The dream this morning is still somewhat fresh in my mind so I must record it quickly before it fades away. The dream begins at a mountain side. I am facing a rocky cliff and I see stone stairs ascending to my left. The place is full of primitive people who have come to worship a bird woman goddess. I walk up the stairs to meet the bird woman. She is standing in a huge bird's nest overlooking the crowd. I come face to face with her and she tilts her head to the one side. She is very curious about who I am and why I have come to see her. I am not a man from this place or time. I am a man from the future, the modern world, that does not believe in the myths of the ancient past. Some how I have been transported here to meet this woman. I get the feeling it is some kind of karmic destiny that we should meet. I think she might have some wisdom or prophecy to share with me. Alas, I never get to hear it, as the next moment, I am whisked away to some ivy university.
When I arrive at the ivy university I am seated in a library. I am reading a scientific journal. I am reading about an experiment conducted by these three male scientists. They had hired a young woman as their test subject. She has consented to have a series of nude portraits of her to be painted. These pictures are done in orange water colors. The object of the experiment was to see if the woman experienced any "psychic phenomenon" with the men who would later view her pictures. I can see the scientists interview the young lady. She tells them, that she did indeed, experience some "psychic phenomenon". She said, with a smile, she felt her body being touched and lusted after by the scientists when they viewed her pictures afterwards. The experiment was clearly lacking proper controls and protocols to be considered legit. It was comical and absurdly funny.
The next moment, I am wandering around campus, with the scientific journal under my arm, and I'm looking for a place to eat. I find a cafeteria serving pizza. However, I have arrived too late to be served so I sit down at a table and resume reading the journal. Two young female students sit down at the table booth with me. They want to know what I am reading. I summarize the article about the nude woman experiment. They are mesmerized by my telling of it and the woman seated next to me puts her head on my right shoulder. That was an unexpected response. I glance up from my reading and look to the front door of the cafeteria and I see the actor, Kelsey Grammar, seated behind a small table, greeting students as they walk into the room. He is dressed in very casual summer clothes. He has on shorts, a t-shirt and sneakers. My vision is then distracted toward one nerdy looking young guy walking in, he is joking and laughing, and being a socially awkward goofball. I see on his head he has a head band with a small clock affixed to it. It strikes me as the oddest thing and makes it no sense at all. It serves no practical purpose, that I can fathom, to put a clock on one's head, and I think that is why he did it. This is when I wake up.
What do we make of all these strange and disparate images? The bird woman goddess? The first thought that comes to mind is a remark that was made to me that my soon-to-be new bride will go through a phase where she will be "nesting" into our new apartment. She will want to turn the empty living space into a home for her and I. That comment must have resonated with my unconscious and brought forth the bird woman image. However, I suspect there is some primordial archetype at work here. Winged women and "bird goddess" figurines are numerous from the Palaeolithic period (around 30,000 BCE) and are part of earliest forms of human art. Also there is a Palaeolithic cavern in the south of France, as well, called Pech Merle, which you can see images of hugely pregnant hybrid bird women dance on the ceilings with animals. From the later Neolithic period more than a hundred thousand figurines of woman have been unearthed, a significant percentage of these, are depictions of winged woman or pregnant bird woman, as well. From subsequent cultures down through history and around the world we see versions, and visions of this archetype. Isn't it interesting how angels often take the female form in our day? There are two elements of this archetype to consider: 1. Being a child of Nature and 2. Sexuality, virginity and reproduction. Now that I think about it, these elements actually are present in the dream with the nude woman, the scientists, and the female students in the cafeteria and even Kelsey Grammar. Analyzing this alone could give us some great insights into how to interpret this whole experience and put it into some useful context.
The bird woman is both human and animal. A part of nature and a child of it. It is important for her spiritual health and physical well-being to be in the nature. People who are her opposite or in shadow aspect are cruel to animals, and have no interest in preserving the natural world.
The sexual element is quite obvious throughout all this. The bird woman had the head and naked torso of a human female, feathered wings, instead of arms, and bird legs. She struck me as both freakish and sensual. I found her both captivatingly beautiful and somewhat frightening at the same time. It was an odd sensation. Ancient Greek and Roman writers called the creature of my dream a harpy. They were originally regarded as wind spirits and latter legends painted them as awful monsters that tormented and devoured people. The bird woman of my dream did not seem evil or threatening at all. She was very surprised to see me and quite curious about me. Perhaps she was just sizing me up for a meal and I am grossly naïve. I don't know. The sexual experience is somewhat a similar sensation. It is exciting, scary and all consuming at the same time.
