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.
Showing posts with label tarot - magician. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tarot - magician. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Dreams of the Angel at the Gate
He's been seeping into my dreams again over the last couple weeks or so, appearing occasionally in the background, not directly involved in the action. Last night, however, the dream was vivid and our interactions were direct.
The most vivid part of my memory of the dream begins when I am flipping through photographs of landscapes on my iPad — gorgeous pictures that I've taken (in dream, not in real life) of mountains, rolling hills, misty forests, etc. — and, when I come across one I want to share with everyone else, I "flick it" up from the iPad onto a large projector screen (using some sort of bluetooth connection and an app that recognizes the gesture — someone should actually invent this because it was awesome)... At which point, the photo would appear not simply as large as life, but also in 3-D, as if the projector screen were actually a window we were looking through to see into the landscape beyond. I don't remember if the photos were actually video clips that moved — since they were mostly landscapes, there wouldn't have been much movement, but a sense of the swaying of trees or the gentle movement of mist or flowing water or birds taking flight now and then, maybe...
He was standing right beside me. As usual, there was an intense longing to be near him, to have his attention on me, and yet also a sense that this was taboo or forbidden in some way.
Back when I was Christian, I thought of him as the "angel at the gate" — the one who stands with a fiery sword guarding the gates of Eden. (Although technically I think Genesis says God stationed several angels, specifically cherubim, to guard the gate, I've always thought of this angel as Archangel Michael, probably because he, too, is depicted as having a fiery sword.) Years ago when I was little, he was the one who appeared to me in the forest and then dissolved into sunlight — though the feeling then was all affection, as if for an older brother, rather than this kind of attraction/eros. Still, even the eros in recent years has been of an almost innocent, adolescent kind — more ecstatic longing than sexual desire, if that makes any sense. Being near him feels thrilling, almost electric, but it's all in the heart and soul, rather than the body (or rather, it's throughout the body, a bone-deep magnetism rather than a sexual pull). I don't know who this figure is — I find it problematic to continue to think of him as an angel in the Judeo-Christian context — but I wonder if he is some kind of expression of my animus. Sometimes he takes on the appearance in dream of people I know in real life, though I can always recognize it's him, but that often only serves to exacerbate the feelings of taboo or discomfort (for instance, he once appeared in a dream as a college professor I had, which left me feeling deeply embarrassed because I felt completely impersonal and professional towards the actual professor himself, who was anyway kind of old and goofy).
In any case, in this dream, I was showing pictures to a group of people, the usual half-anonymous Crowd of Family and Friends. We were all standing and milling about outside in a park-like area, with the projection screen off to one side, and he was standing quite close to me so that I could feel the warmth of his presence alongside me. Then, the landscape photograph I was displaying seemed to somehow come alive and expand, until we were standing within the landscape looking out across a vast mountain range with beautiful shadowy valleys — mist snagged on the mountain peaks high above and pooled in the low valleys below us. It began to snow, and everyone was so excited at the beauty of it. It was as if we were all kids again, thrilled at the first snowfall. This snow was not exactly ordinary snow, for it didn't feel all that cold and it drifted down in huge, lazy flakes that seemed more like autumn leaves, except that they were white and crystalline in delicate designs, and they melted when they touched bare skin. People began laughing and playing, trying to catch the slowly drifting snowflakes on their tongues or with outstretched hands, some people leaning down to scoop up handfuls from the ground to throw like snowballs, though the snowballs were always soft and feathery, not cold and compact in a way that might hurt if you got hit. There was a lot of happy bumping around and into each other as everybody played in the snow, which jostled me into him a couple times so that I got that warm electric thrill passing through me, but the sense of taboo always made me withdraw and try to play it casually. (I'm not sure if I'm exactly describing this well — it always seems to me that he shares my understanding, both the attraction and the awareness of the taboo, though it doesn't bother him as much, as if neither weighs as heavily on him as they do on me in these dreams. Yet it seems as if the taboo is because of him, some other obligation or duty that holds him back, and not so much because of me or who I am.) In any case, in this dream I thought somehow the snow was his doing, and I joked with him about it or hinted at it, as if the others didn't know who exactly he really was, but he shook his head and said it had been my doing, somehow. While everyone was distracted playing and no one was looking, he briefly placed his hands on either side of my face, drew me close to him and kissed me on the forehead. It was at that point that I woke up.
