Dreaming a Movie Classic
This is a dream from the morning of November 14, just before the full moon in Taurus. Although there is nothing in this long sequence which in a conventional way would be seen as nightmarish or horrific, it was nonetheless a profoundly disturbing dream, so much so that I have needed over a week to begin to come to terms with it, this
dream of dreams.
When the dream began I was working as a shopkeeper in a small store in a large mall. It was a narrow shop, shaped rather like a shoebox. We seemed to be selling fashion and decorating accessories like silk scarves, small sculptures, and other knickknacks. There wasn't much in the shop and I certainly wasn't troubled by customers.
I decided to leave the shop for a walk about. I was surprised to see that the shop next door, exactly like ours except empty had been left unlocked by the mall management. I remember seeing another area that I was surprised had been left unlocked also, but I cannot remember what it was. I made my way through a large department store to the north exit. Just at that moment a black limousine drove up to the exit and six or eight high fashion models got out. They were dressed in black leather or PVC and paraded through the doors into the department store, then out again and back to the limo. Photographers were taking pictures - it was obviously a staged event.
I then walked quite a distance to the western entrance to the mall. Again, just at that moment a limo drove up full of female models. This limo was white and the models were dressed in gold satins. Again they paraded a little way into the mall, the photographers took their pictures and then they left. I made my way back to my shop. When I got back and found that two women were there, also models. They asked me where I had been, and I said I had gone to check out "the dailies" - a term I recognized from movie making referring to raw cuts of what has been filmed in that day. The women were not worried that I had left the store closed for a while, as long as I was there to answer the phone after four. I realized that the store was just a front for a modeling agency. And it crossed my mind while dreaming, this is another Scorpio dream - things were not what they appeared.
The women and I were friends and we decided to go out to the cinema together. But where we went wasn't really a cinema but a studio. We were watching an observation lounge watching a large movie screen, and a famous rock band was recording the soundtrack. But I noticed that although they were cueing the music to the movie they were actually just lip-syncing and their music was actually canned. I recognized the movie, it was a famous sci-fi epic. I mentioned to my companions that I had seen the movie on the TV before, but had never caught the beginning. I remembered that I had seen it about half way through, when the hero was making his way across a desert without his crew. At that point I knew that there were some pretty explicit sex scenes, not pornographic but classically erotic.
This time I was watching the movie from the beginning, and the captain and crew were approaching an alien planet in there space ship. I remembered that I had seen clips of this part of the movie, it was famous. They landed on the planet and began the mission - I believe it was a mission of exploration. Now the point of view switched and I was the captain. We had landed in a desert area of the planet and it was important that we made the difficult journey across the desert to the other side. Our team would stop along the way to talk to the locals and determine the route. I knew that difficult thought the trek was at this point, it would get worse, and I would proceed with one or two companions, leaving the rest behind.
I realized that I had become the guardian for an orphaned young boy of about six or eight. He was basically my little shadow, we went everywhere together. We had been searching a hut for supplies and I came out and saw that one of our crew members was resting on a raised platform with an awning over it to protect it from the sun. She was an alien from this same planet, but not from this desert area. It was very hot, but it struck me as strange that she was wearing what appeared to be thin cotton nightwear, a red and blue top with blue briefs, and she had her back to me. She was a black woman with fairly short Afro style hair. She complained of being sick, that she could not eat the food. Her people would never eat the giant grasshoppers, the
naquil. But she would eat them, if only there were tasty salads to go with them, but there were only the hard rations.
I confessed to her that I also had trouble eating the giant grasshoppers, but it was our only protein, and the sickness would get worse without them. They would help protect us from the desert sun. I said that I had thought I wasn't going to be able to keep them down yesterday afternoon, but the feeling had passed. Once you faced it you were OK with them from then on. She said that I was probably right, and she turned around to face me as I sat on the raised platform. The young boy was seated at my left. I asked her to stick her tongue out to see if she was dehydrated. There was a small flake on her tongue, like a cornflake, this would be some of the hard rations. Without the grasshoppers in her diet she would fall sick and die.
Then I looked at her more closely and realized that asking her to put her tongue out had been a mistake. She was very attractive indeed, her clothing hid very little, and I realized she was being intentionally provocative. But in the dream I thought, I will be safe from a seduction, the small boy is with me. The woman touched her fingers to her lips and kissed them, then to my surprise and relief she smiled and touched the forehead of the small boy with the kiss that was on her fingers. I woke up.
Well I can't remember ever having such a powerful dream experience as I did that night, which is saying something! The scenes in the desert were particularly intense. I woke up an hour early which was just as well, because it took me about half an hour of just laying in bed, trying to figure out what had just happened! I realized with some difficulty that this was no classic sci-fi that I was reliving, I had never seen this movie until now - it was an original. After I got up and had a shower I felt ravenously hungry, and realized I must have been using a tremendous amount of energy while I was asleep.