The nude woman and the scientists further explores this theme in a rather silly and light hearted way. Our three nerdy scientists have found a clever way to indulge in their sexual fantasies and avoid the pitfalls, and risks, of the actual physical sex act. It is really interesting that the nude portraits are in orange, as the color orange is regarded symbolically as radiating warmth and happiness. Orange is extroverted and uninhibited, often encouraging exhibitionism, so there was some science present in their scientific sex study after all! Score another point for the wisdom of the collective unconscious.
The two female students in the cafeteria are attractive young women. They are strangers to me. I don't know them personally in this dream, and yet, they are spontaneously attracted to my dream persona. One woman makes a clear affectionate gesture. It is interesting that I turn my gaze elsewhere rather than look into her eyes and engage her in conversation or intimacy. For many years this was a reflection of how disassociated I had become from my own emotions, especially when it came to being intimate with the opposite sex. My current relationship with fiancée has transformed me in so many unseen ways. I am now demonstratively much more loving and affectionate. This dream encounter provokes me to look ever more deeply at the changes I have under gone and how substantial they truly have been. Have I really changed? Is my unconscious self susceptible to the temptations of other females? I did look away and was unresponsive. Should I make any moral associations or judgments about this incident? Is it appropriate to do so? Such questions haunt my conscious self and no clear answers come to the fore. I am in a quandary.
Now what about Kelsey Grammar? Grammar had a long career on television playing the psychiatrist, Dr Crane, on both the shows, Cheers, and it's spinoff, Frasier. A careful study of the man and the character he played on TV will reveal what a personal transformation he made in all those years on television. It seems oddly fitting he should appear in my dream. I feel I can relate to the humanity of the character on so many levels. I don't know Kelsey Grammar, but I have a favourable impression of him. One synchronistic note: Dr Crane's TV ex-wife's is named Lilith and is a correlates with a character from Jewish myth, a woman, who according to tradition was Adam's first wife, before Eve. A mistranslation of the Epic of Gilgamesh led to a incorrect association, to a particular Babylonian bird woman relief, to be an image of her. Later experts cleared this up, but the misunderstanding still remains.
What is the final word on our goofy kid with the head band clock? Well, I took it as a signal to wake up in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Perhaps it is a suggestion from the collective unconscious to be more authentic in how I express my emotions, particularly my response to love and sexuality. The nerd of my dream is a reflection of some silly juvenile aspect of my psyche. He is a shadow or hidden part of my personality. The clock is in a position that it cannot be read by myself but is visible to others. It could be a representation of that infamous biological clock. It is on my mind and I am unaware that it is ticking away, and I am blind to it as well. It is unconsciously ever present and counting down the hours, and I am the blissful buffoon who is unaware of it. At least that's my take on it.
So what can we conclude from all of this analysis? The bird woman archetype is staring back at me from the collective unconscious. I have had a shared experience with our Palaeolithic ancestors. The archetype, I am convinced, wants to communicate a message of concern for the natural world, sexuality and reproduction from the collective unconscious. My task is to try and decode what that message might be and apply it to my life. I can get the gestalt of it, but as usual, the infinite depth of the collective unconscious it eludes a complete understanding and always will. Such is the pursuit of dreams. We might catch up to them, but they never will be held captive for long.
What do we make of all these strange and disparate images? The bird woman goddess? The first thought that comes to mind is a remark that was made to me that my soon-to-be new bride will go through a phase where she will be "nesting" into our new apartment. She will want to turn the empty living space into a home for her and I. That comment must have resonated with my unconscious and brought forth the bird woman image. However, I suspect there is some primordial archetype at work here. Winged women and "bird goddess" figurines are numerous from the Palaeolithic period (around 30,000 BCE) and are part of earliest forms of human art. Also there is a Palaeolithic cavern in the south of France, as well, called Pech Merle, which you can see images of hugely pregnant hybrid bird women dance on the ceilings with animals. From the later Neolithic period more than a hundred thousand figurines of woman have been unearthed, a significant percentage of these, are depictions of winged woman or pregnant bird woman, as well. From subsequent cultures down through history and around the world we see versions, and visions of this archetype. Isn't it interesting how angels often take the female form in our day? There are two elements of this archetype to consider: 1. Being a child of Nature and 2. Sexuality, virginity and reproduction. Now that I think about it, these elements actually are present in the dream with the nude woman, the scientists, and the female students in the cafeteria and even Kelsey Grammar. Analyzing this alone could give us some great insights into how to interpret this whole experience and put it into some useful context.
