Dreams can introduce us to cultures and spiritual connections we might not otherwise know about. A woman in one of my courses received the name Imhotep in a dream. She knew it was Egyptian but knew nothing about Imhotep himself. She accepted the research assignment and discovered that in ancient Egypt, Imhotep, whose name means "comes in peace,” became associated with medicine and healing. In the late period, Cleopatra's time, the shrines of Imhotep were sites of dream incubation for healing in the style of the Asklepian temples of the Greco-Roman world. The dreamer’s curiosity deepened. Why was she dreaming of Imhotep? And what did an Egyptian god have to do with the other characters in her dream, in which she found herself in a happy family of black bears, gamboling with them and perfectly at home?
Historically, Imhotep was famous as an architect before he became a god. He is said to have designed the step pyramid of Djoser in the 27th century bce. It was only 2,200 years later that he started to be recognized as a physician. That probably came in because of people's dreams. Maybe they dreamed of a physician by that name. Imhotep was celebrated in Cleopatra's time as a physician whose sanctuaries were places where dreams healed. At Saqqara, on the west side of the Nile from the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, there was a temple of Imhotep where people went to dream or have their dreams interpreted by professionals. In Karnak, in a vanished temple of Imhotep, at one time there were no fewer than fifty priests responsible for dream rituals and interpretation. There are records of a very knowledgeable dreamer whose name was Hor. He was actually a priest of Thoth and used to dream amongst the mummified ibis birds in the temple of Thoth. But when it came to reading an important but confusing dream, the priest of Thoth went to "a magician of Imhotep” to get a definitive reading. [1]
So a modern American woman dreams of an Egyptian deity and a family of black bears. She learns that Imhotep was at the center of a cult of dream healing at a time when ordinary people are gaining access to sites and practices once reserved for royalty and closed priesthoods. What’s with the bears? Their appearance in a dream of an ancient god was both thrilling and strangely familiar for me.
In the first years when I was leading public workshops in Active Dreaming, I
often placed a statue of Asclepius on the altar at the center of the circle. These
gatherings usually started with the group singing a song to call the Bear as healer
and protector. During one of these workshops, as I circled the room, beating my
drum to power a journey to a place of healing, I asked about the possible
connection between the Bear – the great medicine animal of North America – and an
Old World deity of dream healing. Suddenly I saw the energy form of the bear
joining what had become the living statue of the god. The two fused and came
together. In my vision I saw that in the New World, the Medicine Bear is a counterpart for what Asklepios and maybe Imhotep meant
in the ancient world of the Greeks and the Egyptians. I think this perception would
have delighted the ancient mind because the ancient mind was forever shuffling
things together, making hybrid deities, melding different traditions, borrowing
power and “breathing images” from many cultures.
“You are a natural at this,” I told the woman who dreamed the
name of an Egyptian god while dancing with bears. She said that when she needed help in healing, she now knew just who to call.
1. One one ostrakon, Hor, a native Egyptian, left this invocation: I call upon thee in heaven, in earth, Imhotep…come for a dream, come forth." O.Hor 18, verso, 1–3, 18 trans. J.D. Ray inThe Archive
of Hor: Excavations at
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