Archetypes in Dreams

Coyote the Trickter by JW Baker

When we examine dreams with an eye to their meaning and structure, we discover that dreams speak a universal language of metaphor and symbol.

~~Jeremy Taylor

According to Taylor, understanding the archetypes and how they interrelate is both a complex and subtle task seeming without end. But, briefly, here are some of the archetypes one may encounter in dream work. Another way to get a grasp on some of the archetypes found in dream work is to study the major arcana of the Tarot, which is composed of 22 archetypes.

1. Persona: The part that shows; the “mask” we wear. This is made up of our choices of how we wish to be perceived, individually and collectively.
2. Shadow: The part that is denied and repressed; the dark, scary, immoral, unpredictable, and unconscious/unknown part of ourselves.
3. Light & Darkness: Archetypes of consciousness and unconsciousness; the quality of light in dreams is most often a metaphor of the extent to which the main theme of the dream either is or is not already known and acknowledged in waking life.
4. Animus & Anima: The man inside a woman, and the woman inside a man, respectively; figures representing our deepest intuitions and feelings about the opposite sex.
5. Trickster: A figure representing human consciousness itself–simultaneously knowing and foolish, overblown, yet the source of all the gifts culture.
6. Divine Child: A figure representing new consciousness and self-awareness; born amidst trouble, yet most often surviving with its miraculous powers and the aid of:
7. Animals:Figures often representing instincts and natural drives; elements of life that are vital but not yet consciously differentiated, creatures and servants of:
8. Great Mother: Mother Nature, Mother Earth, cyclic time, the divine perceived in feminine form, the feminine principle(s); multiplying, dividing, nurturing, bringing forth all life, and simultaneously condemning all to inevitable death.
9. All-Father: The thunderer, the law giver, linear time, the divine perceived in masculine form, the masculine principle(s); abstracting, constructing, judging, and calculating with objectifying will.
10. Spirit Bird: A figure representing and embodying communication with the divine; unites the realm of the sky with the plane of the earth.
11. Wise Old People: The figures representing the oldest and wisest and most loving possibilities of our being; figures sometimes referred to as mana-personalities.
12. Willing Sacrifice: A figure representing and embodying the increasing consciousness of interior and exterior oneness; the One dividing itself in to Many, and the many in the act of dying to rejoin the One.
13. Mandala: An image uniting the circle and the angular figure exhibiting radial symmetry and a defined center; an image of harmony, beauty, balance, order, often used as a visual aid in meditation and worship.
14. Spiral: Image of evolution; the spontaneous archetype of cyclic, repeating rhythmic processes occurring amidst the forward flow of time; visible at all scales and levels from the shape of galaxies to the DNA helix.
15. Perilous Journey: Image of life and being alive, often a sea journey, a descent into earth, or into a labyrinth or maze, the journey to the land of the dead, the search for treasure, wisdom, immortality.
16. Death & Rebirth: In the realm of dream and myth, as in physics, energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Each dream death is a liberation of psychic energy from specific form and is linked inevitably with a new birth.

Taylor notes that theoretically there is no end to this list. “The archetypes inter-relate and metamorphose into one another in complex and subtle ways,” he says, “and like the organs of the body, they form a living whole.”

Acknowledging our Shadow aspects is the most difficult thing to do when it comes to dream interpretation because we often are afraid of or dislike those parts of ourselves. Yet we must face them over and over again in order to evolve and grow. The Shadow is most easily visible in the shape of those whom we most dislike and fear, Taylor says, both awake and asleep; that is, in both our waking life and in our dreams. These are the people we perceive as our “Enemies.”

Some Elements Always Present in Dreams

A recent image from a dream

I recently had a traumatic nightmare–the kind from which you wake up crying–and was so glad I had just read this particular chapter in Jeremy Taylor’s Dream Work. It helped with seeing the many different levels and meanings available to me–particularly when my subconscious was trying desperately to get my attention.

Jeremy Taylor

According to Taylor, EVERY DREAM:

1. Comes in the service of wholeness and the effort to harmonize interior and exterior life.
2. Contains an element of “libidinous,” sexual desire á la Sigmund Freud.
3. Contains an element of unconscious wish fulfillment (once again via Freud)
4. Depicts elements of the dreamer’s personality, interior life, and vital energies in its imagery (Gestalt school of dream work).
5. Contains an element of reflection of the physical health and condition of the body at the moment of the dream.
6. Demonstrates that both biophysical and biochemical behaviors accompany the act of dreaming.
7. Has an element drawn from the memories of the preceding day or two, known technically as “day residue.” Ask yourself not only what event is being recalled, but more importantly, WHY it has found its way into your dreams.
8. Has an element of the dream’s construction associated with the “information processing” of memory from short-term into long-term memory.
9. Has an element representing power and dominance relationships in waking life á la Alfred Adler.
10. Has an element of childhood and adolescent reminiscence, often associated with the question: When in my life did I first feel the way I am feeling now?
11. Has an element of speculation about the future: What might happen if I did thus-and-so?
12. Renders feelings and emotions into metaphoric images or symbolic forms as are thoughts, sensations and intuitions.
13. Takes the shape it does because that is the best “fit” that can be achieved, given the multiple meanings carried by the dream.
14. Has an element of archetypal drama, a universality, no matter how personal and/or mundane they may seem.
15. Has an element of “anniversary” or “commemoration” of significant waking life and dream events.
16. Contains an element of constructive self-criticism.
17. Contains an element of creative inspiration and problem solving.
18. Has an element of religious concern and intuition about the inevitability of death.
19. Has a balancing or compensatory element relative to waking consciousness.
20. Is constructed out of the seeming opposition between polarities.
21. Contains an element of “synchronicity” (dèjá vu, telepathy, precognition, or the like).
22. Has an element of “return to the womb” and “return to the crucible for melting and recasting” as in the evolution and development of personality and character, and every awakening is a rebirth into a potentially new life.
23. Is related in theme to all the other dreams one has in a single night (whether you can unravel it or not as you may not see the particular layer that holds the key to the theme).
24. Reflects a concern for waking life emotional relationships or the lack of them.
25. Contains an element of humor even if it is only waking from a nightmare to discover that it was, in fact, “only a dream.” The fundamental basis of dream humor is often in the radical synthesis and juxtaposition of incongruous elements within the dream.

As Taylor notes, there is theoretically no end to this list. Some elements will dominate while others will be obscured at various times, but they are always there.

The Red String of Fate

 

Do not be afraid. We are immortal, eternal spirits and we are always loved. In fact, we are love.

~~Brian Weiss, M.D.

17 Hints for Working with Dreams

If you have had success using the eight basic hints for dream recall, and once you start recording your dreams, Jeremy Taylor offers some advice on working with your own dreams:

1. Make a written record of your dreams no matter what method you use to record them initially.
2. When you record your dreams, do so in the present tense (reserving past tense for what is experienced as memory in the dream). Always make sure to note the date and the day of the week for each dream.
3. Give your dreams titles after you write them down. This becomes crucial when you go back and review the dreams over months and years because the moment of picking a title is often a doorway into insight.
4. Never forget that you are the only one who can know what meaning and significance your dreams can hold. The “tingle” or “aha” that you feel (or whatever you prefer to call it)–that inner knowledge that something seems true, strikes you as right–is the only reliable touchstone of dreamwork.
5. However, the “tingle test” is only a positive test. Just because you don’t feel something doesn’t mean that an idea or experience is wrong–only that you need to take it into consideration. It is always possible that you are not prepared to acknowledge some aspect of the truth that your subconscious is presenting you with.
6. Never put any limitations on the way you record or interact with your dreams. Prose writing isn’t the only way. You can use art, music, poetry, whatever seems to fit the context of your dream.
7. That being the case, give expression to the images, energies and ideas of your dreams in as many ways as you would like to explore. In this way you will open up your dream to more of its meanings and insights and gifts for living. Cultivate whatever means of expression work best for you.
8. Do not ignore dream fragments. Just because you can’t remember the entire dream doesn’t mean you won’t find meaning in just a piece of it. Often dream fragments are a condensed version of the meaning of your dream.
9. Read, think, pay attention to the full range of your experience in each moment, and try to make sense out of it as whole, in pieces, any way you can.
10. Every dream has many meanings and many levels of meaning so don’t get too caught up in the first or even second set of “tingles” you might experience. Try to see the whole range of meanings.
11. Remember that every one else is in the same boat, dream wise. We all have multiple layers to our dreams.
12. And, because of this it is important to love our enemies–we share one planet on the outside, one archetypal drama on the inside.
13. Re-experience your dreams in as vivid imagination as possible. Re-experience it from the different points of views of the different characters and figures within the dream. Write these imaginings down and re-read them. Imagine different ways your dreams may have continued had you not awakened.
14. Take the time to make the journals where you record your dreams visually interesting. The more you honor and welcome your dreams, the more likely they are to provide you with insights. In addition, how you decorate your journal now can give you great insight later into where you were at that particular time in your life.
15. Go back and look over all your dreams periodically. Keep an open mind for patterns and directions of development. This work can be greatly facilitated by keeping a second journal in which you keep your dream titles on one page with dates and page references and a list of significant events in waking life on the opposite page.
16. If you practice any formal meditative practice in waking life see if you can’t translate that to dream life as well.
17. Share your dreams with people you care about and ask them about their dreams.