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.
mossdreams.com
The Sibylline Books were the oldest and most respected oracle of the Romans. According to legend, the original set – in Greek hexameter – were sold to an ancient king of Rome by a wise woman, or sibyl, from the region of Troy. They were replaced several times. Under the Empire, they were moved from the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in Rome to a vault under the temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill. An august college of secular priests, whose members had typically held high state office, were entrusted with pulling verses from the collection –as you might pull Tarot cards from a deck – to perform a reading.
The Sibylline Books were most often consulted to get a second opinion on an anomalous event, like the flooding of the Tiber or the birth of a two-headed ram, but also to elicit the will of the gods on important undertakings and to receive guidance on what measures the state might need to take to propitiate the powers above.
In 405, the master of Rome was a half-barbarian general named Stilicho who had been fighting a series of savage battles against Alaric and the Goths; Stilicho usually won, but at ruinous price, and without clear resolution. He did not like his ratings from the Sibylline Books, which hinted that he was out of favor with the gods. He did what other men of power have done when they disliked the opinions of diviners and dreamers; he tried to shut them down, in this case by ordering the destruction of the Sybilline Books. Though the Empire was now officially Christian, the culture of Rome was still deeply pagan, and this was widely viewed as an outrageous act of blasphemy that would bring punishment from the old gods.
Soon news reached Rome that barbarian hordes had crossed the Rhine, heading for Italy. A cabal of disgruntled officers overthrew Stilicho; in 408, he was beheaded.. Two years later the Goths sacked Rome. There were many pagans who muttered, I told you so.
Around the same time that Stilicho was
destroying the great oracle at Rome, across the Mediterranean in Cyrene a philosopher of noble blood named Synesius – soon to be made a bishop
of the Church – completed a treatise On Dreams that argues,
elegantly and persuasively, that dreams are our personal oracle and we should
never allow anyone to interfere with it. This oracle is the birthright of every
human, regardless of class or condition, and it travels with every dreamer. All
that is required to consult it is to lay your head on a pillow – though the
results you get will have a lot to do with how you live your life and how you
cleanse (or fail to cleanse) your perception.
If we stay at home, the dream oracle stays with us; if we go abroad she
accompanies us; she is with us on the field of battle, she is at our side in
the city; she labors with us in the fields and barters with us in the market
place. The laws of a malicious government cannot stop her. A tyrant cannot
prevent us from dreaming, unless he banishes sleep from his kingdom. [The
dream oracle] repudiates neither race, nor age, nor condition, nor
calling. This zealous prophetess, this wise counselor, is present to everyone,
everywhere.[adapted from the 1930 Augustine Fitzgerald translation]
This is an oracle we can ignore (at our cost)
but thankfully it can never be destroyed.
Art: "The Sack of Rome by the Barbarians" by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre (1890)
In many human cultures the most profound insights into the nature
of the divine and the fate of the soul after physical death have been
attributed to ecstatic journeys beyond the body in waking dream or vision. In
most human cultures, the existence of parallel worlds inhabited by gods,
daimons, and spirits of the departed has been accepted as simple fact, a fact
of extraordinary importance. Visiting these other worlds was a top priority for
our ancestors, as it still is wherever there is living spirituality. From the travel reports of the boldest and
most successful journeyers between the worlds, mythologies and religions are
born. Soul journeying was understood to be the key to orders of reality, hidden
from the five physical senses, that are no less “real” than ordinary reality and may be more so.
For the Jivaro people of
South America, everyday life is regarded as “false.” “It is firmly believed
the truth about causality is to be found by entering the supernatural world, or
what the Jivaro view as the ‘real’ world, for they feel that the events which take
place within it are the basis for many of the surface manifestation and
mysteries of daily life.”
Among dreaming peoples, the reality of the soul journey and the
objective, factual nature of the travelogues brought back are not in doubt. The
travel reports will be compared with those of previous explorers.
Shamans ride their drums to the Upper and Lower Worlds to gain
access to sources of insight and healing, to commune with the spirits and
rescue lost souls. Aboriginal spirit men journey to the Sky World, climbing a
magic cord projected from their own energy bodies, at the solar plexus or the
tip of the penis.
