Dreams
as part of
the Creative Process

      In dreams as in baptism, water is an image of spiritual rebirth as well as of cleansing. It is also a symbol of the mysterious realm of the feminine – the unconscious and womanhood.

• Bathing | Moral purification.

• Flood | Destructive, negative aspect of the life force; chaos, boundless catastrophe, usually beyond the dreamer's control, which 'inundates' and 'engulfs' him.

• Fountain | Rebirth; inner 'fount' of life.

• River | Life, and the twists and turns of fortune.

• Sea / Ocean | The original chaos; the cold, inhuman cosmic unconscious.

• Well | Resources and gifts that are great value to the dreamer.

T. Chetwynd

      The 'tree of life', with its widely ramifying branches; the process of growth, development, which is linked with the idea of family tree that unites the human race.

      It represents Axis Mundi, or world axis, that connects three realms — Heaven, Earth, and Underworld. 

      The tree is a means of ascent to higher consciousness, and an image of the True Self, man's essential nature.

• Forest / Woods | The Unconscious. Place of reflection & encounters with supernatural forces and beings.

T. Chetwynd

      The first and most immediate image of Divine Power seems – almost universally– to be the earth, providing and nourishing like a mother: and devouring the corpses like a terrible mother eating her own children to restore her strength. This was the Lady ruling the symbolic Physical Age of Man. Then came a Mythological Age, with a deep sense of corporate identity, a growing unconscious awareness, with individual prowess streaking like the white crescent gander across the night sky – to meet its ruler, the Moon, lord of civilization. Julian Jaynes has made a bold attempt at tracing the rise of a third World Age about 3000 years ago, when the personal conscious Ego emerged. Its symbol the Sun, or winged Sun Disk, rose to prominence at the same time: depicting the lord of the daylit world, and also the image of that inner light which separates and analyses into intellectual categories and metaphysical abstractions. 

      With the rise of the solar cult, buildings are oriented towards the Sun and the sacred year is arranged around the solstices and equinoxes of the Sun. The Sun becomes the primary symbolic Light in opposition to the Dark, and it gives birth to a brood of twins and the realm of opposites. The conscious Ego divides light from dark, masculine from feminine and life from death. Symbolically it can be identified with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge – the Apple with Apollo, the Sun. The separate personal Ego is mortal. Whereas the older Lunar Soul depicted the continual process of transformation within the whole vast universe, the solar cult spotlights the day and then dies. His journey measures time, destiny, the journey of your life, and the Ego dying, and hoping to rise.

T. Chetwynd

      Moon – the oldest of the measurer of Time, so was one display of the Divine Power of Time and Number. Staying the same through many transformations, the Moon is a symbol of the One-in-the-many, the changeless essence underlying the many changing forms.

      Passing swiftly through the different quarters of the sky and various signs of the Zodiac, through five main phases (new-half-full-half-old), the single moon takes on many characteristics. It is itself the transforming Trickster and Magician, but it also receives different names and titles in its different aspects, which then became separate figures (hypostases) and in due course get revered as distinct Divine Powers. So the first New Moon after the Winter Solstice is of quite a different character from the Full Moon at Midsummer or the Old Moon going out at the end of the year. And these different characteristics gradually become the separate Deities about whom the myths are told: the masks worn for the drama get stuck.

      Jungian psychology is particularly concerned with relating back to the Moon period of man’s evolution, still lying in his collective Unconscious, with its many faces and figures that tend to merge into each other and re-emerge in a magical or imaginal way – without any of the restrictions that the logical and literal left-brain would like to impose.

T. Chetwynd

      Being naked in a dream represents the individual's desire to remove his façade, or persona; to drop all pretenses and be himself for a change. But this will also make him defenseless. This desire on the part of the dreamer to be less secretive, less on the defensive, more open and frank may be with regard to one particular person, someone with whom he wishes to get beyond mere social formalities; or it may be directed at someone who has misunderstood his outward behavior.

• Being 'stripped down' to the 'bare' facts, the 'naked' truth, etc. | Exposing one's natural instincts and sexuality, which are also part of the true self; letting repressed longings be known. Also revealing one's own inadequacy or shortcomings; a feeling of inferiority or guilt.

• If everybody disapproves | The dreamer fears that if he lets others see him as he really is, dares to be himself, they will disapprove.

