The Grotto of the Sun and Moon, Nicaragua
Dreamed 1949?, watercolor 1952, by Ithell Colquhoun
Why Nicaragua?
It began with a dream in the late 1940s, and I can't do better than quote a prose-poem in which I recounted this dream soon after it had happened.
The Grotto of the Sun and Moon, NicaraguaI didn't know anything about Nicaragua then, but since--and fairly recently--it has been in the news for volcanic eruption, political revolution and Bianca Jagger. There is water in the name Nicaragua, and Bianca means white; this suggests aspects of the lunar element. A friend whom I consulted at the time of the dream was of the opinion that I should have a series of such dreams with obvious interconnections, but this did not occur.The approach to the grotto is a wide unroofed corridor or narrow courtyard, something like the entrance to one of the circular tombs of Mycenae. (One remembers the very pale Mycenaean gold, thinly beaten out.) Above the high wall at the opposite end the sky burns intensely blue. In the middle of this wall a triple archway is hollowed out, the surfaces at right angles painted in true fresco with deep yellow, flower pink and slate blue. This design is mainly abstract, but sun's rays are suggested at the top of the central arch on the wall surface facing the spectator.
Inside the arch rises a mass of dark porous substance like pumice stone, but each of its holes is large enough to admit the passage of a ray of light.These rays seem to shine through the holes from the hidden core of the grotto; some are paler than others, and I understand that they proceeded from the sun and moon. Each hole represents some crisis in the annual cycle of these luminaries, and, as at Stonehenge, a gap in the circle allows the sun, rising on Midsummer's day, to strike a certain stone, so here the light streams through each hole in its own season; yet all appears to be happening at the same time, bringing the greatest satisfaction.
I also painted this dream as a picture. The tide of both poem and painting was heard as a disembodied voice in the dream.
However, I tried to find out if there was such a place as the grotto by studying books about the country and found that very little had been published on its topography or archaeology. There was no mentioned of such a frescoed temple.
Perhaps 'Nicaragua' is not to be taken geographically but to be understood in the same sense as the place names in alchemical literature, like the 'India' of Lambspring or the 'Andalusia' of The Book of Ostanes. The central archetype is prefigured in the first illustration to the Splendor Solis of Salomon Trismosin, though the commentary on this seems to be at fault since it calls the luminary on the ground 'a second sun', whereas it is plainly intended for the moon.
The grotto may be the sanctuary where the chemical nuptials of the sun and moon are celebrated; and I had the impression that there was, now or at some former time, an initiatic group called something like the Order of the Sun and Moon, perhaps localized in Nicaragua.
Having discovered nothing of any relevance I assumed that the grotto was an occult centre used by an eponymous order which existed in the past or still exists, either in that state of being commonly recognized as reality today or else in regions variously called the Higher Worlds or the Inner Planes. For some reason I obtained a glimpse of this mysterious centre, and now if I receive an idea or perception which does not seem to be a direct result of anything I have read, heard or thought, I take it to be a message from the order.
At least the volcanic character of Nicaraguan geology is aptly indicated by the tufa-like formation of the rock in the grotto, and the weather also seems to be typical, as perhaps other matters will be verified in the future. One may speculate that the teaching of the order takes up an equally balanced position between the forces of yang and yin, to use a Far-Eastern term now modish in the West where the words sun and moon were once understood in a similar sense.
SOURCE: Medea's Charms: Selected Shorter Writings of Ithell Colquhoun, 2019 (Richard Shillitoe, ed.) , p.341-3 + plate 22 (between p.288-89); Shillitoe's picture notes say she painted two versions of the dream and tried to interpret it for "decades".
EDITOR'S NOTE
When I started the World Dream Bank I chose dreams that were direct and interpretable. Clarity's a virtue, but plenty of my own dreams, like Colquhoun's, are compelling but cryptic--and may stay so.
The disjointed feeling of her notes may be the result of coming back to this dream from different angles for years--not an interpretation but a slow accretion of ideas & associations, trying them on for size. Even if none quite fit.
If I understand Colquhoun--never easy--she's saying her dream showed the cave from a spacetime angle that simultaneously presented the whole year's cycle. I don't find this too odd, as I frequently dream of timescapes myself; spatializing time makes it easier to grasp.
What I do find odd is "if I receive an idea or perception which does not seem to be a direct result of anything I have read, heard or thought, I take it to be a message from the order." Any stupid idea? A wee bit naïve! Yet her editor, Richard Shillitoe, mentions at least one painting and three poems that all warn "otherworldly beings can be unreliable." In practice, Colquhoun was more cautious than her quote sounds.
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