In 2024, US author
Megan Mary published
The Dream Haunters: A Metaphysical Mirror of Magick. Once again, the narrative pitches the reader straight into a world of dreams, storms, mirrors, cats, pumpkins and spells. Now, Megan Mary has published a sequel,
The Dream Mirrors: A Metaphysical Mirror of Magick. The author weaves dream interpretation seamlessly into the series of events. The story’s setting, Skye Manor, is on an island remote, yet connected to the cosmos. Nor does the author shun technology, the characters (protagonist Hannah, Aunt Jewelia, Madame Morgan, Ashlin, Old Man Adams) making a healthy use of cars and telephones as they battle the dark forces of the Dream Haunters, entities who would forever deprive dreamers of the route to their subconscious store of knowledge and wisdom. At every turn, I recognised the interpretation methodologies as laid out in my book,
Dreams: Exploring Uncharted Depths of Consciousness (Mandrake of Oxford, 2020). In Megan Mary's later book, Hannah is presented with the philosophy of the mirror, learning that what she (and we) see in the glass is but one step towards finding the true self.
The mirror is a topic that I explore in my other book,
Wicked Uncles and Haunted Cellars: What the Gothic Heroine Tells Us Today (Greenwich Exchange, 2024). Other gothic motifs that endear Megan Mary’s narrative to me include the ever-pervading storm, the old house and family connections, and unravelling mysterious documents. I was touched also with her selective use of the Celtic language, actually Irish, which I learned while growing up in Dublin. Above all is the warm sense of connection between the female characters, the sense that all women (fictional and real) can throw off victimhood and take our own steps towards self-actualisation, that we are not helpless pawns in a (mostly) male game of politics and economics. This is a message I stress again and again in “Wicked Uncles”, the gothic heroine being an intelligent, energetic and rational trope emergent in the literature of the time. Since “The Dream Mirrors” is the second in Megan Mary’s series, the time to get acquainted with her fiction is now.
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