A few days ago, I dreamed that someone I knew was an expectant father, and his wife was in labor. I was to be the labor coach and, while my friend waited nervously outside, I went in to attend to her.
When I entered, I discovered the “wife” was an elderly Native American; a shaman (I knew) in jeans, a red flannel shirt, and a headband. The shaman got up on the delivery table and spread his legs, and from between his legs a slit opened in his blue jeans and a head began to emerge.
Well.
Last night I dreamed that I was at a festival with friends Larry & Sabina. We were playing some sort of game or doing some sort of ritual, and they needed a drop of my blood to prove my good intentions. I knew they would prick a finger but then Sabina said that didn’t work and could I please turn around. It was, I think she said, for initiation, but I don’t know what she meant. I think it was still a sex game in my mind. She lifted my hair and took a slice from the top of my spine/base of my skull (exactly where my Kali eyes tattoo is, but I wasn’t aware of the tattoo in the dream). It was a plus-sign shaped cut and it hurt horribly. I felt like she was damaging my brain. I was terrified and angry. I cried out in pain but I was afraid to move. She cut my like that, with me holding still and crying out, for a long time. I was wondering, in the dream, if this was domestic violence.
Upon awaking, that dream plus the earlier one seem to add up to some kind of message about ritual or transformation, but I can’t put it all together.
Hello, I think You know it better than me. I need to buy new mala. I think about rudraksha and I don’t know is it only for Shiva or maybe I can pray on it mantras like Gayatri, mantras to Jagadambe?
Actually, I know nothing about this subject.
But You use malas?
You expected young, you got old (Shaman), you expected a female, you got a male, Shaman offers literal birth rather than other transformation, intentions become something supposedly physically manifested so one can physically examine them (painfully, abusively), orthopraxy (correct practice) becomes abuse (wrong practice), Kali’s eye gets cut out (blinded) in an x like fashion in order to see (intentions), familiar (friend?) does the unfamiliar, wounding.
Everything seems topsy turvy, wounding you. What could have been sexy becomes horrific, unpleasant, bewildering, and “unnecessary.”
Things seem surreal — Kali’s eye is cut out in a cartoonish fashion, leaving an “+” where the eye was, similar to popular outsider images of voodoo dolls’ with their stitched “x” eyes only the symbol is turned — the wound forms a physical plus sign, as if someone is trying to make something wounding a positive, you submitted to it by being caught off guard in a situation you unexpectantly find yourself in.
Hmmm. Perhaps an old belief/relationship, not initiation, is what the dream is really about, since everything is topsy turvy. Perhaps what is blinding is really deepening insight.
It definitely involved Kali. Metangi, seen as an aspect of Kali by some, is often represented as someone who makes everything topsy turvy. Might not have anything to do with it, maybe it does.
Karen, thank you so much for this interpretation. Even though Kali’s eyes didn’t appear in the dream, my dreaming self knew the eyes were there on my waking body, so I think that’s a valid inclusion.
You’re welcome. 🙂
Karen gave an excellent interpretation so it’s difficult to add much. One thing I might suggest is doing some work to interact directly with the dream characters you feel might be most helpful for deepening your understanding.
I wrote an article about the topic a while ago. It’s on my website at http://witchgrotto.com/content/view/71/9/
If you can get your hands on a copy of Strephon Kaplan-Williams “The Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual” it has the best suggestions for working with dreams that I’ve ever seen.
Ben, that’s good advise. Although I don’t know the Kaplan-Williams book, I have long recommended “Inner Work” by Robert Johnson, which is all about this sort of thing.