The Curious Dream of James Warner

Around 1790, a Wilbraham man named James Warner put pen to paper and recorded one of the strangest dreams to survive from early Wilbraham.

Warner’s dream begins on a summer evening. The sun had set, darkness covered the earth, and the stars filled the sky. Warner went to his room, lay down on his bed, and soon fell asleep.

421 Glendale Road, Hampden (South Wilbraham). The home once owned by James Warner. Willie D'Angelo

What followed was no ordinary dream.

Warner imagined that four men dressed in ancient clothing appeared before him. They told him that they were “brethren” who had come from Jerusalem and had served as porters during the time of Solomon, when the great Temple was being built.

The four men began leading Warner on a remarkable journey.

First came Mount Horeb, where Warner was instructed to remove his shoes. From there he traveled toward Mount Moriah, the biblical mountain associated with Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. Warner imagined walls decorated with cherubim and palm trees and approached a mysterious door, hoping to gain entrance.

But entrance was not automatic.

Warner was examined and questioned before being permitted to proceed. He described hearing a tremendous sound coming from the east. Suddenly, his eyes were opened to a brilliant light, and he wrote that he saw “glorious things” that he would keep secret, revealing them only to those worthy of hearing them.

The dream then carried him across Jordan's stream, where he imagined thousands falling at once. Yet Warner continued, determined to see the holy ground of Moriah again.

His journey eventually brought him to Enoch's building, where he was told that Enoch was a son of Lamech and a craftsman “of high renown.” Warner was then told that he, too, was a “Craft” and skilled in his trade.

That qualification allowed him to enter.

Warner's dream became increasingly elaborate. He was taken through a series of sacred places and finally found himself associated with Aaron's threshing floor and the building of a great temple. There he was taught “five noble orders” surrounding the mysterious temple of wisdom.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the experience ended.

Warner awoke.

At the bottom of his manuscript he wrote:

“The end, James Warner Wilbraham S O M.”

More than a century later, the manuscript was still among Warner's papers when Wilbraham historian Chauncey E. Peck came across it. Peck considered the document so unusual that he preserved it in his 1914 History of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, under the heading “James Warner's ‘Dream.’”

Peck believed the manuscript had probably been written around 1790, based on the other papers with which it was found. But one mystery remained. What did Warner mean by the initials “S.O.M.”?

Peck wasn't sure. He suggested they might mean “Son of Massachusetts,” “Son of Moriah,” or even “Son of Melchizedek.” Considering the dream's references to Solomon's Temple, Moriah, Jerusalem, master builders and secret knowledge, Peck suspected that the initials had some deeper meaning, but he couldn't determine exactly what Warner intended.

The symbolism certainly resembles Masonic traditions and imagery, although the surviving document alone does not prove that Warner was a Freemason.

And perhaps that is what makes the old manuscript so fascinating.

We don't know exactly what James Warner experienced before putting pen to paper. We don't know whether he was recording a vivid dream, a piece of Masonic allegory, or something he deliberately intended to keep mysterious.

What we do know is that sometime around 1790, a Wilbraham man dreamed that he entered a secret world of ancient brethren, sacred mountains, Solomon's Temple, and mysterious ceremonies, and then took the time to write the entire strange journey down.

More than 120 years later, his dream was still waiting to be found.

And thanks to James Warner and Chauncey Peck, it survived.