Jung on the Virtue of Making Dream Pictures

 

In his 1929 lecture "The Aims of Psychotherapy", Jung issued a passionate appeal for art therapy - specifically, for the art of turning dreams into pictures.

First, he notes that it was often a very positive development in a patient's inner life when their dreams featured photos, paintings or films and even more so when the dreamer declared "If only I were a painter I would make a picture of it". When this happened he would encourage his patients to actually draw or paint their dreams and abandon any protestations that they lacked artistic ability. "Many of my more advanced patients, then, began to paint."

He noted that this shifted the dreamer away from a passive attitude to dreams, and to life. "He puts down on paper what he has passively seen, thereby turning it into a deliberate act. He not only talks about it, he is actually doing something about it."

In making a dream picture, the dreamer comes to reflect on a dream in depth and starts to bring vital energy from the dreamworld into embodied life. "The concrete shaping of the image enforces a continuous study of it, in all its parts, so that it can develop its effects to the full. This invests the bare fantasy with an element of reality, which lends it greater weight and greater driving power."

He insists that making art from dreams helps the dreamer to become "creatively independent". The patient no longer depends on the doctor's opinion. "By painting himself he gives shape to himself." He has gone beyond ego to work with his "interior agent" and "the hidden foundation of psychic life".

Then he goes right to the top, or perhaps over the top. 'It is impossible for me to describe the extent to which this discovery changes the patient's standpoint and values, and how it shifts the center of gravity to his personality. It is as though the earth had suddenly discovered that the sun was the center of the planetary orbits and of its own earthy orbit as well." [1]

Painting Philemon

"Since I did not understand this dream-image, I painted it"

In 1914 Jung dreamed of a figure he called Philemon. He came to play an extraordinary role in Jung's imaginal life. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, he recalled:

"There was a blue sky, like the sea, covered by flat brown clods of earth. It looked as if the clods were breaking apart and the blue water of the sea was becoming visible between them. The water was the blue sky. Suddenly there appeared from the right a winged being sailing across the sky. I saw that it was an old man with the horns of a bull. He held a bunch of four keys, one of which he clutched as if he were about to open a lock. He had the wings of a kingfisher with its characteristic colors.

"Since I did not understand this dream-image, I painted it to impress it upon my memory."

The tremendous - indeed Otherworldly - significance of the dream encounter was confirmed for Jung when, a few days later, he came upon the body of a dead kingfisher, a bird rarely seen around Lake Zurich.

He said in his memoir that “Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.

"He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.”

Jung's first portraits of Philemon - at least, the first that have survived - are a pencil drawing and a study for a lost picture that once hung in the room of Jung's wife Emma. They are reproduced in the lavishly illustrated book The Art of C.G.Jung, recently published by the Foundation of the Works of C.G.Jung. Their great interest is that they show the bull horns and a vigor of flight that are missing from Jung's later painting of Philemon in The Red Book.

1, C.G.Jung, "The Aims of Psychotherapy" in Collected Works volume 16 trans R.F.C.Hull (Princeton: Bollingen Series, 1985) 47-49

"Lady of Many Colors'. Dream drawing by Robert Moss.

Dreaming the Cosmogram

Lucid dreaming from the hypnagogic zone

On the Cosmogram

Something is skimming the surface of wetlands. I can't see it clearly among the rushes. I am told it is a Nightskimmer. The marshes extend as far as the horizon. I wonder whether these are the waters between the worlds of the living and the dead in the Kongo cosmograms.

I see one of them now, drawn with motion signs to show progression from life through death to rebirth. The cycle moves from birth to death as the sun moves from sunrise to sunset. When the sun goes down in the world of the living, it rises in the white clay world of the dead. To die in one world is to be born in the other. To die in the world of the living is to “go upside down”.

Then there is the other arm of the cross within the circle. It is actually a vertical pole. It takes you up or down, between the two worlds. The way is open to the initiate and the sorcerer and the sacred king. In their different ways they stand feet planted in the cosmogram, connected to its points, choosing among its ways, drawing the flash of spirit from above and below.