I can't help but think that this has something to do with my work with the tarot cards. Last night I began work with the Magician/Magus, reading through some of the various books I'm working with and examining the various Magician cards from all my different decks. I wonder if I'm connecting the Magician with the Animus/Angel at the Gate somehow, who has always been a figure of energy, light and warmth, somewhat fiery but also ecstatic and creative in his energies.
I just hopped over to Wikipedia to see if I could find anything on the animus, since I really know next to nothing about it other than that it's supposedly the female's parallel to the male's anima, the archetype manifesting from the collective unconscious the totality of the feminine (or, for the animus, the masculine). I seemed to remember reading that Jung really didn't examine the animus at all, being much more interested in the anima in the male psyche. This is what Wikipedia has to say:
::foreheadsmack:: This seems like a pretty obvious connection between the Magician (symbolized especially in the Thoth tarot but in other decks as well as the figure Hermes, messenger of the gods, with snakes twining around his helmet and wings on his feet)... and the figure who appears to me in dreams.
The most vivid part of my memory of the dream begins when I am flipping through photographs of landscapes on my iPad — gorgeous pictures that I've taken (in dream, not in real life) of mountains, rolling hills, misty forests, etc. — and, when I come across one I want to share with everyone else, I "flick it" up from the iPad onto a large projector screen (using some sort of bluetooth connection and an app that recognizes the gesture — someone should actually invent this because it was awesome)... At which point, the photo would appear not simply as large as life, but also in 3-D, as if the projector screen were actually a window we were looking through to see into the landscape beyond. I don't remember if the photos were actually video clips that moved — since they were mostly landscapes, there wouldn't have been much movement, but a sense of the swaying of trees or the gentle movement of mist or flowing water or birds taking flight now and then, maybe...
He was standing right beside me. As usual, there was an intense longing to be near him, to have his attention on me, and yet also a sense that this was taboo or forbidden in some way.
Back when I was Christian, I thought of him as the "angel at the gate" — the one who stands with a fiery sword guarding the gates of Eden. (Although technically I think Genesis says God stationed several angels, specifically cherubim, to guard the gate, I've always thought of this angel as Archangel Michael, probably because he, too, is depicted as having a fiery sword.) Years ago when I was little, he was the one who appeared to me in the forest and then dissolved into sunlight — though the feeling then was all affection, as if for an older brother, rather than this kind of attraction/eros. Still, even the eros in recent years has been of an almost innocent, adolescent kind — more ecstatic longing than sexual desire, if that makes any sense. Being near him feels thrilling, almost electric, but it's all in the heart and soul, rather than the body (or rather, it's throughout the body, a bone-deep magnetism rather than a sexual pull). I don't know who this figure is — I find it problematic to continue to think of him as an angel in the Judeo-Christian context — but I wonder if he is some kind of expression of my animus. Sometimes he takes on the appearance in dream of people I know in real life, though I can always recognize it's him, but that often only serves to exacerbate the feelings of taboo or discomfort (for instance, he once appeared in a dream as a college professor I had, which left me feeling deeply embarrassed because I felt completely impersonal and professional towards the actual professor himself, who was anyway kind of old and goofy).
In any case, in this dream, I was showing pictures to a group of people, the usual half-anonymous Crowd of Family and Friends. We were all standing and milling about outside in a park-like area, with the projection screen off to one side, and he was standing quite close to me so that I could feel the warmth of his presence alongside me. Then, the landscape photograph I was displaying seemed to somehow come alive and expand, until we were standing within the landscape looking out across a vast mountain range with beautiful shadowy valleys — mist snagged on the mountain peaks high above and pooled in the low valleys below us. It began to snow, and everyone was so excited at the beauty of it. It was as if we were all kids again, thrilled at the first snowfall. This snow was not exactly ordinary snow, for it didn't feel all that cold and it drifted down in huge, lazy flakes that seemed more like autumn leaves, except that they were white and crystalline in delicate designs, and they melted when they touched bare skin. People began laughing and playing, trying to catch the slowly drifting snowflakes on their tongues or with outstretched hands, some people leaning down to scoop up handfuls from the ground to throw like snowballs, though the snowballs were always soft and feathery, not cold and compact in a way that might hurt if you got hit. There was a lot of happy bumping around and into each other as everybody played in the snow, which jostled me into him a couple times so that I got that warm electric thrill passing through me, but the sense of taboo always made me withdraw and try to play it casually. (I'm not sure if I'm exactly describing this well — it always seems to me that he shares my understanding, both the attraction and the awareness of the taboo, though it doesn't bother him as much, as if neither weighs as heavily on him as they do on me in these dreams. Yet it seems as if the taboo is because of him, some other obligation or duty that holds him back, and not so much because of me or who I am.) In any case, in this dream I thought somehow the snow was his doing, and I joked with him about it or hinted at it, as if the others didn't know who exactly he really was, but he shook his head and said it had been my doing, somehow. While everyone was distracted playing and no one was looking, he briefly placed his hands on either side of my face, drew me close to him and kissed me on the forehead. It was at that point that I woke up.
