I thought i'd post this in here because i'm not sure what this was. Before i go on, i'd just like to mention that i already have a memory of a past-life as a woman onboard an old wooden sailing ship, i've been meditating on this, but until now i always seem to be distracted by other things. I have to make it clear that in my present life, i have a very deep interest in the British Navy around the time of Nelson in the early 1800's. Maybe this interest is because of a possible past-life that i had at that time.
Anyway, on to the vision. It was very brief, but very clear. I was sitting alone in a public house, filled with noisy drunken men. It was very dimly lit in there, and there was a huge log fire burning to one side of the room, and the floor was wet and sticky with spilt ale, there was a lot of shouting and laughter going on. Here i am a woman, pretending to be a man, and i was here for a purpose.
The entrance door bursts open, and a group of men enter, some of them are in a uniform very much like this, and a couple of them take their place at the entrance doors, as if to stop anyone from leaving (again, i was able to find the picture easily with my knowledge of the era) I see 2 men from the group grappling with a man, one of them is pulling on the sleeve of his jacket, but he manages to wriggle himself completely out of it, and makes a run for the exit, where the 2 guards stop him and turn him back into the room. I see his jacket on the floor, i pick it up and put it on in the hope that it will further conceal my "feminine" curves, and it fits perfectly.
I have a mug of beer, and i try to drink and appear like a man, i wipe my sleeve across my mouth and spit on the floor, i'm trying to catch the attention of this group of men.
This is where the vision ends. I think the group of men were what was known then as a "press-gang". They were an organisation of the Navy, who used to patrol the streets and bars, and they would "recruit" civilians or merchant seamen, often by force, into the navy to fight for their country.
In the vision, i felt that i was trying to get myself press-ganged into the Navy, by disguising myself as a man. I may have succeeded because i have further memories of being onboard the vessel, although it was as a woman, who was not pretending to be a man, so somewhere down the line i may have been caught out.
Now i'm not sure how much of this vision is memory, and how much may have been influenced by my present knowledge of the Navy at that time. It certainly didn't feel like an ordinary dream, and it just felt too personal to come from something that i may have previously read about. I could feel the tension in that house, and i left the meditation with butterflies in my stomach. A quick search on Google has so far come up with some promising results, like this:
Anyway, on to the vision. It was very brief, but very clear. I was sitting alone in a public house, filled with noisy drunken men. It was very dimly lit in there, and there was a huge log fire burning to one side of the room, and the floor was wet and sticky with spilt ale, there was a lot of shouting and laughter going on. Here i am a woman, pretending to be a man, and i was here for a purpose.
The entrance door bursts open, and a group of men enter, some of them are in a uniform very much like this, and a couple of them take their place at the entrance doors, as if to stop anyone from leaving (again, i was able to find the picture easily with my knowledge of the era) I see 2 men from the group grappling with a man, one of them is pulling on the sleeve of his jacket, but he manages to wriggle himself completely out of it, and makes a run for the exit, where the 2 guards stop him and turn him back into the room. I see his jacket on the floor, i pick it up and put it on in the hope that it will further conceal my "feminine" curves, and it fits perfectly.
I have a mug of beer, and i try to drink and appear like a man, i wipe my sleeve across my mouth and spit on the floor, i'm trying to catch the attention of this group of men.
This is where the vision ends. I think the group of men were what was known then as a "press-gang". They were an organisation of the Navy, who used to patrol the streets and bars, and they would "recruit" civilians or merchant seamen, often by force, into the navy to fight for their country.
In the vision, i felt that i was trying to get myself press-ganged into the Navy, by disguising myself as a man. I may have succeeded because i have further memories of being onboard the vessel, although it was as a woman, who was not pretending to be a man, so somewhere down the line i may have been caught out.
Now i'm not sure how much of this vision is memory, and how much may have been influenced by my present knowledge of the Navy at that time. It certainly didn't feel like an ordinary dream, and it just felt too personal to come from something that i may have previously read about. I could feel the tension in that house, and i left the meditation with butterflies in my stomach. A quick search on Google has so far come up with some promising results, like this:
Though officially ignored by the Admiralty, women on the vessels of the British Royal Navy, according to this myth-puncturing study, exerted a surprisingly strong presence in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during both peace and war. Stark, an editor at American Neptune magazine, distinguishes three primary sorts of women aboard ship: prostitutes; the wives of warrant officers; and women in male disguise serving as members of the crew.The "women seamen" who impersonated their male counterparts, lived in constant fear of being discovered, although unmasking rarely resulted in anything worse than being booted off the crew.