Feelings: high excitement

Reality check: I am not versed in Kongo tradition or practice. However, I was intrigued by the pictures and commentaries of Kongo ground drawings (Brazilian: pintos riscados) of the cosmos in recent rereading of Robert Farris Thompson's wonderful book Flash of the Spirit.

The traditional cosmograms are usually highly abstract, often basically just a circle cross. In my lucid dream space, one came alive and I saw the parallel life and movement of the two worlds and how an initiate could himself become the vertical axis between them. I gave my figures bird crowns like Yoruba kings. My solar barque sailing both sides of the world-ocean recalls Egypt. In the African diaspora, the traditions stream together.

Since I have made drawing and coloring from dreams a daily practice, my imagery in the HG state is often very painterly, suggesting how to transfer something from the dreaming to a physical surface. I don't have the technical proficiency to bring through more than a small part of what my inner artist is showing me, but I'll go on doing what I can!

The drawing below came from another distinctly African passage in my recent dreaming in the liminal space between sleep and awake.

Bird on the Iron: Staff of Osanyin (Osain)

The bird of mind, the spirit head, floats above six iron spikes. This is the staff of Osanyin, wounded healer, lord of leaves, crippled orisha of medicine and initiation of the Yoruba. I own a staff just like this, in Afro-Brazilian style, that I acquired in Salvador da Bahia several decades ago. The bird, lean and graceful, hovers above the crossroads of the tricky god Eshu and the sharpened iron of the hard god Ogun. The spikes may also be a psychic stockade and the healer's apothecary tree. Look carefully and you may see the serpent energy raised.

Drawings (c) Robert Moss

Journal excavation and the magic of hand writing

I find there is magic in writing by hand. I prefer to write with a fountain pen, or in pencil. In the old days I used to carry rather fancy fountain pens.

In a village cafe where I was signing for a catered lunch that was going to be delivered to one of my workshop groups, I signed the bill with a fountain pen.

The man behind me said, "You're a writer!"

"How do you know?"

"Who but a writer uses a fountain pen. What's your name?"

When I told him, he gasped, "Robert Frost? Oh, I'm gonna die!"

"Robert Frost has done that already."

Things have changed. I am far less at risk of being mistaken for Robert Frost because in these times of pandemic you won't find me out and about signing for things. Also,I got lazy about fountain pen maintenance so instead of those fancy ones I use disposable Pilot Varsity pens and just throw them out when they run out of ink or get hopelessly clogged.

The biggest change, however,is that I'm not writing much by hand because my writing has become largely illegible, even to me. So at home, where I have been nearly all the time since March, when I follow my practce of starting the day by wrting dream reports or writing from my dreams, I go to a keyboard and type. I will often do a sketch a little later in the morning.

I was writing by hand every day during my pre-pandemic travels, which had me on the road roughly half the days of the year. I am still in process of transcribing what is in all those travel diaries - and in the big college-ruled five subject notebooks where I used to record my dreams thirty years ago.

When I embark on tne task of transcribing handwritten pages, I frequently find I am digging up real treasure. Here's an example. In a travel journal from six years ago I found a dream report that came alive in glorious color, pulsing with energy and mystery today, as it did them, when I made a sketch from it. This is the transcription, unedited:

January 17, 2015. Walnut Creek, CA

dream

Ready to Paint It Red

I am wandering through an immense and beautiful art museum. In one of the rooms, the ceilings are beyond cathedral height, and as far up as I can see there are enormous paintings in softly glowing pastel hues. I know these images are sacred and they have something to do with ascension towards successive levels of a Higher Self.
    I am carrying an open can of red paint in one hand and a paint brush in the other. The paint is bright crimson, fire engine red. The brush is large enough for a house painter but I think it is the kind an artist would use to cover a wide area very quickly.
    Through an open doorway, I look at a small group of people clustered around a professor who is talking to them about the large framed painting in front of them. This is a special invited group. The picture shows a stone tub, possibly limestone, that looks like it could be filled with water. Hooded figures in white and light-colored robes are around it, evidently waiting for some event.
    In mid-sky, in the picture, there is an arc of light. Figures are moving along this arc in the sky. Some are mounted, some on foot. They appear to be in many sizes. They are golden, and glowing.
    There is something of the quality of the Journey of the Magi about this painting, but the images are not explicitly Christian.
    I am fascinated by the stone "tub". I can't find the right word for it. It could be a sarcophagus, but the feeling is of coming birth or baptism rather than of death.
    My high excitement and curiosity are with me as I become fully lucid inside the scene.
    I hear these words streaming through my mind:

From life to life, from day to day, I bring essence from the world of soul into the world of time.

I rise into the California morning charged with energy and excitement.
    I want to know what my dream self means to do with that red paint. I think of it now as life blood, blood of spirit. I feel I want to fill that hollow tub with this blood of spirit and see whether this will provide a medium of manifestation for those glowing spirits in the sky.
    I am reminded of a big dream from many years ago in which I led a special group of invited guests along a spiral path, past a great stone lion with a huge carnelian on his back, into a gallery space with an immensely high ceiling. We studied an unfinished painting of incalculable size. Within it, a life size human figure was as small as a candle flame in proportion to the shapes that rose around and above him. I understood that this was an unfinished portrait of the Higher Self. I was the professor in that dream. In the new one, I am watching my second self - I am almost certain - play professor while I get ready to lay on the red paint.

 

Drawing from dreams

My daily practice is not only to write down whatever dream memories I bring from the night, but to draw them. My journal drawings are rough and ready and as I make them my inner art critic is sent to another room. As I continue the practice, I find that successive drawings make storyboards for narratives unfolding over many nights, in more than one world. Some of the drawings make me vividly aware of just how far and wide the Traveler - the part of me that goes wandering while my physical body is dormant - may go in his overnight rambles. Some of the drawings make it clear that some dream experiences are like quantum chess games in which pieces are moving simultaneously in parallel, potentially interactive states.

February 14, 2019

Leading in a Bear Blanket

I am leading a workshop for a large group near a rocky shore. I am carrying many shamanic accoutrements and power objects but I lay them all down in favor of a long-handled rattle and a blanket I drape over my shoulders. The blanket looks like a Pendleton with many animal designs. However I tell the group it is a Bear blanket. Bear has made it clear who will be in charge of our healing journeys. There is happy excitement as I lay out the stages of a full day of working with the medicine of the animal spirits under the aegis of the Bear.

- I rose in excellent spirits feeling that everything that had taken place was entirely real and could play out in the future at a location I can't yet identify but will recognize

February 16, 2019

Man in Motley at the Diner

"You'll have to talk to Ramón," says the strange young man in a parti-colored suit. He comes down a ladder to speak with me after I return to the retro diner in search of a carry on bag I think I left there. He makes a gnomic remark about "the first parrot in the race." Where is Ramón? "Ramón will be here in three hours. He speaks Spanish, Belgian and Hebrew."

February 16, 2019

The Mystery of Niss

The young woman at hotel reception tells me she has been reading or viewing something called "Niss". "Eliot Niss," I say brightly, not realizing that his last name was Ness. The receptionist ignores this and goes into an enraptured trance. Her fingers are frozen on the computer keyboard. She is no longer pulling up my reservation though i am in a hurry. She is THERE, in the world of Niss. I catch a glimpse of what is going on inside the bubble of her fantasy - a kind of Shangri-la within icy mountain ramparts. I reach over the counter and gently touch her shoulder, trying to bring her back.

I leave this dream scene wanting to know: Who or What Is Niss? Auntie Google gives me acronyms that don't feel relevant and Nissan ads; Urban Dictionary gives me wildly discordant slang references. Calling Special Agent Ness; we need a dream detective to work on this mystery word.