I can't help but think that this has something to do with my work with the tarot cards. Last night I began work with the Magician/Magus, reading through some of the various books I'm working with and examining the various Magician cards from all my different decks. I wonder if I'm connecting the Magician with the Animus/Angel at the Gate somehow, who has always been a figure of energy, light and warmth, somewhat fiery but also ecstatic and creative in his energies.
I just hopped over to Wikipedia to see if I could find anything on the animus, since I really know next to nothing about it other than that it's supposedly the female's parallel to the male's anima, the archetype manifesting from the collective unconscious the totality of the feminine (or, for the animus, the masculine). I seemed to remember reading that Jung really didn't examine the animus at all, being much more interested in the anima in the male psyche. This is what Wikipedia has to say:
Jung focused more on the male's anima and wrote less about the female's animus. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, postulating that women have a host of animus images while the male anima consists only of one dominant image.
Jung stated that there are four parallel levels of animus development in a female.
The animus "first appears as a personification of mere physical power - for instance as an athletic champion or muscle man, such as 'the fictional jungle hero Tarzan'".
In the next phase, the animus "possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action...the romantic man - the 19th century British poet Shelley; or the man of action - America's Ernest Hemingway, war hero, hunter, etc."
In the third phase "the animus becomes the word, often appearing as a professor or clergyman...the bearer of the word - Lloyd George, the great political orator".
"Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of...spiritual profundity". Jung noted that "in mythology, this aspect of the animus appears as Hermes, messenger of the gods; in dreams he is a helpful guide." Like Sophia this is the highest level of mediation between the unconscious and conscious mind. [emphasis added]
::foreheadsmack:: This seems like a pretty obvious connection between the Magician (symbolized especially in the Thoth tarot but in other decks as well as the figure Hermes, messenger of the gods, with snakes twining around his helmet and wings on his feet)... and the figure who appears to me in dreams.
Labels:
angel,
animus,
creativity,
dreams,
landscape,
photography,
snow,
tarot,
tarot - magician
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Daily Diary
Days of Note: Full Moon (Fire Friend)
Sun: scorpio (water/fixed) on the cusp of sagittarius (fire/mutable), 7:13am - 4:58pm
Moon: full moon, taurus (earth/fixed)
Earth: bright sunny day, possibly up near 60
Thoughts: planning the ritual this evening - notice the sun and moon, between them reflecting all three realms (the sun moving from water into fire, the moon solidly in earth); excited for the ritual tonight; thinking about the coming week, getting things done, cleaning and readying for moving furniture; revisiting the wedding planning stuff, seeing where we are along the check-list, firming up plans for the trip in January
Actions: spending the day with the kids today, going to Phipps, possibly the library, Savanah's Druidry lesson; getting everything ready for the ritual; ritual tonight around 10 PM, then write up and post afterwards
Connections: mostly just thinking about what needs to get done over the next week, excited by lots of awesome stuff, not too worried about the holidays being overly stressful (yesterday's "Thanksgiving" dinner with the kids went well)
Daily Tarot Card: The Magician (I) appears again, sun flares radiating in tattoos on his shoulder, hands deftly balancing an orb of power between them. The four elements surround him, and he engages them with creativity, dexterity, self-confidence and insight. He represents that first initiative, the first impulse to act manifesting itself in the world - even if it is as yet only the inner world of his mind as it seeks out knowledge, patterns and new ideas. He is absorbed in his work, for that work is learning how to move through and change the world. His diligence, enthusiasm and energy hint of fruitful progress and success.
