Tag: dream interpretation

The Dream Temple of Asclepius: A Portal to Healing Through Dreams

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In the ancient world, dreams were not merely fleeting nocturnal experiences but were considered profound sources of wisdom and guidance. People believed that their dreams held the key to understanding their deepest desires, as well as a means of connecting with the power of the divine. 

Dream incubation was a revered and ritualistic practice that held a central place in the cultures of many civilizations, including the Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans of the time. Those seeking divine guidance or healing would prepare for dream incubation by participating in elaborate ceremonies.

These rituals might include offerings to deities, purifications, and the recitation of prayers or invocations. The dreamers would then retire to a specially designated sleeping chamber where they would await a visitation or guidance in their dreams.

Among the many temples and sanctuaries dedicated to dream incubation, the dream temple of Asclepius stands as one of the most famous and enduring institutions of its kind. It served as a sacred space for healing and spiritual growth through the incubation and interpretation of dreams.

The Mythical Origins of Asclepius

Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing, played a central role in the temple’s legacy. According to Greek mythology, Asclepius was the son of Apollo and Coronis. His powerful ability to heal made him revered among mortals and gods alike. As the legend goes, Asclepius became so skilled in the art of medicine that he could even revive the dead.

This began to raise the concern of Hades, the god of the underworld, and he complained to Zeus. In response, Zeus struck Asclepius down with a lightning bolt, but later, recognizing the necessity of Asclepius’s talents, placed him among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.

Asclepius is linked to modern medicine today through the symbol of the Rod of Asclepius, still used by many medical associations today.

The Dream Temple: A Gateway to Healing

Asclepius’s enduring connection to healing and the divine led to the establishment of dream temples in his honor, with the most famous of these located in Epidaurus, Greece. These sanctuaries provided a sacred space for individuals seeking cures for their ailments and answers to their questions through dreams. The temple’s design and environment were carefully curated to promote an atmosphere conducive to dream incubation.

One of the most striking features of the temple was the Abaton, a specially designed sleeping chamber that resembled a cave. People seeking healing or guidance would stay in the Abaton after participating in certain rituals designed to incubate a dream.

They would spend the night there, hoping to receive a divine dream from Asclepius, who often appeared in dreams as a physician offering guidance and remedies. These dreams could contain instructions for treatments, the identification of herbs for healing, or simply comforting reassurance.

The dream seekers would then recount their dreams to the temple priests or priestesses, known as therapeutes, who would interpret the dreams and provide guidance for the necessary course of action. This practice of dream incubation and interpretation formed the heart of the temple’s therapeutic methods. It was not merely a place for physical healing but also a sanctuary for the nourishment of the soul.

Legacy and Influence

The dream temple of Asclepius has left a mark on the history of medicine, psychology, and spirituality. Its emphasis on the significance of dreams in the healing process predates many modern therapeutic practices. The temple served as a precursor to contemporary psychotherapy and the exploration of the subconscious mind.

In many ways, the practice of dream incubation and interpretation foreshadowed the vital role dreams play in understanding ourselves and becoming more aware of our inner experience. Today, practices like dream analysis, Jungian psychology, and dream tending can trace their roots back to the ancient dream incubation practices of the temple.

The dream temple of Asclepius stands as a testament to the enduring belief in the power of dreams as a source of healing and insight. It was a place where individuals sought solace and answers, where the boundaries between the divine and human, the conscious and subconscious, blurred. 

The temple’s legacy continues to influence contemporary therapeutic and spiritual practices, reminding us of the profound wisdom that can be unlocked through the enigmatic world of dreams. 

Inner Beso Dream

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Journal Date: February 2, 2021

At the end of the collection of short stories in Warming the Stone Child, Clarissa Pinkola Estés offers a couple tips for continuing the healing journey on your own.

The first one is this: “Pay attention to your dreams. Your dreams will tell you everything. In terms of injured instinct, dreams that are about animals that are injured or not acting properly are very good clues to what is hurt or what is injured in the deep unconscious.”

It’s funny, because just days before I heard this in this book, I had a very intense dream which fits what Estés is describing here perfectly.

From what I can remember, I had been struggling inside of this dream for a while before the parts that I became more directly conscious of occurred.

I remember that in this dream, I had been at a party for quite some time, feeling more and more frustrated as it went on.

Both my best friend and my ex-boyfriend were there. In this dream, we were still dating, but I could tell that he was losing interest, and not wanting to be with me.

Then my best friend showed up, and somehow it became known that she intended to sleep with him.

I tried to convince her not to do that, but apparently I didn’t do a very good job, because that’s exactly what happened next.

And in the dream, I just could not get over it.

I held on to that so tightly, with so much resentment and bitterness. I just couldn’t let it go. I told everyone I met. It was the only thing I wanted to talk about in my dream, really.

