I'm taking two weeks to work through the Magician/Magus card in my in-depth tarot work, mostly because I didn't have the time last week to sit down and spend hours writing like I did for the week before when exploring the Fool. One of the reasons I didn't have time was because I have been struggling with writer's block for my next SageWoman column, which is due at the end of this week. Last night over dinner, I talked with Jeff about some ideas for where to go with it, since the original idea I had is clearly not working out no matter how much I try to push forward. That brought us back around to the idea of the animus again, since writing about that would be in keeping with the issue's theme in a kind of abstract/psychological way. And since I'm working with the Magician these two weeks, I might as well ride that energy. I had half a notion to set an intention for my dreams for last night, to try to get in touch with my animus again in that context, but I didn't. Apparently, though, a half-thought intention was enough.
After some random action-adventure dreams that involved flying cars and an evil villain dumping huge vats of first salsa and then sour cream into the local river...
I dreamt that I was a man (I looked somewhat like David Boreanaz, more from these days than from his moody/brooding/dreamy days on Buffy), and I was out with my wife in a kind of touristy downtown type of place poking around in shops before going to dinner. I glanced across the street to see myself in drag — dressed as a woman, wearing a skirt and a wig, though in a way that was much more akin to Monty Python than RuPaul — and I was confused about what "I" was doing over there. I had the impression that this version of me had been off doing things without my knowing about it, and it became really important to me to track her down and see what was going on.
I must have woken up briefly at that point and fallen back asleep again, because then the dream switched over and I was once again female, my usual real-life self, but this time back in high school. The girl who was my best friend in the dream was egging me on to find this alternate-me, but we had the sense that we couldn't get out of school to play hooky without somebody noticing we were gone. So she devised a plan that involved us agreeing to be tour guides for new students, and we had a pass to get out of class in order to attend the introductory meeting. After that, we found some excuse to get outside and walk the grounds, including the woods that were out behind the school. From there, we were able to slip away and catch a plane to fly across the country. We arrived in a place that seemed to be some kind of national park, that was in some ways very much like some of the parks in Utah and New Mexico, all rocky desert landscapes, but also had places that were more like Acadia, with rocky shorelines and rivers running out into the ocean among mist and tall fir trees. We spent some time walking around these amazing places, joining up with various tour groups who were exploring the different overlooks. We had the impression that, because we couldn't find the alternate-me among the tour groups, we must have missed him. For some reason, we had the impression he was also looking for me, though again, I had the sense that this task was less important to him than it was to me, something that he was fitting in among his other obligations. We thought that he must have been flying across the country in the other direction at the same time we were, and so we'd crossed in mid-air. Somebody from the tour group asked me if I was meeting someone, and I told them this (making a hand gesture to show what I meant), but when I looked up at the person asking, it was him. He looked somewhat Arabic/Middle Eastern this time, with a long thin nose, very dark eyes and shoulder-length hair. He had a somewhat thick accent (though the accent itself didn't sound Middle Eastern). But it was definitely him, and there was a recognition between us. After that point, the dream basically involved wandering through the park with the tour group, listening to a ranger as she talked about the history of the place, while trying to stay near (but not too near) him. At one point, there was a visitor's center type of place where they were playing a short film, and while we sat watching that, he reached over briefly and held my hand.
The gender reversals in this dream are really interesting, though I'm not sure I have any interpretation for them beyond the pretty straightforward stuff about gender fluidity and the animus/anima as being the inner man/woman within each person. I think it's interesting that I start out the dream as a David Boreanaz-like figure, who (especially as his character in Bones) strikes me a bit as a kind of meathead/muscle-man type (more so than the tortured-romantic nature of Angel in Buffy)... but the eventual encounter with the animus himself has him as much more of a mysterious/mystical kind of person, even down to the dark eyes and the hard-to-place accent.
Whether or not any of this will actually help me write my column remains to be seen.
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