Before compass and sextant, before charts, the great open-sea navigators guided their shipmates across the oceans by fine attunement to the patterns of waves and wind and stars and by the ability to scout ahead and consult a spiritual pilot through dream travel. Traditional navigators in the Indian Ocean reputedly had the power to travel ahead of their vessels in the form of seabirds or flying fish to set a safe course.
The ancient Daoist masters were known as the feathered sages
because of their reputed power of flight, which sometimes involved
shape-shifting into the form of cranes.
In ancient Greece, shaman-philosophers were renowned for their
ability to travel outside the body, appear in two or more locations at the same
time, and commune with their colleagues. The Pythagoreans taught and practiced
soul travel and believed that spiritual masters born centuries apart could
communicate by this means.
The ability to project consciousness beyond the physical body, to
fold space-time, influence events at a distance, and project a double are all
recognized siddhis — or special powers —
of advanced spiritual practitioners in Eastern traditions. Vedic literature
from India is full of vivid accounts of soul-flight by humans and
beings-other-than-human. In the Mahabharata, the dream-soul, or suksma atman, is described as journeying
outside the body while its owner sleeps. It knows pleasure and pain, just as in
waking life. It travels on “fine roads” through zones that correspond to the senses, the
wind, the ether, toward the higher realms of spirit.
Shankaracharya, the ascetic exponent of Advaita Vedanta,
practiced soul-flight and the projection of consciousness to another body.
Challenged to a debate on sex —
a subject of which he was woefully ignorant at the time —
he is said to have left his body in a cave under the guard of his followers
while he borrowed the body of a dying king, whose courtesans schooled him in
all the arts of the Kama Sutra.
Soul travel was well understood in the Sacred Earth traditions of
Europe, from the earliest times until the murderous repression associated with
the witch craze. One of the most fascinating accounts —
less reliant than most on confession extracted under torture — is Carlo Ginzberg’s
monograph on the Benandanti, or “good-farers” of the Friuli region, who journeyed to defend the
health of the community and the crops.
Soul journeying is also central to Christian spirituality. In II
Corinthians, Paul refers to his own soul journey when he speaks of “a man who was caught up into the third heaven,
whether in the body or out of the body I know not.”
St. Columba, the founder of the great monastery at Iona, regularly traveled
outside his body to scout developments at a distance.
St Anthony of Padua was renowned for his ability to travel
outside the body and appear in two places at once. There are reports of him
preaching in two churches at the same time.
In Jewish tradition, the story of Elijah’s
chariot of fire is the model for visionary ascent to higher realms. Among the
Kabbalists, soul-flight to the higher planes was held to be the reward for long
years of study and solitary meditation. A key element in Kabbalist meditation (hitboded) was the chanting and correct
vibration of sacred texts. Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–72)
recited phrases from the Zohar over
and over, as Eastern meditators use their mantras. He entered and altered state
in which he received visitations from spiritual teachers — notably Elijah —
and could travel freely outside the body, to visit “heavenly
academies.”
Soul-flight is not an art reserved for yogis, mystics, and
shamans. The projection of consciousness by “remote
viewing” or “
traveling clairvoyance” has been central to
the history of warfare. Go back through the old battle sagas and you will find
tales of warrior shamans who shape-shifted to spy out enemy positions. The
druid MacRoth, in the Irish epic the Tain,
performs this service for his royal patron, flying over the enemy ranks in the
shape of a black warbird. Native American sorcerers were employed by both the
French and the English to carry out similar scouts during the French and Indian
War.
One of the most famous soul journeyers in European history was
the Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772),
the son of a Lutheran bishop. He was in his fifties when powerful visitations
by the spirits transformed his life; he then embarked on repeated journeys into
their realms. He encountered angels who escorted him on guided tours of many
kinds of heavens and hells..
It is not surprising that the dream explorer who coined the term lucid dreaming was another soul
journeyer. Dr. Frederik can Eeden (1860–1932)
was a Dutch writer, physician, and member of the British Society for Psychical
Research (SPR). In 1913, he gave a lecture to the SPR in which he reported “lucid dreams”
in which the dreamer retains the memory of his waking life, remained conscious,
and could carry out “different acts of free
volition.” He observed that the
phenomenon of multiple consciousness and “double
memory” —
of both waking and dream events —
“leads almost unavoidably to the
conception of a dream-body.” He later wrote a novel, The Bride of Dreams, about dream travel outside the body.
