981]

[Redbook2:215-216][19811221:1815]{A Dream of Three Chapels}[21st December 1981]

1981.12.21.1815

A dream, or part of a dream, this morning, in which I stood in a churchyard or sacred place, in the town I think: perhaps in Autumn. I was located between three buildings (although whether in space or actually in time I cannot now say). The first, on my left as I turned, was a miniature chapel: not much taller than a man, complete with doors and windows, but empty. The second, next to me in the middle (I had to turn right round to see it), was a complex round spire construction, on its own base, more like a memorial or shrine than a chapel, freestanding but in some way related to the other two (as it might have been their spire). The third, on the remaining side of the spire, was similar to the first miniature chapel, but perhaps larger. From its upper windows or rooflights, with extraordinary dynamic skill, the artist had carved the black metallic figures of devils being ejected with force, as if they had been expelled by some psychic explosion within the chapel. I wanted very much to find the original of this work – I seemed to know that it was a dream – or, secondly, to create it myself. As I passed into a waking doze I became aware that this work represented Christ clearing the devils from the Temple; although it seemed to me that the end doors of this chapel, although wide open, did or should show no one.

It was only as I awoke more fully that I remembered there there is no such episode recorded in the life of Christ: he cleared the merchants out of the Temple, and the devils out of individuals; he resisted temptation on the highest point of the Temple, but so far as I know he did not cast devils or demons out of the Temple.

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