Divination Dream, by Christine
My intention this night was to dream for the purpose of divining. I went to bed hoping for some sort of prophecy. Unfortunately, I was very tired when I went to bed after an active day, which for me, can be the worst for getting good dreams. I went to bed a cross between optimistic and a little self-critical, not sure what to expect, hoping to get something, and wishing that I had slept more the night before so my chance of getting a grand vision would be maximized.
I had one dream during the divining part of the evening. A context for this dream is that I have spent a long time in my life studying the Tarot, a popular tool for future seeing, and my first deck was the Ryder Waite. These cards have a particular border around the central image for many of the cards cards, and the colors are notable in how they contrast one another.
In my dream, the general landscape was somewhere between a Ryder Waite card and a real life winter scene. It was midnight and a light snow was falling. The snow on the ground was bright. On it, lay a Reindeer. Living, breathing, lying on it’s left side. I could only see it’s hind legs and the back of it’s body, but I knew it was a Reindeer. Keeping it in focus was a frame that was suspended in air, framing the Reindeer in the snow, with the dark sky behind it. This frame borrowed it’s aesthetic from the Ryder Waite tarot, so what was on this “card” was one Reindeer, lying on it’s side. Hmmm…
The symbols I derived from the dream are that it was a card representing the element earth and the physical world. It also appears significant that the time of day is night in the the animal pictured appeared to be in a state of deep dreaming. I looked up Reindeer to find information on their symbolic meaning. This was the more interesting thing that I found. “…persistence, and resoluteness, and an interpretation from a teacher in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition who wrote, ‘Deer are shy by nature, and their presence in a landscape represents a dimension where fear is unknown.”‘ I’ve heard that Reindeer antlers have been used for divining. Many times since our dream night I have gone back in my mind to the image of that Reindeer, sleeping soundly in the midnight snow and I feel my body relax as I watch this animal expand and then sink into the ground with each cycle of breath. I wonder what he is dreaming about.
Early in the morning I had many dream fragments which stand out. I suppose if I wanted to, at the time, I could have woven them into a narrative, but I didn’t and now, they stand on their own.
- getting fish on College Avenue during the Christmas holiday. I am one of the few people out and it feels peaceful and quiet outside.
- drinking soda and wondering where I got it.
- a dog
- climbing through a crack in a wall to get out of the building where I was
- preparing for a group recital
- a rainy day