• If nobody minds or takes any notice | An attempt on the part of the unconscious to rectify the individual's exaggerated self-consciousness. Or the dreamer himself doesn't care, perhaps determinedly, about his outward appearance or the effect he has on others.

T. Chetwynd

      Nightmares are dreams which frighten the dreamer and/or dream-ego. They usually constitute urgent messages from the Guiding Self of the dreamer about hitherto unheard, denied, or inadequately considered material. They may point to new problems and adaptations far from the dreamer’s ego attitude which come as frightening intruders into the habitually comfortable psychological space of the dream-ego. They may expose outgrown limitations and/or constitute invitations to development that the dreamer fears to risk. Nightmares serve to support the death of the currently held ego attitude; and as such they may include dreams of dying or dismemberment.

      Other nightmares may point to spoiling elements attacking newly integrated capacities and attitudes. Sometimes they even use the image of threatening monsters. They can serve to coalesce the new ego position by presenting the threat or backlash of inertial complexes as a danger to be confronted and stood against.

      Other nightmares repeat traumatic situations as if to force their confrontation by the dreamer and to assist in the process of reaching some conscious relationship to the stressful and threatening energies on the object and subject levels.

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E. Whitmont & S. Brinton Perera

      Fish represents the contents of the deeper layers of the unconscious mind. At the turn of the World Ages, when the Age of Aries the Ram came to an end, Pisces the Fish became the first sign of the Zodiac, and so the head sign (roughly at the beginning of the Christian Era). The symbolism of Fish and Fishermen seems to have temporarily replaced that of the Ram and the Shepherd. Fish in the sea are symbolically related to stars in the ocean of space.

      As one of the primitive ancestors in the scale of evolution it refers to the remote past and comes from a profoundly alien underworld. The saving power of renewal and rebirth may be symbolized by fish, which are often the equivalent of the treasure in the depths of a cave or well.

• Fishing | Keeping the conscious mind firmly anchored to tangible reality, while trying to catch the treasures of the unconscious. A big fish may be landed, but if it is too big, the fisherman may become the victim of his catch. Fishing from a boat is plainly more precarious.

• Eating fish | Renewal, rebirth: fish is a miraculous food.

• Being eaten by a fish | Being swallowed by the unconscious.

• Whale | The realm of the feminine, whether the unconscious or the mother.

• Being swallowed by a whale | The story of Jonah, and a dark period in the bowels of nature during which the individual is replenished from the store of the unconscious, to be born anew.

T. Chetwynd

      Flying represents the wish to escape the pull of the earth. 'Flight' from humdrum everyday earthly existence, with all its tedious responsibilities, and therefore often 'flight' into the realms of daydreams and fantasies: 'flights' of fancy and of the mind.

      The desire for freedom may have a more spiritual foundation: soaring towards the celestial, the heavenly; the longing for immortality.

      On the practical level the dreamer may wish to transcend and overcome difficulties, to lift himself above the complicated ruts and patterns of life, or to elevate himself above other people, to excel or even to dominate; or just attempt to compensate for a feeling of inferiority. "To fly is to be lifted above those about one" (Artemidorus).

      On the physical plane, the ecstasy of sensuality: erection and coitus; possibly the desire for free love. Feeling light as air; this could have something to do with recapturing the pleasures of the swing in childhood.

• If the dreamer is away a long time, flies off into space or is unable to land again | The wish to escape the turmoil below may lead to a total lack of realism and even possibly the danger of madness, somebody whose 'feet are off the ground'.

T. Chetwynd

      Labyrinth represents the devious ways that lead to finding your center, your essential point, or True Self - and then getting out to apply this to everyday life. The maze is in the route of spiritual initiation.

      It is Death that waits at the center whether in the shape of the Minotaur or the Cross. Death is the entry to the underworld where the perspective of Soul can be gained, sometimes expressed as the myth of rebirth.

The breadth and the scope and the depth of life with all its twists and turns. The masculine Ego tries to go direct to the center and misses completely. Only the feminine muddle - a bundle of complexes - matches the complexity of life. Only the feminine Soul can get in and out.

      Mazes were places of the mystery cults and initiations and refer to the inner maze, the ducts of vitality and energy coursing through the body which in turn are symbolic of inner paths and ways leading to higher states of consciousness.

      Mazes were placed near the entrance at the West doors of Gothic cathedrals especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and represented the Way of the Pilgrim - fraught with obstacles; an alternative to the Way of the Cross.

T. Chetwynd