It just went on and on like that, endlessly, without reprieve.

It was like I had to convince anybody who would come near me how wrong it was. How it was something which could never be forgiven, which I had to hold onto forever.

This went on for a frustratingly long amount of time.

Until suddenly, I found that I was no longer at the party, but back on the streets of Whittier, making my way back towards my childhood home on Friends Ave.

And I had a little baby Beso in a wrinkled up, used and old plastic bag inside of my black backpack, just like the one I had in middle school.

Baby Beso was very sick.

I had fed him something toxic without knowing it was poisonous to him.

And so now I was trying to make my way back to this house, thinking that it was here that I would be able to take Beso out of the old bag in the backpack. 

I knew that he was suffering in there, it was dark and poorly ventilated, and I could only rarely look inside to check on him and see if he was even still alive.

And on top of this, I kept getting distracted, caught up again and again in telling everyone I encountered what a victim I was, and how I would never forgive them for what they had done to me.

This went on until I found myself on a street near Uptown Whittier, one which was on the other side of the alley where I had often walked through on my way to another friend’s house.

I took one last look inside of my backpack to check on baby Beso–and he was not doing well.

His eyes were red, deeply irritated all around the edges, and it was clear that he was suffering, struggling and very much in pain.

I was worried that he may not make it all the way to my mother’s house.

But I was convinced, for some reason, that there was nothing I could do until I reached this place, so I put him in my backpack again, and kept on walking.

And then I woke up.

I thought about that dream quite a bit that day. Clearly, there seemed to be a significant connection between what went on in my dream and in my world.

I remembered how my therapist has started calling the part of me that still needs mothering, the child within that requires loving attention and care, my “Inner Beso.”

I think it’s because I talk about my dog all the time, and how much I love being his “mom,” and how much I’ve learned from caring for him. I think he keeps saying that to encourage me to do the same for myself, to transfer my Beso-mothering skills into inner child, self-mothering skills.

What I got from analyzing my dream was this:

Maybe the bitterness and resentment I’ve been feeling towards my family aren’t serving a purpose anymore.

Maybe they are poisonous, maybe they are the toxic food that I have unknowingly been feeding my “inner Beso.”

And maybe I’m just going in the wrong direction entirely.

Why go revisit that old place in Whittier? 

Why go “home”?

There was nothing nourishing in that place to begin with. To keep returning there no longer makes any sense to me.

Maybe it’s just a distraction, a dangerous lie putting my inner child at further risk of being harmed.

Maybe the thing to do is attend to my “inner Beso” now, right where I’m at, as imperfect as that may be.

And please, take him out of that dirty old bag in your backpack immediately!

There is no reason to hide him away anymore.

All of this is to say, I need to turn and start heading in the other direction now.

This return to the childhood home, the return to the past, has served its purpose and outlived its usefulness. 

I’ve learned what I came to learn. Now is the time to move beyond it.

And I don’t need to wait to start caring for myself. I can start feeding my “inner Beso” healthy, nourishing food. 

I can give myself experiences that fill me up and nourish my soul.

I don’t have to wait anymore.

This Train is Leaving the Station

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Journal Date: May 5, 2020

I woke up early this morning to take my little puppy Beso outside before the sun rose.

Coming back inside, I gave him a snack and lay down to rest more on the living room couch while he played with his toys.

Soon, I found myself in the middle of a terrible dream.

In this dream, I was being rejected, shamed and abandoned by everyone in my life. I felt wildly out of control, unable to control my body or my reactions to anything around me. I was sure that I had been drugged, I had a vague memory of taking a pill I had been offered earlier in the dream by my mother.

I tried to tell the others in my dream it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t control my self, it was this drug I had taken that was making me act intoxicated, that the way they saw me wasn’t reflective of who I really was, but no one believed me, and left me alone with my shame anyway.

Soon I came to realize I was on a train, which continually traveled between two stations, an old station and a more modern one in a new town. Sometimes I would get off the train and explore the land surrounding each station, but inevitably I would find myself back on the train as it continued its ceaseless journey from one point to the other.

On one trip back to the old town station, I saw a hospital emergency room. I wanted to rush off the train and see if they could give me a drug test or something to prove the cause of my condition. But I could never stay off the train long enough, I always came back sooner than I would have wished to commence a new cycle of pain and confusion.

Once back on the train, I re-experienced each abandonment anew. Most times, it was one of my parents which were leaving me after delivering their cold, unequivocal judgements on how I was not worth the trouble to be around. But there were times when even my puppy Beso was taken away from me. It may not seem like much, but each time it happened, I felt my heart implode like a massive black hole in my chest, and I heard myself scream out loud.

This lasted until I was woken up on the couch by my mom. “Are you okay?” she asked. She had heard me scream again and again in my sleep, and was afraid something was wrong.

