Every now and then I've thought why my dreams are nowadays so every day sort. Lately I've even woken very early to extreme tension in a dream, but even those dreams are far from the fantastic horror and nightmares. It's more about being late from a public transport kind of stuff. But I guess when one has had the drive to bring the opposites towards each other, the unconscious to the conscious and other way around from such an early age, we don't have to hang on dreams so much. For example, one might have heard his call to become a neophyte and being enough conscious of the mysterious currents the unconscious tries to lure him into, that he has managed to pursue this idea in waking consciousness by becoming fascinated by surrealism for example. Pursuing the calling and forming ones own relation to it, through art or other ways, such magnificent dreams might be left unseen, and the unconscious communicating with us through dreams might be left to draw further mysteries, perhaps less scifi ones, we are yet to reach. Some clearly alchemical dreams of mine has been very much drenched in the every-day sort of things of working with old women etc.Nefastos wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:39 pmPsychology and Alchemy wrote:18. Dream: A square space with complicated ceremonies going on in it, the purpose of which is to transform animals into men. Two snakes, moving in opposite directions, have to be got rid of at once. Some animals are there, e.g., foxes and dogs. The people walk round the square and must let themselves be bitten in the calf by these animals at each of the four corners. If they run away all is lost. Now the higher animals come on the scene – bulls and ibexes. Four snakes glide into the four corners. Then the congretation files out. Two sacrificial priests carry in a huge reptile and with this they touch the forehead of a shapeless animal lump or life-mass. Out of it there instantly rises a human head, transfigured. A voice proclaims: "These are attemps at being." (p.143)
Once again so extremely solid alchemical & magical dream that it makes one wonder what kind of unconscious neophyte the dreamer must have been.
The trauma casted by Christianity upon our culture has made this challenge extremely rarely overcome, because to many not identifying with the animal impulses would mean bowing down to the Christian law. Once again a reason why I try to avoid all political thinking even away from fraternity contexts: the choosing of side is always a fall in the inner accumulated integrity. The inner unification of the opposites is doomed by judgement of the surface masks (whether the masks are those of Christianity, Dionysian pagans, witches... whatever.)Nefastos wrote: ↑Mon Jun 15, 2020 3:39 pm Jung ponders, understandably, the old idea of a human being been released from his animal state with the aid of the serpent. (See Genesis & all kinds of similar kundalinî mythologies, including the Book of Dzyan.) He puts the ordeal in very good words, which must ring especially true to the ears of those walking the Left Hand Path:
Psychology and Alchemy wrote:During the process one is "bitten" by animals; in other words, we have to expose ourselves to the animal impulses of the unconscious without identifying with them and without "running away".(p.145)
I've just started reading Dante's The Divine Comedy (second attempt), and in the start Dante is climbing a mountain when he comes across different beasts that won't let him pass. He obviously isn't identifying with them, nor straight away running from them, but carefully tracing his steps back until he hears the voice of his master (Lucifer disguised as Vergilius, I presume) who leads him further down the falling arch to hell to hear the agony of its inhabitants. I assume this observation of the suffering in inferno is paraller symbol to letting the animals bite you. Although the specific happenings in the soul of Dante and in the soul of our dreamer here might somewhat differ.
This reminds me once again of the Phinx and the four animal parts relation to the four Evangelists. As the religious surroundings, laws, symbols, metaphysics and theology affects our souls so much, I had a wild idea if the Tetramorph could be set individually to certain ideal form to meditate upon. It would be a sort of purification of the concepts, and what would hopefully follow is the spreading of the fire to purify the other forms the tetramorph is presented in.Psychology and Alchemy wrote:The arrangement of the snakes in the four corners is indicative of an order in the unconscious. It is as if we were confronted with a pre-existent ground plan, a kind of Pythagorean tetraktys. I have very frequently observed the number four in this connection. It probably explains the universal incidence and magical significance of the cross or of the circle divided into four. In the present case the point seems to be to capture and regulate the animal instincts so as to exorcise the danger of falling into unconsciousness. This may well be the empirical basis of the cross as that which vanquishes the powers of darkness (fig. 73)