February 19, 2019
To the Riding of the Soul

The lattice doors of my salon open and I am on a green path of pressed grass winding deep into the woods. I am following deer, running like a stag and feel the antlers on my head. I delight in all the animal life. Fox wants to show me something but I stay on the green path. Beyond the woods I look up at a shining city. I feel my elders and old comrades are there. However I pause to talk to a graybeard leaning on a staff near a slightly tumbledown stone house. I ask him, "What is this place?". He replies, "The riding of the soul."

- from a lucid dream that unfolded spontaneously in the hypnagogic state overnight.

Feelings: excited and regenerated by that depth of green. Intrigued by the unexpected phrase. The term "riding" in British Commonwealth usage, means an administrative district and is derived from a Norse word meaning a third.

February 20, 2019

Oberon Deals Me the Storm Card

In the liminal space between awake and sleep I follow the path I took the previous night to the Riding of Soul. The old man in the broad brimmed hat is waiting for me. His name is Oberon. Really? I try to change this; surely I can't be dealing with the King of the Fairies. The struggle of my inner skeptic is met with cool indifference. "I have told you my name. Use it or not."

He shows me that I have a choice between three paths. I see vivid scenes of where they lead. All outcomes have strong attractions. In the long run, it becomes clear to me, I can follow all three paths and manifest what each offers. However for manifestation in the near future it is necessary to set a clear and simple objective and hold to that.

Oberon takes out what looks like a set of tarot cards. Really? My skeptic is restive again. Oberon wants me to see that, whatever my life choices, there is a ruling factor that I must acknowledge. I can work with this archetype in many ways but I can't evade its presence. I reconcile myself to the delivery of one of the major arcana. Here it comes. Wait. This is not a card from any tarot deck I have seen or imagined.

The image is of a thunderhead or thunderbird shooting lightning bolts. Thor's hammer flies through the maelstrom. The name on the card is Storm. A detailed reading follows, exploring how my life will unfold according to which aspect of myself I allow to take the lead when the power of Storm is strong with me, in me and around me.

Feelings: Excited, potent
Reality: Since boyhood I have always felt close to lightning and thunder and the mythic beings associated with those elemental powers.

March 5

Tracking the Dream Traveler

Once again, I am tracking the Traveler - the Robert who wanders far and wide while my body is dormant in the bed. I roused myself to write a list of names and clues from his rambles overnight:

- a long-haired white chihuahua cuddling close to me in a crowded taxi
- a landscape of gently rolling hills where landmarks had been given Celtic names. I observed that the Celtic words were imports the original spirits of the land may not appreciate.
- a thrift edition of a novel "by the author of Ben-Hur". I put this with other thrift classics and children's books in a pile of Free Books on a curb, making the sign.
- an Indian restaurant with a pleasant beer garden.The sign read "Jaipur" and this was also the name of the house beer
- a clothing store named Lane in a high Victorian building that looked like a former factory. A woman told me I would not be interested because they sold "Boys' Academy stuff".

March 6
Superposed

While we seek to make linear narratives out of our dreams it is possible that many of them are organized by superposition. In quantum mechanics this means that "whenever the system is definitely in one state we can consider it as being partly in each of two or more states" (Paul Dirac). This may explain how in the dream I just left I was both (a) dressed in safari shirt and cream chinos and (b) looking for the same clothes on a bed while (a) I had the room to myself but (b) there were other people coming and going, leaving signs of much activity - a burning candle, a weird collection of Icelandic elves and trolls, both humorous and sorcerous, on a wide windowsill. The parallel states converged when a young man - one of a gay couple that had been using the room without intruding on me - showed me a strange cabinet carved with runes and magic sigils. Definitely some magic afoot.

All images (C) copyright Robert Moss.