I finally got up and she brought me water and some aspirin to help with the headache I had woken up with.

“Look at Beso,” she said, pointing to my dog laying under the couch beneath me. “Even though you were making so much noise he never left you. He’s so loyal.”

I avoided thinking about the dream until later in the afternoon. I had fallen asleep again for a nap, and on waking up, the meaning of the earlier dream came to me all at once.

The drug I had been given was my trauma, my childhood experience and conditioning which told me I was and would never be good enough.

Being high (or in this case, low) on this drug had me acting in ways I felt I couldn’t control. I was reactive, reckless, hurting myself and others, watching this bitter pill create the wreckage of my life I knew, feared, and experienced over and over again.

There was still that part of me that wanted to get off at the old train station, to go back further into my past, to find some authority that would look at me and give me a diagnosis that would shift the blame onto anything outside of me. I wanted someone to say to me, “It’s the drugs talking. It’s this tough pill of trauma you’ve been hooked on for so long. We understand it’s not your fault.”

But no doctor could ever give me that script. Even if they did, few would believe me and even less would care.

I could feel all of the shame and fear and sense of “stuckness” rising up within me as I reflected on the dream and what it could mean for me.

Then I remembered, the train always kept moving. The train was always taking me forward, trying to open its doors for me onto new frontiers, but I had such a hard time feeling ready to make roots in this foreign territory, I was obsessed with proving something about who I was and who should be held responsible for all the consequences that came of that that I found myself again and again on that same train “home”.

Now I could see that when those doors opened again, I needed to plant my flag in that new space and declare the future my true home.

The past is a desolate place, a withered landscape, a war-torn country I could never trust as my own. In some ways I think that maybe I never had a home, I felt as if I’d been born at sea, a small ship at sail in dangerous waters. 

I know I can’t go back to where I was, but now I’m prepared to get off this train and build my own home, create my own safe harbor from a pattern I am putting together as I go along. I’m ready to go home, to the future, and leave that train of sadness behind for good.

Fermentation | The Fifth Phase of Alchemy

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The process of Fermentation is typically regarded as being composed of two steps in both laboratory and psycho-spiritual alchemy.

The first phase is known as putrefaction, in which the matter undergoes a second death and is cleansed of all remaining impurities. It is somewhat similar to the first phase of alchemy, calcination, in which the heavy dross of the material is burned off. The putrefaction is the final cleansing of the substance undergoing alchemical transformation.

The second part, or the true fermentation, began with a display of colors known as the cauda pavonis, or peacock’s tail.

In this second part of fermentation, the alchemist may experience visions or engage with psychic energies in a process known as active imagination. The alchemist may also experience fermentation through meaningful or prophetic dreams, out-of-body experiences, or through the use of entheogens or other mind-altering substances.

This fifth step of alchemy is critical in the Great Work, as through this process the seeker is given guidance and inspiration for how to continue on the path toward enlightenment.

Visions of Xiuhcóatl: Part 2

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Me as Cynthia, about to get eaten

During the last days of my medical treatment for the parasite, I was still feeling a lot of generalized fear and anxiety that would seem to come from nowhere and overtake me without warning.

One night, I was in meditation and I started to have a lot of fear regarding the way the vision had ended, with me being eaten by the turquoise serpent.

I think it was in response to one of the images Noé had sent me, of the man being swallowed by the serpent.

In his message he had said, “we see the being consumed by the matter planes and lower body impulses (Coátl) and unable to act for itself controlled by the parasites..”

😬

I was like, “Uh oh…this guy on the Mayan vase looks A LOT like me being eaten the other day. Am I in trouble?” 

I started to panic, thinking, “Oh no, it’s all over, I’m doomed,” etc.

But a stronger voice from above said, “Hell no! Don’t believe it. You will be given another vision, you’ll know what to do.”

I thought, “Oh no, not now! I’m too scared. I couldn’t…”

But it came more quickly than I’d imagined it would.

First, I saw the turquoise serpent to my right, with my body still in its belly.

Then a very large dragon appeared: a bright green, distinctly female dragon. It had a cute little red bow attached to the left side of its head. I feel a bit silly saying this, but that’s kind of how I knew it was me.

But not the personal, little me, not Eleanor, lying immobilized in the serpent’s stomach.

It was my higher self, my soul, the part of me which is eternal and beyond.

She took a step toward the serpent and looked him right in the eyes. He bowed his head, and though he didn’t seem to like it, he didn’t make any move to resist as she stepped forward and swallowed him whole, head-first.

It’s your turn now hehe 😉

I was a bit confused by this detail. “Are you sure?” I had always seen those images of the Ouroboros, the snake (or sometimes dragon) eating its own tail, and I thought it would be the same here.

“No, it has to be this way,” was the answer.

