Energy, Change, Love and Form: The Four Coins
December 1, 2006:
In the first remembered dream I see a faceless coin lying between two other coins. This middle coin is darker than its companions and I am told that it is the Coin of Transformation. I wake.
In the second dream I see a bright shiny coin lying between two other coins. This middle coin is the Coin of Creation. I wake into trance.
In trance I ask about these two dreams. The first one is about Sophie. The coin on the left is Energy, on the right is Form. Sophie lies in the middle, and has the power of metaphor, to covert something from one thing into another. This is Transformation, and her name is Change.
In the second dream the coins on either side remain the same. This time the middle coin has the power of simile, to compare one thing to another. This is Art, and her name is Creative Love. She is called by many other names: one of them is Eirian. I return to sleep.
The first of this dream pair helps clarify yesterday's dream, in which Sophie was described as an agent of "transformation, transmutation, and transubstantiation" with the virtue of providing superior nourishment to the Survivors, those who endure on their chosen life path. Even in the course of the dream these seemed very weighty words. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines transformation as the act of making a "thorough or dramatic change in form". Transmutation bears a similar meaning, but has a specific alchemical context. Transubstantiation refers to priestly magic, whereby the bread and wine of Eucharist are converted into the actual body and blood of Christ.
As a creature of the Third Eye, Sophie is representative of the power of archetypal vision, and her name literally means Wisdom. Some would suggest that Sophia was the Spirit of God who "hovered over the waters", the catalyst of primal creation. The imagery of archetypal identity is the first step in the journey from the unlimited but diffuse potential of Crown consiousness downwards towards manifestation. It is at this point that the One is first conceived as the Many.
In its normal workings, the Inner Eye works in tandem with the Sacral chakra, and thus we perceive duality through the senses. But when this chakral centre is approached from above, perception has not yet manifest into form. Thus Form here is represented only by an ideal or model, as archetypes without a bodily presence.
In the upper domains of the Inner Eye, even vision itself is a pre-dualist concept, and in this rarified state even Sophie cannot have a visible presence. Nonetheless, the descent of Crown consciousness into the Inner Eye provides the dualistic creature with a nurture that closely approaches perfection. This is the true manna or bread of heaven, the Soma of the East. Here is the purest intuition that we may experience while operating within dualism, lacking even the distracting cloaking of image.
Like the first dream, the second dream deals with media of exchange, the coins whereby dualistic work is assigned a symbolic value. An alternate visioning of the suite of Pentacles, coins are the one of the most prosaic results of Energy manifesting as Form. In this case we are at the level of the Heart Chakra, where we integrate through relationship, and where dualist and unitive consciousness may come to resolution.
I recall that even Eirian's name means "bright" or "shiny one" in the Welsh language, just as this middle coin is bright and shiny. Through analogy, Art finds relational meaning within diversity: Creative Love brings spirit into manifestation; Form finds ultimate meaning through its soulful inclination towards passionate transcendence. Here indeed is the very Empress of my Heart, where Sophie's vision is drawn by Eirian's undeniable passion into physical reality.
So these two triads of coins can be seen as overlapping and coexisting. Without the synergies of both Change and Love, Form cannot approach its divine potential, and neither can Energy assume a dualistic presence. Perception shows where you may go; passion motivates the journey.