Soul Piñata: Creative joy in a circle of Active Dreamers

I love the spontaneous creative play that develops in a circle of Active Dreamers. Last night, in my local monthly circle, a dream inspired me to invent a new Coincidence Art Game. The juice and joy that came with playing that game are still with me, as is some very practical and helpful guidance.
    We began, as we always do, by drumming to call in the dreams and stories that wanted to play with us in the circle that evening. When her turn came, Sara gave us the dream title "Robert's Clues" and shared the folowing report:

Robert is leading a workshop, giving us assignments for artistic expression from dreams. I walk around looking at paintings people have been making. One of these pictures is on a bench in a park where I spent a lot time as a child. Robert painted this himself. I'm intrigued by his picture but this doesn't stop me from painting over it. When Robert comes around, I'm worried that I will now be in trouble. But he's humorous and relaxed. Not only does he not seem to mind that I just painted over his picture; it feels like he set me up for this as part of his game.

Sara came out of this dream excited, and she was fizzing with excitement as she recounted it. I was intrigued by the behavior of Dream Robert. Under normal circumstances, I would not be thrilled if someone painted over a picture I had made. But it seemed that Dream Robert was playing a deeper game. I felt, as I often do, that I wanted to catch up with my dream self. I liked his laid-back, humorous approach. I also felt, as the dreamer did, that he had set up a game that was about more than simply doing expressive art with personal imagery. The game seemed to involve bringing two images together, from two imaginations, to generate something rich and wonderful and entirely fresh.
    We spent a little time discussing Sara's dream. Someone observed that if it were he dream, she would notice the significance of the locale, a place the dreamer associated with happy scenes from early childhood. Was the dream an invitation to reclaim more of the energy and imagination of the child who had played in that park? This resonated with all of us.
    "Colors!" I cried out. "Sketch paper!" The little boy in me wanted to get down on the floor and play with colors. I asked our host what she had available. She left the room and returned with a big trolley stacked with paints and pencils, crayons and art paper. Whooping, we grabbed our supplies.
    With the story of Dream Robert vivid in my mind, I improvised the rules for a new game. We would start by taking a few minutes to draw freely - kicking any inner critic or editor who was with us out for the room - from the dominant dream or life story that was with us. Hands flew across papers with crayons, watercolor brushes, markers and pencils.
   I was a little disappointed to find that the crayons I had grabbed were mostly dried up. They yielded little color, compared to the wild efflorescence of what others were creating with markers and brushes. Still, the scene I was trying to draw was mostly nocturnal, so I made do with pencil and the faint smear of pastels.
    "Okay," I drew a pause to our crafting "Now we will make our deck." A volunteer gathered up the drawings and shuffled them as best he was able, making a kind of deck.
    "Now, let's be clear about a theme we would like to explore, maybe an issue on which you need help or guidance. Have that absolutely clear in your mind." We took a moment or everyone to record that theme in their journals, so there would be no delay or confusion later on. Mine was: "energy and discipline to complete a major writing project".
     We now had themes for guidance, and a kind of oracle deck. In the game we were about to play, we would draw images at random from the deck, then receive them as possible responses or contributions to our theme. Thus far, the game was familiar to many of us. I had led this version of my Coincidence Card Game - played with pictures rather than words - over many years.
     However, I was inspired by Dream Robert to bring in some new twists. "It will go like this," I proposed. "When you receive your picture, you'll study it and write three phrases on the back that come to mind in the presence of this images. If you are so inspired, you can also add to the picture. You can draw on it or around it. You can even overlay a whole new picture if you like."  This was shocking and exciting to the group. I was secretly hoping that whoever received my faint pencil sketch would bring in some bold colors, even a whole new drawing.
     "When your turn comes to speak to the group," I continued to outline the rules, "you'll hold up the picture, read your three phrases. Tell us about any changes you made to your picture. Tell us your theme. We'll explore the ways in which the picture you received may help with that theme. Then we'll ask the person who drew your picture to stand up and tell us what she can about the story behind the picture."
    The novel elements in the game - writing the three phrases, acting on permission to fool around with the image received - played beautifully. A rather shy newcomer to the group received and image that the artist described as a Fountain of Light. She drew people around the fountain, showing its light and energy helping to build and grown s community. Someone looking for guidance on "clarity of vision" received an image that included stones and water. She added to the drawing until it showed a line of stepping stones, and received clarity from the composite image that she would find the clarity she was seeking by taking things one step at a time.
    I was delighted to receive an image seething with color. The first phrase I wrote on the back was "Soul Piñata, ready to burst." I wrote two more phrases: "All the colors of the imagination" and "Christmas every day". I didn't want to mess up the raw beauty of the image, so I just added the visual suggestion of hands holding this bundle of juice and joy, ready to release the contents. What I had received certainly felt like a direct response to my theme. I needed to bring in the energy of color, perhaps by starting my writing stints by making a quick drawing, using something other than dried-up crayons.
   Sara revealed that she was the artist, which seemed wonderfully appropriate since it was her dream of Dream Robert's unusual art game that inspired what we were now doing. She spoke of "fire flowers" inside the container, and pointed out that there is a key - which I had seem differently, as an antenna. We all felt that we found a key to manifestation last evening. That key is to play new games that bring the magical child closer and entertain our creative spirits,