Sun: scorpio (water/fixed) on the cusp of sagittarius (fire/mutable), 7:13am - 4:58pm
Moon: full moon, taurus (earth/fixed)
Earth: bright sunny day, possibly up near 60
Thoughts: planning the ritual this evening - notice the sun and moon, between them reflecting all three realms (the sun moving from water into fire, the moon solidly in earth); excited for the ritual tonight; thinking about the coming week, getting things done, cleaning and readying for moving furniture; revisiting the wedding planning stuff, seeing where we are along the check-list, firming up plans for the trip in January
Actions: spending the day with the kids today, going to Phipps, possibly the library, Savanah's Druidry lesson; getting everything ready for the ritual; ritual tonight around 10 PM, then write up and post afterwards
Connections: mostly just thinking about what needs to get done over the next week, excited by lots of awesome stuff, not too worried about the holidays being overly stressful (yesterday's "Thanksgiving" dinner with the kids went well)
Daily Tarot Card: The Magician (I) appears again, sun flares radiating in tattoos on his shoulder, hands deftly balancing an orb of power between them. The four elements surround him, and he engages them with creativity, dexterity, self-confidence and insight. He represents that first initiative, the first impulse to act manifesting itself in the world - even if it is as yet only the inner world of his mind as it seeks out knowledge, patterns and new ideas. He is absorbed in his work, for that work is learning how to move through and change the world. His diligence, enthusiasm and energy hint of fruitful progress and success.
Labels:
autumn,
diary,
full moon,
major arcana,
sagittarius,
scorpio,
tarot - magician
Friday, November 12, 2010
Daily Diary
Sun: scorpio (water/fixed), 7:03 am - 5:05 pm
Moon: waxing crescent, aquarius (air/fixed)
Earth: another sunny, warm day, the birds are singing, I'm itching for some outdoor time
Thoughts: still brainstorming this Brigid of the Stars ritual, marveling at the intensity and excitement; thinking about the Rachel Maddow interview with Jon Stewart, some of his points so clearly shaped by watching too much cable news; want to finish at least one blog post today (P+P or Meadowsweet), maybe two, but we'll see how it goes
Actions: still no yoga (arm still sore, but getting better); waiting for word on my first project for work; finish Brigid ritual and post it; walk in the woods; spend time preparing lesson for Savanah for Sunday; finish a blog post; go ahead and order StD cards
Connections: there's always more that I'm thinking about than I have time to devote my energies to accomplishing; sometimes I wish I could figure out a way to write as effortlessly as my brain rambles, but to craft a good ritual or essay takes a lot of pausing and staring off into space, playing with different word choices and potential structures; writing is a long process, it forces me to slow down, which is not a bad thing, just... wish there were more hours in the day
Daily Tarot Card: The Magician (I) possess creativity, skill, enthusiasm and self-confidence. Ready to engage in the world of form and to exercise willpower in pursuit of learning, experimentation and activity devoted to and directed towards what seems most important. In some ways an inward-turning card, it represents the energy, vision and initiative to make a tangible start towards an objective (though not necessarily the meticulous planning or mapping of details towards any specific goal as yet).
Moon: waxing crescent, aquarius (air/fixed)
Earth: another sunny, warm day, the birds are singing, I'm itching for some outdoor time
Thoughts: still brainstorming this Brigid of the Stars ritual, marveling at the intensity and excitement; thinking about the Rachel Maddow interview with Jon Stewart, some of his points so clearly shaped by watching too much cable news; want to finish at least one blog post today (P+P or Meadowsweet), maybe two, but we'll see how it goes
Actions: still no yoga (arm still sore, but getting better); waiting for word on my first project for work; finish Brigid ritual and post it; walk in the woods; spend time preparing lesson for Savanah for Sunday; finish a blog post; go ahead and order StD cards
Connections: there's always more that I'm thinking about than I have time to devote my energies to accomplishing; sometimes I wish I could figure out a way to write as effortlessly as my brain rambles, but to craft a good ritual or essay takes a lot of pausing and staring off into space, playing with different word choices and potential structures; writing is a long process, it forces me to slow down, which is not a bad thing, just... wish there were more hours in the day
Daily Tarot Card: The Magician (I) possess creativity, skill, enthusiasm and self-confidence. Ready to engage in the world of form and to exercise willpower in pursuit of learning, experimentation and activity devoted to and directed towards what seems most important. In some ways an inward-turning card, it represents the energy, vision and initiative to make a tangible start towards an objective (though not necessarily the meticulous planning or mapping of details towards any specific goal as yet).
Labels:
autumn,
diary,
first quarter,
major arcana,
scorpio,
tarot - magician
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