Frequent flier Robert Monroe asserted with reason that “a controlled out-of-body experience is the most
efficient means we know to gather Knowns to create a Different Overview” — a new definition of
reality.
Illustration: "Green Flight" by Robert Moss
I am back in the Iceland of the sagas. In the Vatnsdal Saga, the chronicle of a Norwegian family that moved to northern Iceland before
Christianization, we read about dream visitations and the need to listen to a
dream advisory, especially when it comes from a fylgja, or companion spirit.
Groa the witch invites Thorstein to a banquet. However, three nights before he
is due to leave home, he dreams he receives a visitation from a fylgja, in this case his
family's protective spirit. She appears in human form and asks him not to go to the witch's house. He objects that he promised to
be at the feast. She responds, "It seems unwise to me, and harm will befall you
from this." She appears for three nights in succession, scolding him for not
heeding her warning. She touches his eyes as if to tell him he must open them
and see clearly.
Thorstein must have listened, because on the day of his departure he says he is
sick and tells the people who were going to travel with him to go home. At her
place, Groa walks backwards around the house chanting spells. A rockfall on the
house kills everyone inside. "Ever afterwards the place where Groa lived
seemed haunted, and men had no wish to live there from that time on."
Although fylgja is sometimes translated as "follower" we know from other tales - and from first-hand experience today - that it often travels ahead of its protege, and may be seen by others before a traveler reaches their destination.
Quotations are from Andrew Warn's traslation of Vatnsdal Saga, chapter 36, in The Sagas of the Icelanders: A Selectuon (New York: Viking, 2000) with one significant change. Warn turns the Icelandic word fylgja into "fetch". This is not satsfactory, since in
English "fetch" is usually taken to mean a personal double, whose appearance is ominous since it often heralds death. The fylgjur ("those who accompany") are
constant companions, most visible and especially active in dreams. A fylgja is a guardian spirit rather than a shadow self, though the term has shiftng meaning in different contexts. in and out of the Old Norse polypsychic houses of selves. The fylgja watches over an individual but may also protect a whole family and be passed
down through generatons. The fylgja is often seen in animal form. When it
appears as human, it is apparently always female, which leads some to suggest
that it be a matriarchal presence.
Photo: Vatnsdalsá River, in the landscape of the Vatnsdal Saga
I am drifting around dawn in the liminal state between sleep
and awake, where I recommend that you learn to spend more time because it's a
natural launchpad for lucid dream adventures. It's a place where creative
connections are made easily. It's a place where you are highly psychic and your psyche - come on, let's call it soul - can be quite mobile.
I am drifting around dawn. The image
of a feather floats up on my inner screen. I see the pattern and I know it is
the feather of a red-tailed hawk, a bird that has played an important role in
my life. Suddenly, I realize the feather is attached to a live bird, to a wing
that is quivering in mid-air. I look at the wing, at the back of the bird, at
the silver-white belly feathers.I look ino the intense yellow eyes that are looking at me and I feel an
invitation. To do what? To lift up, to fly with the hawk.
Now I am floating over the rooftops
of the city and over the green park. I have gone through my window without noticing.
I am vaguely aware of the body I have left in bed, but my focus is on the
adventure ahead. Extraordinary things have happened when I have flown with the
hawk before. This already feels so good. I, am enjoying going with the wind, the pure freedom
of flight. The hawk is no longer separate. I think the hawk and I have become a
hybrid. Or I have taken the form of a hawk.
Frequent flyers beyond the body do
it in different ways, Some fly Superman style, arms out, straight as a rocket.
Some swim through the air or go doggy-style, or pedal. I often find myself winging
it like the birds. So maybe I am a hawk now.
But I am distracted by mechanical
noise. I have not lost track of the physical environment. I am in two places and
two states of mind at once. I am floating above the city and at the same time I
am aware of my body in bed and the physical life of the night city below me. I search
for the source of the noise and see a helicopter, probably going to or from a
nearby hospital on an emergency call. I tell myself the noise will go away. Let
me stay with the hawk in flight and find out where it wants to take me this
time.