Following the Amber Road: Dreaming with my Ancestors

Guest Blog by Tenaya Amelia Wieczorek

“This is where the wolf resides. Show me the way through deep forest. Take me back to where I came from, long before. I know the path begins in the dark trees… They know my name. Our family has always worshipped a form of the great Mother. I surrender to your grace. I feel you ever inside me…Holy, wholly.” - The Amber Road painting text 2017

These words are inscribed on the ochre-colored road in my painting The Amber Road. This is the story of how this painting came to be, guided by dreams of my ancestors.

     For the past few years I’ve been obsessed with genealogy shows on television. On both Who Do You Think You Are, and Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr., famous people trace their ancestry, often revealing unknown family stories and thrilling revelations of ancestors that share common interests and life experiences. 

     In the late spring of 2015 I got my DNA tested and had some surprising revelations of my own! All my life I was told that I was half Yugoslavian (Serbian and Montenegrin) and half Polish. When I was in 5^th grade I became obsessed with Ireland, and dreamed of travelling there, so I started tucking away extra coins into a large green glass wine jug to save up money for the journey. My grandmother recalls that I used to tell people that “My dad is Polish and my mom is Yugoslavian, but I’m Irish!”
     So when I opened my DNA results I was shocked to find out I did indeed have a tiny percentage of blood from the British Isles, as well as several other places and cultures that I have felt a profound connection with. I have had dreams and visions of reindeer herding people from the far north, and I discovered that I have Yakut (Siberian) as well as Scandinavian blood.
     As I sat in front of my computer, dumbfounded, with chills running up my spine as I read the results, a vision formed in my mind’s eye of lines of ancestors fanning out in long rows behind me, stretching all the way to early, prehistoric times. It was the first time I had a visceral sense of myself as being connected to the ancient past, to indigenous people, my people. I saw the thrumming beauty of DNA woven like threads in a basket rushing forward to the present… and had the sense that I AM MY ANCESTORS. For a moment I stepped outside of time and space and felt part of a vast continuum of humanity, like I had a place in history. I wept at the feeling of homecoming, confirmation and remembrance.

A few months prior to these revelations I recorded the following dreams:

The Amber Rosary and Blessed with Cabbage Water 5/14/2015

I dreamed that I needed to be on my way, and dusk was falling, so I took up jogging, unsure of where I was going, or how to get back to my car. I couldn’t remember where my room was for the night, and I hadn't checked in yet. It felt like Virginia~ the trees were bare and lacy, so I knew it was late fall.