As I watched the last bit of the serpent’s tail disappear into her mouth, the dragon gave herself a little pat on the belly. With a wink, she said, “Don’t worry, babe. It’s not to hurt you, it’s to integrate you.” 😉

[Apparently my higher self has a sense of humor.]

I immediately recognized her words as echoing those of the serpent as he swallowed me to “transmute” me.

And then I saw as the head of the serpent reached the tail of the dragon, and vice versa. In this way, the opposites met and were joined.

The insides of their bodies dissolved into a golden, liquid substance, while their skins hardened into the shell of an egg. 

I saw my body inside the golden amniotic fluid of what was, I soon noticed, not an egg but a chrysalis. 

I lay inside this cocoon where, like the butterfly, I would soon begin to undergo the process of digesting myself, dissolving the cells of what once was in order to be transformed into the self I was born to become. 

And with that, the vision ended: with me, in a gentle sleep before the last decay. Relaxed, safe and enclosed within my own energy, ready to release and to regenerate anew. 

That night I slept more peacefully than I have in many months. I felt it was an important conclusion to something which still felt unfinished after the first vision.

Neptune Square Mercury Dream

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I used an AI app called Wombo Dream to create this image of the sinking phones

Back in May of this year, I had a dream where I saw hundreds of old cell phones and pagers with open text messages displayed on their screens, all sinking slowly into the ocean.

I was out in the ocean in a row boat, paddling around and trying to read the messages on the screens. But every time I approached one of these devices, it just sunk further and further into the ocean.

I rowed around like this for what must have been hours, trying to catch a glimpse of the messages which I thought may have been meant for me.

But no matter how hard I tried everything just sunk deeper and deeper into the depths before I was able to grasp it.

Of course, as I usually do, when I woke up I asked myself what this dream could mean for me.

The first thing that occurred to me is that is that it showed me I was starting to feel the effects of Neptune in Pisces squaring my natal Mercury in Gemini. This is a transit which had started to come into effect earlier this year at the start of March (and which is going to last for the better part of the next 3 years).

This image generated by the app probably comes the closest to representing what I saw in my dream

Neptune in astrology represents dreams, fantasies, illusions, spirituality, confusion and sacrifice, while Mercury symbolizes the conscious mind, words, communication and logic.

The square aspect is usually thought to be a challenging one, where a crisis is often brought to a head, sparking an opportunity for creative resolution of the original conflicting dynamic.

So on one level, I took this dream to represent a sense of confusion I’m feeling around how I have conceptualized my spiritual principles and ideals, and what this all means for me in my day-to-day lived experience.

On another level, I think this also means that I’m being forced to confront some of the illusions I’ve had about the ways I’ve communicated with others in the past.

I think that some of these habits, thought patterns and ways of interacting with others are not really serving me anymore. This transit could be an opportunity to re-evaluate, let go of what isn’t working and find new ways to express myself and my vision.

Fueling the Flames

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Three nights ago, I had a dream.

In this dream, I was in a war zone. This war zone was contained within a massive warehouse, which extended out as far as I could see.

After a time, I came upon a wooden staircase, and ascended up into an attic. It seemed to be a workshop where many scribes were writing in bound books of various shapes and sizes.

There, I found a nun, a saint whose name I recognized (but can no longer remember now). She spoke to me, and asked me of my many fears. Of what I thought about my own power. And of the fears she knew I had surrounding this power.

Before we parted, she handed me a notebook of my own, and pointed toward a black wrought-iron spiral starecase at the back of the attic workshop. She gave me one question I was to reflect and write on: “What purpose does your rage serve?”

I walked past the many scribes and ascended to the next level, and then the next. As I walked from room to room, in an unending spiral moving towards the sky, I encountered scenes from my past, and some from a possible future.

In each room, I would find a different pen, each a different shape with a different kind of ink, and here I would set down my notes. Here was my rage. Here was my purpose. Here was my power.

I’ve been reflecting on this dream during these past three days, days which have been filled with anxiety, turmoil and unrest.

I’m learning not to fear my own power. I’m learning how deeply I had internalized the message that my power is not welcome. That my passion is not allowed. That my presence is one which should be diminished.

I see these messages for what they are, tools of control, methods of oppression that have kept me small, that have kept me serving the needs of the patriarchal capitalist (+ colonist + white supremacist + beyond) society in which I was born.

And I see the purpose of my rage.

After a lifetime of being told that anger, not to mention rage, was “not allowed” for a person in my position, I am welcoming it. I am feeling it. And I am listening to it.

I am asking my anger, “What are you here to tell me?”

I ask my rage, “What do I need to do to honor you?”

I am listening. I am open to answers. Now I know that my darkness is my fuel. This is what will light my way forward. And I am ready to carry the torch into a new future.