|
Tarot and dreams belong together. Both come to us in images, both are elusive and filled with meaning that we can never fully grasp. Both Tarot and dreams attract seemingly endless books of explanations, going back all the way to antiquity. The ancient Egyptians composed books of highly specific meanings for every possible dream image or event. We find the same sort of books today, especially on the "dreams" shelves of New Age bookstores. Similarly, book after book offers to explain the meanings of the Tarot cards, and how they apply to our lives. And yet, the essential nature of Tarot cards, as well as dreams, remains their sense of mystery.
There are any number of Tarot spreads you can do to explain your dreams, even to tell you what you need to about them. The latter question is simple, really, you just ask "What action does this dream tell me to take?" The problem with such readings is that they tend to reduce the dream-and the Tarot-to simple answers, when often the act of questioning is so much more interesting.
In her fine book, Choice-Centered Tarot, Gail Fairfield suggested a more direct way to use Tarot for dreams. Write the dream down and separate it into sections. For example, you might end up with something like
"1. I dream I am playing the piano in a big empty house.
2. It's late at night and nobody is there.
3. I have no idea how I got there.
4. I don't know the song but I play it without hesitation and with great skill.
5. I can't stop." (not an actual dream.) Then you mix the cards and turn over one card for each of the sections of the dream. There are no questions, just a matching of the dream images with the Tarot pictures.
What this does is stimulate our own ability to re-enter the state that produced the dream in the first place. It helps us remember that dreams, like Tarot, speak a language of symbols. The difference is that dream language is private and to some extent inaccessible, while Tarot is a communal symbolic language, built up over centuries, and so more available. Bringing the two together makes the dream more transparent without reducing or caricaturing it.
Most of the dreamwork I do is for dreams that people bring to a class or a private session. Every now and them I will come across a written account of a dream that seems especially to invite a reading. Recently, while reading Roberto Calasso's book Literature and the Gods, I came across a translation of the oldest recorded dream in human history. Written down on a clay tablet in Mesopotamia (now Iraq), it comes from a woman named Adduduri, the overseer of a palace of Mari.
Adduduri wrote: "In my dream I had gone into the temple of the Goddess Bellit-ekallim, but the statue of Bellit-ekalim wasn't there! Nor were the statues of the other divinities that normally stand beside Her. Faced with this sight I wept and wept." (taken from Calasso) What a strange story! The oldest dream and it tells us of the disappearance of the Goddes (the spelling is meant to invoke both God and Goddess).
We should pause here a moment and deal briefly with the question of idol worship. As children, many of us learned that ignorant ancient people foolishly believed that statues were God. Now, there are always people ready to believe simplistic things about religion; a Texas governor once vetoed a dual language education bill with the words "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ it's good enough for the children of Texas." But in fact, most people throughout human culture have understood that divinity is subtle and complex. Idols mark-or invite-the presence of the Goddes. For Adduduri the disappearance of the idols meant that her Goddess had deserted her. And this too has afflicted people throughout history, the sense that we have not turned from Godde, but Godde somehow has abandoned us.
For the reading I decided to ask eight questions. Because the dream is simple it gave me a chance to ask surrounding questions, that is, about the context of the events. The deck is the Shining Tribe Tarot, designed and drawn by myself.
1. What is the temple? The Place of Stones.
Remarkably, this card (equivalent to the Page of Pentacles in traditional decks) actually shows a temple. While some of the cards depict specific sacred structures, this is a fanciful image of a temple shaped like a Goddess's body. It is simple, open, a place of sanctuary and protection. As Stones, the suit of Earth, it also indicates a concrete reality. Temples are both physical buildings and places of the mind.
2. What does it mean to enter the temple? The Four of Stones.
 ]
Fours represent structure, and here we see the idea of sacred structures that go back in time. An Egyptian style arch frames the picture, but inside it we see a prehistoric dolmen, two standing stones capped by a lintel, or crossing stone. Inside that, however, we see only golden light and a spiral of energy. And in front of the structures, a simple crack in the Earth seems to take the shape of a Goddess, with living plants at the heart and the womb (this image comes from something I saw just outside a sacred site in Canada). To enter a temple means to move through layers of reality, to move backwards in time, seeking the essential connection with the divine.
3. What is the presence of the Goddess? The Gift of Rivers.
The card is equivalent to the Queen of Cups, the Queen of the element of Water, which is the element of love. Thus we can say that the Goddess is the way love takes form in our consciousness. But we also can take the name of the card literally, and recognize that any time a Goddess is present we receive a gift of love and intense emotion. Notice in the card that two rivers merge into one. The divine presence allows us to join ourselves with an experience beyond our limited egos.
4. What is Adduduri's job as overseer? The Two of Rivers.
Like the Two of Cups, its traditional version, this is a card of love and a committed relationship. No one can properly perform that task, to oversee a temple, if they only do it mechanically. It must always be a deep emotional relationship. At the same time, the picture shows the flow of light and dark energy. The job as overseer requires sensitivity to all the different states of being that can take place in a sacred environment.
The next three cards deal with the action of the dream. We do not ask why, or how, but simply draw cards to match the events.
5. The Goddess is gone. The Five of Rivers.
This is a card of loss and sadness, similar to the Five of Cups. The river turns downward and the fish have no choice but to follow the bends. However, to follow the turn down and inwards reveals meaning, for the river becomes the neck of a bird who opens its mouth, as if to speak a truth.
6. The other deities are gone as well. The Seven of Trees.
Where the Seven of Wands in many decks shows a combative mood, this card embodies openness. We see the spinal column as a great tree, with ganglia branching out as smaller trees. The sun shines at the level of the heart. There is no head, no ego. The only way we can respond to the disappearance of the Goddes is to accept this, and to try to open our hearts to something greater.
7. She weeps and weeps. Death.
While the card of Death implies liberation (notice the open box, with streams of light symbolic of released souls), the experience is still a dying of what we know. For each of us our physical death ends the universe we know, even if it leads to a greater truth. And so, the disappearance of the Goddes-in the form we know them, whatever that might be for each of us-becomes a kind of death. Think of someone who for any reason loses her childhood understanding of religion. Hopefully it will open her to something greater (that Seven of Trees image, above), but it still hurts, still makes her want to weep and weep.
Finally, the last card addresses what I think of as the obvious question.
8. Where did the Goddes go? The Six of Birds (Six of Swords).
 ]
This card literally means dreams! The picture shows a temple where a woman lies asleep, seeking a dream vision. The Goddes have left their ancient places, their stone images (or old books) and have entered our dreams. And so, our reading on a dream about the loss of the Goddes comes full circle.
|
|