The noise of the chopper blades
does fade. But now there is a louder, harsher, churning noise, I think of a
military aircraft. This is really pulling me out of my lovely aerial experience.
As soon as my attention shifts, I drop back in my dormant body in the bedroom
with a soft thud.
This is a small anecdote, nothing important
going on, but little incidents like this remind us that in dreams and dreamlike
states, we can fly. This is a talent to be grown and to be mastered. It
has been valued in most cultures as far back as we can track even if many in
modern society have forgotten.
“Poetry is always
the result of flooding”, a young poet told Stefania Pandolfo as she journeyed
among rural Moroccan villagers for whom dreaming and poetry are vitally
important, and always interweaving. A real poem bursts from an emotion that is
inundating, overwhelming – until it finds creative release. [5]
The most
respected poet in the area, one Sheikh Mohammed, was alien to poetry until he
dreamed of a flood. The dream came at a time of personal trauma when he was
close to despair. Previously a violent man of action, he had managed to blow
off his right hand in a gun accident. He dreamed the river was coming down in
flood, its front like a mountain, carrying everything it encountered in its
path, trees and carrion and debris. Instead of fleeing, he stood there in the
dry riverbed, watching and waiting. Then he opened his mouth and swallowed the
flood and everything borne along by it. He recounted the dream to his mother
and she told him that he had become a poet. This became his life’s
calling.[6]
From the priestess-scribe who
wrote Dumuzi’s story to the latest novels by Stephen King and Neil Gaiman,
dreams have provided wonderful material for stories and novels, scripts and
poems. The dream may provide the rough first sketch of a theme or a plot or a
character, with everything still to be worked out and delivered – perhaps with
the help of subsequent dreams – over a considerable period of time. The dream
may have the structure and detail required for a finished story or poem (but is
unlikely to be “finished” in the sense that it will be truly good writing until
the raw report has been shaped and polished). The dream may be inserted in a
narrative and attributed to one of the characters as Graham Greene did for Querry in A Burnt-Out Case). The dream may be delivered as a story without a
frame, as Franz Kafka delivered a nightmare in Metamorphosis while insisting, in the tale, that the man turned
into a giant bug was not dreaming.
The literary dream has been used
as a plot device in many ways. It may be used to take the reader into the inner
life of a character. It may be used to set up critical narrative tension, for
example between a character’s desires and his conscience, a central theme in
Dostoyevsky’s use of dreams.
The dream can be
used as an architectural device, to open and frame a story that may be anything
but a dream; the medieval Roman de la
Rose is a classical example, from an age when dreams were greatly
respected. In the classic Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber novel
opens with a goddess creating a mountain from 36,501 pieces of stone, one of
which - rejected - is a speaking rock whose complaint is heard by two immortals
and is gifted with a very mobile life, in different forms, in the mortal world
– known to gods and immortals as the Red Dust - and elsewhere.[7]
The Lion all began with a
picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. The picture
had been in my head since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about
forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’
At first I had little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly
Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams about
lions about that time. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from
or why he came. But once he was there He pulled the whole story together, and
soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him. [9]]
Finally, it is in dreams and flow states
that writers come into contact with inner helpers. Robert Louis Stevenson
communed with his “Brownies” in states of reverie, and gave them the credit for
doing better than half his literary work. Yeats spoke of the “mingling of
minds” that can bring assistance, in a creative venture, from intelligences
that seem to belong to other times or other dimensions.
....my celestial
patroness, who deigns
Her nightly
visitation unimplored,
And dictates to
me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my
unpremeditated prose []
Notes and References
3. Bert O. States, Bert O., “Authorship in Dreams and Fictions” in Dreaming vol.4 no.4 (December, 1994) pp. 239-240
4. Samuel Beckett, Proust.
5.Stefania Pandolfo, Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan Space of Memory.
6. ibid p. 265
7. Tsao Hsueh-chin, Dream of the Red Chamber (1754). Trans. and adapted by Chichen Wang.
8. Charles Dickens letter to Dr Stone.
9. Lewis, C.S., “It All Began with a Picture”, Junior Radio Times, vol. 68 (
10. Paradise Lost IX. 21-4