SubscribeJune 23rd, 2011
dreaming about magic
Last night I dreamt of magic. In the dream a woman had started a spell and located the material power of it – the magic’s physical source – in a room well away from its point of impact. She was doing something to someone, I don’t know to whom or what the intent was, but in the dream I want to stop it. I find the ritual objects which bind and direct the power and I dismantle it, thereby breaking the spell.
It was an arcane and complicated dream. I don’t remember much of it but I do remember the feeling. It had a sense of intricacy, of a mystery novel, of slightly malicious intentions. I’ve put little time into it today, but it has been ringing in the hollow of my head. I’ve not been able to concentrate, nor settle to any of the work I really need to do this week. I even went to see a movie (Midnight in Paris – it was great) to try and break my mood. But it’s been a no-go.
So I came back home, have eaten half a small vegetarian pizza and am going to settle down to look at Jung’s Red Book and think about the dream, try to reason with it. I’ll let you know if anything interesting comes of it.
Or you can just tell me what such a dream would mean to you. That would be helpful.
July 4th, 2011 at 6:39 pm
[...] pictures stood out for me, with this magic dream taking up the background of my awareness. I am thinking of these two as foreground characters in a [...]
August 13th, 2011 at 6:27 am
I feel a sense of responsibility in that dream. Even in an alien environment which ‘you’ experienced, you had the capacity to enact on your moral values. But it seems to me that this dream shows just how dynamic our internal world is, with chaos interweaved with order…which we often hide in daylight.
We have seen evil, and it exists in the human psyche, not as some unseen force in the outside world. Likewise, the solution to encountering evil is to intervene and understand when necessary…not demonise it and think that “it’s not my problem”.
As for magic…we underestimate our influences on others, which are often unconscious in origin. Magic–of course!–isn’t real in the way a lot of people believe. But since we humans have similar vulnerabilities, no wonder a person’s persusaion power can extend beyond their immediate visible reach. The problem, of course, is that not many are aware of these unconscious influences on their behaviour.
…just my take on this dream, that’s all.
August 13th, 2011 at 7:31 am
Thank you Cathy for your take. I really do appreciate it.
Intervene and understand when necessary – yes. That is my pattern. I’ve spent much of my life as an advocate of sorts for those at the butt end of others’ malicious intent. I can only do so much, but I what I can I do. The fact that this is also true in my dream is an indication of the solidity of that part of my personality I suppose. I might not always follow the law of the land but I am a deeply moral person who believes that fucking with another’s head should be stopped if possible. I really don’t like mean and venal people.
Where magic comes in is still a question to me. I have some bits of answers, some images, some words that wriggle with energy but, as yet, do not align into anything coherent. I do think the putative answer is somehow allied with my obsession with embodied philosophy and cognitive poetics. It is the body that has the answer, and it is through studying the embodied mind that (for me) magic (and dreams like this) will come to be understood. And yes, I think you are right that the dream is speaking to my sense of vulnerability and also to my desire for power.
August 16th, 2011 at 4:32 am
So what sorts of things come to mind when you think about magic?
August 16th, 2011 at 11:04 am
off the cuff, when I think about magic:
power in self, discipline of mind and body and feeling, the recognition that symbol, image, story and ritual activity effects inner change well below the level of conscious awareness, communal cohesion through internal focus. I think of the winter dance and what it feels like to be in ritual with kin. I think about circling with others dedicated to some common responsibility.
Good question, Cathy, but my thoughts about this are still hovering in the realm of feeling, of behaviour, of poetry. I haven’t felt its surfacing and so haven’t come to write about it yet despite proddings from others.
August 20th, 2011 at 3:25 am
By the way, how far have you read through “The Red Book”…and what are your impressions about the replicated manuscript?
August 20th, 2011 at 9:38 am
I have been through the whole thing once fairly quickly, which is my pattern with books like this. I want to get a sense of the whole project, its movement, direction, weight. Now I go into sections and connect as specifically as I can with the text and how it works with the pictures. During this phase I am trying to do two things. The first is to understand what Jung means by his words and pictures and the second is to connect with the pictures as if they were tarot or dream images and I am interpreting them for myself. The third stage will be to assess what the differences (vast in this case) mean about what the book can be to me.
So I’ve connected with a couple of sections and find that my readings of the pictures are so very different from Jung’s. I have the same experience when I read the Thoth tarot cards. Crowley and I do not think alike. I wonder if it is the cultural differences, or the gender or both.
Having said that, I adore the book and feel that the high cost was well worth it. The respect of self and his human processes is wonderful to see, and he really meant it when he decided to get to know himself. I respect anyone who does that with integrity and honest intent. I find the pictures wonderful and deeply entrancing, which means to me that they are honest, truthful portrayals of our shared human patterns. Yet his reading of those patterns I cannot agree to. He is a deeply Christian man in many ways, and that underlying need for a singular self/reality seems wrong to me. It’s not just an “opinion” I don’t think. That is, like a poem there are good and simply wrong ways to interpret a poem.
So fundamentally I love The Red Book because it has deep insight, and the mismatch of story to insight allows me to work with the places where narrative and image meet.
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:51 am
So, as a matter of curiosity, did you read the text or look at the images first?
August 22nd, 2011 at 8:27 am
Oh images. About the time it was published I was browsing the web and came across one of the images that was used to promote the book. As soon as I saw it I decided to buy the book. I have to admit once I saw the price, I flinched and it was about three months before I did shell out the dollars. Then when it came (via Amazon), I (almost) reverently unwrapped it, and it sat on my desk for at least two weeks without being opened. That was intentional. I was absorbing its presence in my house. I’m kind of funny about books.
Once I did decide to open it, I opened it randomly, looking at the picture the text makes as well as the more formal images. That consumed a few more weeks. Then I started at the beginning and read through, comparing the German to the English translations. Not that I read German, I don’t. Rather, I get something of the cadence and sounds of the original from relating it to the English.
Other books are different. I usually read for the text, and use images as support. But Jung’s book is a book of active imagination and he was better with images than words. If he’d been a poet then I may have done the tennis thing and gone back and forth, back and forth. In a lot of ways I treat Jung like I do tarot cards.
You?
August 22nd, 2011 at 2:17 pm
The images initially lured me in. However, I went for the text first.
I do agree with you, though, that Jung was better with images in active imagination.
How do you go about dealing with the images in the book?
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:25 pm
I’m not sure I understand the question. Let me hazard: I approach the images as if they were tarot cards or dreams. That is I respond to them as if they are a dream on “pause” and simply “unpause” the action. What plays out is what it comes to mean.
August 27th, 2011 at 3:47 am
So what sort of reactions did you feel whilst responding to the images?
August 27th, 2011 at 8:24 am
Wow! That’s a really big question. I think the only way I can really answer that is by giving an example. I’ll try for a post this weekend in which I “respond” to an image. Do you have one you prefer?
August 27th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
There was one image which I particularly was struck by…and it involved the creation of a huge fire plume which almost kills the creator. It’s a Frankenstein-like motif, and given our fears about biotechnology ["playing god"?], it pretty much emotionally caught my eye.
August 28th, 2011 at 6:38 pm
I assume you mean plate 64, the Jung-traveller opening the egg (and then face down, crouched on the floor) in which the healed god Izdubar arises in a pillar of flame?
August 29th, 2011 at 12:38 am
Yep. For me, it felt as if I were in the scene itself, feeling all vulnerable to the huge created being roaring out into existence.
August 29th, 2011 at 8:28 am
[...] post is the result of a question in the comment section of this post. Thanks for the question [...]