For the past few nights my dream life has been very active - vivid and detailed and weird. A Freudian analyst could have a field day and I'm sure with a dream dictionary I could find any number of interesting interpretations of the images playing in my mind while I sleep. In my shamanic training we were taught that dreams have tremendous magickal potential. Among other things, they can take us on specific and intentional journeys. Goddess I hope that wasn't true last night! One of my dreams involved being washed up onshore at an old-folks vacation spot!

I also believe, from a psychological perspective, that our dream life is often where we work out the puzzles and problems that our brain is too busy - or too blocked - to process during our waking life. It's interesting to me when someone I know says he doesn't dream. How can that be possible? I'm sure he must be dreaming, he simply must not have any recall of those experiences. Which is all the sadder for him. Our dreams, whether shamanic or simply cuckoo, are an invaluable source of information. The images they contain could be iconic and archetypal or intimately personal, but either way the meaning behind those images can be useful to us.

Much of the time it's very easy for me to tell where the symbolism in my dreams comes from. For example, I remember once dreaming of being some sort of detective and before I'd gone to bed that night I'd been watching a movie with a detective character in it. The night I dreamt of being a pastry chef I had visited that day a beautiful patisserie and restaurant in Wellesley. Visions of sugar plums indeed! What makes the images in our dreams significant - if in fact they are, beyond the restful mind enjoying a bit of fun - is what they mean to us and why we might have chosen those particular scenarios to act out our hopes, fears, fantasies and psychological melodramas.

Each experience we have is informed by the experiences we've had in the past and perceived in the context of our history. The material of each new experience, including our dreams, is being worked upon by our history and is recreated in the context of the symbolic systems we possess. Language is a symbolic system. Traditional canons of art historical iconography are symbolic systems. So are street signs and the periodic table of elements. Obviously, the more extensive our knowledge of various symbolic systems, the richer and more varied the information we have at our disposal, and therefore our perception of our own experiences has the potential to be more complex.

We often ask someone who speaks multiple languages what language she dreams in, the common wisdom being that we dream in whatever language is most natural to us. If we place other symbolic systems in the same category as language when analyzing dreams, then it becomes easier to understand the various images that occur to us in a dream. If we imagine that our understanding of color, mythology, spirit animals or any other set of symbols that is fairly widely accepted among magickally oriented practitioners to be akin to that of language, then we can extend this understanding to dream interpretation, giving us the ability to unlock any magickal meanings behind our dreams.

Until we've received the training necessary to direct our dreams with intention - as in lucid dreaming - most of the time the information that comes to us in dreams is unconscious. This doesn't make the information any less valuable; it only means that we have to sift through lots of information to figure out the messages our dreams contain that may be more profound than an affinity for cupcakes with pink icing or a secret desire to dress like Diana Rigg. A proven technique for improving one's ability to remember details from dreams is to keep a dream journal. Over time, your dream journal will reveal recurring themes and images that you can use to interpret the meaning of your dreams - your meaning in the context of the symbology that is relevant to you.

Keeping a dream journal was an important part of shamanic training. For a shaman, dreams are extremely important tools and skill in remembering dreams is vital. But you don't have to be a shaman to be good at remembering and interpreting your dreams, or to begin to direct them with intent. In his book Temple Of Shamanic Witchcraft, Christopher Penczak provides a wonderful overview of dream magick that ranges from techniques for guiding dream experiences to directions for creating charms and sleep pillows that can protect against nightmares. Among the many resources out there, I found Christopher's book to be especially helpful. Christopher is the person who taught me my shamanic skills, so I may not be entirely unbiased, but I do believe his book is a terrific resource if you want to learn more about dream magick.

As for my knowledge of symbolic systems, this came through a particularly interesting graduate course in the philosophy of aesthetics and my own creative combination of the ideas of American philosopher John Dewey and symbol theorist Nelson Goodman. One of the convictions that I came away from that experience with was that the greater our command of certain symbolic systems, the better equipped we are to experience life to its fullest extent. As a witch, this is even more true, because we accept that symbols are available to us from any number of worlds.

May your dreams be rich with symbols. And in them may you be washed ashore on a tropical island with nude sunbathing and cabana boys serving cold drinks!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 9:23 AM