And the reason the dream was so upsetting was not that there was anything frightening or abusive, but because of the ultimate fear of the union with the spiritual and the divine. Fears of loss, of pain, abuse, separation and evil can be uncomfortable, even intolerable in the extreme. But at the basis they reinforce who we are, no matter how distorted the perception, and in that there is some comfort. But fear of transformation, of surrender into union, this fear exists a quantum level above our material fears, this is what the Bible somewhat awkwardly calls "the fear of God". It is not that God is out to get us - that is but another expression of the dualistic fears which bind us to separation and suffering - it is that the divine loves perfectly. Love casts out mortal fear, but replaces it with a fear which is much more fundamental. And our limited egos confuse this Love with Death.
Returning to the dream itself, one connection with waking reality comes to me. I had given a television/VCR combination to a friend and in setting it up I started the VCR. Then I realized that I had left a tape in there, a recording of
Andromeda, and I said, "The archetypes!" Until the series ended it was the only TV that I watched in a week, and it was because I enjoyed seeing what they would do with such archetypal material. I believe that the dream director is using the image of "models" as an expression of the archetypes.
In journeying to the northern door, the portal which I connect with Pentacles in their materiality and physicality, the dream ego encounters
the models or archetypes of the sexualized and overtly physical. In this "staged event" of erotic symbolism I meet the dark feminine - earthy, primal and powerful - a raw invitation into union at the sexual level through which the spiritual cannot help but be engaged. I must mention here that recent Tarot analysis of the chakras has confirmed that my Sacral is closed where once it was open. Since the activation of the Heart and Solar Plexus the ego's last defense is to wall up the Sacral, for this potential union is profoundly dangerous to continued existence in his present form. I am currently a light year away from the surrender experienced with Sophie in the dream "More Sex Please, We're British".
Then, in the view from the western portal, from the domain of the Swords of thoughtful discrimination and insight, angelic models of the high mind emerge from the upper chakras, emerging from the white and clothed in liquid gold. Here walks the creatures of spiritual vision, manifest in the Third Eye. They are equally transformative, but as long as they are not allowed to touch down and take Root, they are relatively non threatening to the ego - merely immaterial and ephemeral energies without manifestation.
So then I return to the shop which is not a shop, to my job which is not a job, and meet the models who are actually my guides. Together we journey to the dark theatre of the mind, a theatre which actually as studio - a place not only of vision and perception, but of creation and manifestation. Here a "famous", i.e. archetypal, rock band plays, cutting the sound track for a "famous" inner movie. I am about to go on a numinous journey which is rooted in the collective unconscious, for which even the rock band itself is but the medium through which the primal or "canned" music is manifest.
In this "classic" movie, I am at last starting at the beginning, fully exploring the root causes which lead to the erotic centre, the raw passion in the heart of the desert. From the celestial womb of the mothership I begin my descent into incarnation, landing on the alien world we all share together. This is the desert of unformed energy, the fire of Wands seeking manifestation. Who will bring fertility to this inner desert, the nurturing rain from above? My inner child still knows, for he is the bridge to the creative heart. As I nurture and protect him, the boy in my unconscious shadows guides me to my destiny.
And here she is, an alien also, foreign to egoic consciousness, black with the fertility of Africa, the womb of the earth - but yet a part of me, one of the cosmic crew. Like the face of God, overpowering in its uncompromising reality, I must view her from behind, for to look on her fully would be to risk losing control, to be seduced into irrevocable union with the Creative Beloved.
She is sick from lack of proper nurture, my creative heart is still in a state of brokeness, but she knows what she needs. The cure is in the grasshoppers, not the traditional locusts of the desert, but creatures of abundant and light-hearted green life, those who sing and make merry in the verdant heartland. They are called
naquil, a word that was unknown to me, but which Google reveals as
Naquil, the name of a black male composer and musician, a creator of electronically styled jazz (another
must have for my music list). It is in union with her counterpart that she will be healed, but she must approach this unity through the heartfelt, gentle green abundance of fresh green salads, not in the cold rationing of the objectively measured "creative sessions" by which I dole out my artistic moments. Through the unconstrained release of art the oppressive heat of overabundant masculine solar energy is regulated, transformed and released.
And here is a literal statement indeed, reflecting on the nature of my ultimate fear, "Once you faced it you were OK with them from then on. She said that I was probably right, and she turned around to face me as I sat on the raised platform." Ah yes, here is the primal encounter in full extremity, for here I may pass "beyond the point of no return". I quickly reference the little boy to my left. In reversion to immaturity perhaps I may temper the potent dynamic of my aroused feminine heart. On the tongue of her creative expression lie the undigested flakes of left brained restraint - lacking the empowering fertile rains of liberated emotion, the heart dries out and withers.
Now the dream ego uses the inner child as a talisman to ward off unrestrained union. But the heart is gentle and wise, and instead of embracing the dream ego in love she touches the inner child. Through that child the man will be seduced. And now the revelation was complete.
