|
So here’s a dream I’ve had:
I’m in a small bookshop looking through the science-fiction section. Just above the shelf in front of me, I see a book with a completely blank black cover. I pull it down and flip through, identifying it as “The Book of Shadows” at which point I put it back on the shelf and return to browsing sci-fi. Now the woman who owns the shop tells everyone there (there are 5 of us) that she’s closing. We make our way outside and find that it’s completely dark. The shop owner senses our surprise and asks - “Do you know what time it is? It’s 4:00.” I have the sense that the seasons are going by too quickly. Wasn’t it just summer and light out until 9:30 a few days ago? “The hour is later than you think, Gandalf.” - Saruman the White
(I actually don’t feel that this dream is particularly sinister, I just love quoting The Lord of the Rings too much to pass up the opportunity.) I’m going to share some of my dreamwork process here. While I think this is interesting in its own right, hopefully it will inspire some of you to engage with your own dreams in this way too. The book Inner Work, by Robert Johnson is the one to check out for a more detailed explanation of this process. Finding meaning in the dream: Dreamwork, associations; My associations to the image of browsing science-fiction in a bookshop are: Ideas, imagination, and optimism (I tend to prefer optimistic sci-fi to the dystopian type), also; escapism and “escape velocity.” There’s an adolescent connotation here for me too, because I read so much science-fiction in my youth. My associations to the “Book of Shadows” are: Shadow Work (in a Jungian sense). Emptiness, the void - a place the mind finds itself deep in meditation, different from the “fullness” of ideas and imagination. The Book of Shadows and the number 5 have a connection to witchcraft, to magick, to mystery (a feminine image, yin) & the science-fiction is all rocket ships and reason (a masculine image, yang). To go outside and find that the darkness is everywhere makes me think of the Egyptian Goddess Nuit - she is the night sky, the background to everything, the ground of being, all embracing. Dreamwork, interpretation; One possible interpretation is that I’m being shown an attitude in me that would prefer not to engage with the Shadow right now - that would prefer to imagine glittering futures of light. But “putting the shadow back on the shelf,” as it were, doesn’t make it go away - if one doesn’t engage with and try to integrate it in their inner world, the shadow comes instead from the outer world, as projection, as “fate.” Two relevant quotes from Jung come to mind; “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - C.G. Jung
Another interpretation, is that this is a compensatory image speaking to some balance of opposites or complementary qualities; feminine-masculine, foundational-expansive, empty-full, and it’s nudging me to embrace more of the dark, the mysterious, and the mystical. And then there’s the time passing element - perhaps it refers to aging; I have more thoughts than this... It seems I can uncover layer after layer of meaning from a dream if I give it enough time, but I’ll just leave you with these beautiful lines concerning Nuit from The Book of The Law before moving on to other topics; “I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.”
”She answered him, bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest!”
- Aleister Crowley, Liber AL vel Legis
|