I came to a tent set up in a driveway and saw two nuns in white, and immediately thought they might be able to help me. The one in front saw me right away. She was sprinkling holy water on people with a purple cabbage leaf. That felt so familiar to me, connected to my Polish heritage. There were religious items laid out on the table, rosaries etc. The nuns chanted in what I first thought was Polish, then realized was Latin.

Dipping a cabbage leaf in a bowl, the nun sprinkled me with holy water, and indicated I should take an amber rosary that was in a cloth bag on the table. I wasn't sure if I should make a donation or not. I walked around to another table and saw all sorts of baked goods, including triangular scones with rosaries baked into them. I asked the nuns for directions, worried because I couldn’t remember my eventual destination, and my phone was low on juice. They couldn't help me, and said I should ask someone at a service station. I saw a woman from Spirit Rock Meditation Center with medium length dark hair and couldn't remember her name, but was relieved to see someone familiar. I knew she would help me. We started chatting and I picked out a rosary, and I told her how I was embarrassed that I had forgotten her name. She said her name was Sarah and I saw that she had become Sarah A., my dear friend and I was overjoyed!

At the back of the booth two young 15-year-old girls were helping out and they started singing for us! They sang haunting Appalachian/Eastern European sounding harmonies~ quietly at first, then building in strength and power, completely a cappella. We were riveted by their perfect harmonic sound. It gave me chills of recognition.

Then it was time for me to be on my way so I took off jogging and wished I had settled into my accommodations before I have left on his journey.

At Dream Teacher Training Level One in July 2015 at Mosswood Hollow in Washington State I encountered a wonderful woman and fellow dreamer, Stefania, who was also of Polish descent. I shared these dreams with her and we discussed many levels of connection and symbolism. She was the first Polish person I had really connected with outside of my family, and it felt like we held keys of wisdom and knowledge  for each other.

    Just days before leaving for the Dream Teacher Training I had the following dream:

Our Family Has Always Worshipped a Form of the Great Mother 7/12/15

I dreamed I was with Sonia and Tadek (my siblings) and Sonia had on a beautiful, intricate, spiritual piece of jewelry. It was a thin gold chain that draped around her body with tiny carved figures made of jade, aquamarine and citrine and faceted rosary-like beads. It was a prayer/spiritual device. We were at Nana and Dziadzi’s (my Polish grandparents) house in Fremont in the front yard. Nana Aggie was there and she pointed out a large white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary in a place of honor amid the cactus and juniper bushes, and she told me that: “Our family has always worshipped a form of the Great Mother.”

In September 2015, in a moment of Facebook synchronicity, a video popped up that I am certain has changed the course of my life. The video was of Laboritorium Piesni, a young all-female polyphonic singing group from Gdansk, Poland. At the first sound of their voices rising in song (just like the sisters in the Amber Rosary dream) and the heartbeat thud of the drum, I was riveted, blood pounding and my eyes filled with tears. I felt my ancestors clamor around me as I listened to the voice of the ancients sing through these young women that could be my sisters. Suddenly my Polish lineage felt relevant to me, I could see myself among these women, singing draped in earth-colored fabric, dancing in a circle, arms tracing the shape of sacred energies…

    The song, Sztoj pa moru, was the fuel for my painting, The Amber Road, that I began at an intuitive painting workshop in October 2015 in Portland Oregon with inspiring teacher Flora Bowley and finished a year later.
     Using deep turquoise, black, ochre and fluorescent red, applied with a large foam brush, I created a dark under painting for the first layer, which is unusual for me~ I usually work in bright, vibrant colors. After the layer dried, I approached it again, and as this song looped on repeat  in my headphones, the painting began to reveal itself and I was pulled into the dark woods I often visit in dreams.
    I consciously steered myself into the Amber Rosary dream as the art studio faded away and the harmonic music circling through my ears induced a mild trance state. I painted for six hours that day and five the next day, barely stopping as the world of my dream came to life before my eyes, infused with the energy and essence of my ancestors~ The sacred purple cabbage leaf dripping holy water, the dark trees looming overhead, the white plaster Mary statue, draped in gold chains, who, as my mother pointed out later, actually looks like a Black Madonna.

Chestnuts for Mary 10/15/2016

I dreamed it was a holiday (Thanksgiving or Christmas) and I was with my family. There was a high wooden mantle (like the one at my adolescent home) and Mimi said I should “Give some chestnuts to Mary.” There was a large framed image/icon of mother Mary, and I arranged autumn leaves, orange cherry tomatoes, 2 termite wings and 2 chunks of tree sap/amber on the mantel in front of the image. Mimi placed a several chestnuts up there and it felt right. 

At Thanksgiving, when I visited my mom and grandma in Oregon, I noticed my mom had a greeting card that looked very much like the image of the goddess in the dream, which inspired me to lead a simple ritual to honor this dream and our ancestral line. We bought chestnuts and lit candles and frankincense, and I played music from Laboritorium Piesni’s new album. We sat quietly around the table, holding our chestnuts and pouring our prayers into them. Through closed eyes, with the resonant voices rising in waves around us, I saw a vision of my ancient family, in concentric circles of women and circles of men, dancing around a fire outside of a village in former Yugoslavia. I felt my beloved departed also in the room (my dad, Popi, Dziadai and Nana, Ciocia Jane and Uncle Tadek among others) as we called up a connection to our ancestral line. Then, beginning with my grandmother, we offered our chestnuts to the image of Mary on the hearth, our prayers flickering by candlelight.

During this visit I showed my mom a photo the Amber Road painting in progress, and she exclaimed that the goddess figure actually looked like a Black Madonna, which was unintentional on my part, but resonated as soon as she said it. It also immediately made me think of my Polish grandmother’s funeral card, which depicts the famous Black Madonna, Our Lady of Czestochowa, from Poland. In the course of my research into this particular Black Madonna, I learned that King Louis of Hungary (1326-1382) brought the Black Madonna to Poland in response to a dream.    
    I discovered that there are numerous Black Madonna statues located throughout Europe, and that some theories suggest that they may have originally been depictions of pre-Christian goddesses such as Isis, Demeter, Persephone, Astarte, and Athena. When Christianity came to various areas in Europe, people had to take down their shrines and “cloak” their goddesses in the more acceptable guise of the Virgin Mary and child, much like is done in syncretic religions such as Candomble and Santeria.  This seems related to what my grandmother told me in the dream:  “Our family has always worshipped a form of the great Mother”.

     I put the finishing touches on the Amber Road painting by adding red, blue and ochre fabric motifs to the tree trunks. The motifs are based on embroidery from a blouse my great grandmother brought back from Yugoslavia in the early 1950s. These red “flags” are markers, guiding the way through the trees, encoded with patterns and messages, just like my blood and DNA is encoded with vital information. In the Amber Rosary dream I was trying to find my way, looking for my place, and now these flags, woven of memories, stories, dreams, and recollections are pointing the way. 

    These dreams have given me exciting clues and set me on a path to discovering the lines of my family, known and unknown. I have been talking to family members and consulting a family history my father wrote. I’ve started learning the Polish language, with hopes of attending a singing workshop with Laboritorium Piesni when they come to the US for the first time in the fall of 2017. My big dream is to travel to Poland in September 2018 to visit places my family lived, and to study polyphonic singing and Polish crafts, such as basket making and paper cutting, as well as traditional herbal medicine and pagan practices. My dreams are weaving the way…

Tenaya Amelia is a life-long dreamer trained as a teacher of Active Dreaming by Robert Moss. Intuitive, sensitive and creative, she holds a safe and vibrant space to explore the inner realms. Tenaya weaves together intuitive painting, collage, expressive movement and evocative music into her unique offerings. She is based in Northern California and offers workshops, private dream sessions and a monthly dream salon.  Tenaya is Robert's guest on his Way of the Dreamer radio show on Tuesday March 14. Listen to the show live or download from the archive