The bird woman is both human and animal. A part of nature and a child of it. It is important for her spiritual health and physical well-being to be in the nature. People who are her opposite or in shadow aspect are cruel to animals, and have no interest in preserving the natural world.
The sexual element is quite obvious throughout all this. The bird woman had the head and naked torso of a human female, feathered wings, instead of arms, and bird legs. She struck me as both freakish and sensual. I found her both captivatingly beautiful and somewhat frightening at the same time. It was an odd sensation. Ancient Greek and Roman writers called the creature of my dream a harpy. They were originally regarded as wind spirits and latter legends painted them as awful monsters that tormented and devoured people. The bird woman of my dream did not seem evil or threatening at all. She was very surprised to see me and quite curious about me. Perhaps she was just sizing me up for a meal and I am grossly naïve. I don't know. The sexual experience is somewhat a similar sensation. It is exciting, scary and all consuming at the same time.
The nude woman and the scientists further explores this theme in a rather silly and light hearted way. Our three nerdy scientists have found a clever way to indulge in their sexual fantasies and avoid the pitfalls, and risks, of the actual physical sex act. It is really interesting that the nude portraits are in orange, as the color orange is regarded symbolically as radiating warmth and happiness. Orange is extroverted and uninhibited, often encouraging exhibitionism, so there was some science present in their scientific sex study after all! Score another point for the wisdom of the collective unconscious.
The two female students in the cafeteria are attractive young women. They are strangers to me. I don't know them personally in this dream, and yet, they are spontaneously attracted to my dream persona. One woman makes a clear affectionate gesture. It is interesting that I turn my gaze elsewhere rather than look into her eyes and engage her in conversation or intimacy. For many years this was a reflection of how disassociated I had become from my own emotions, especially when it came to being intimate with the opposite sex. My current relationship with fiancée has transformed me in so many unseen ways. I am now demonstratively much more loving and affectionate. This dream encounter provokes me to look ever more deeply at the changes I have under gone and how substantial they truly have been. Have I really changed? Is my unconscious self susceptible to the temptations of other females? I did look away and was unresponsive. Should I make any moral associations or judgments about this incident? Is it appropriate to do so? Such questions haunt my conscious self and no clear answers come to the fore. I am in a quandary.
Now what about Kelsey Grammar? Grammar had a long career on television playing the psychiatrist, Dr Crane, on both the shows, Cheers, and it's spinoff, Frasier. A careful study of the man and the character he played on TV will reveal what a personal transformation he made in all those years on television. It seems oddly fitting he should appear in my dream. I feel I can relate to the humanity of the character on so many levels. I don't know Kelsey Grammar, but I have a favourable impression of him. One synchronistic note: Dr Crane's TV ex-wife's is named Lilith and is a correlates with a character from Jewish myth, a woman, who according to tradition was Adam's first wife, before Eve. A mistranslation of the Epic of Gilgamesh led to a incorrect association, to a particular Babylonian bird woman relief, to be an image of her. Later experts cleared this up, but the misunderstanding still remains.
What is the final word on our goofy kid with the head band clock? Well, I took it as a signal to wake up in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Perhaps it is a suggestion from the collective unconscious to be more authentic in how I express my emotions, particularly my response to love and sexuality. The nerd of my dream is a reflection of some silly juvenile aspect of my psyche. He is a shadow or hidden part of my personality. The clock is in a position that it cannot be read by myself but is visible to others. It could be a representation of that infamous biological clock. It is on my mind and I am unaware that it is ticking away, and I am blind to it as well. It is unconsciously ever present and counting down the hours, and I am the blissful buffoon who is unaware of it. At least that's my take on it.
So what can we conclude from all of this analysis? The bird woman archetype is staring back at me from the collective unconscious. I have had a shared experience with our Palaeolithic ancestors. The archetype, I am convinced, wants to communicate a message of concern for the natural world, sexuality and reproduction from the collective unconscious. My task is to try and decode what that message might be and apply it to my life. I can get the gestalt of it, but as usual, the infinite depth of the collective unconscious it eludes a complete understanding and always will. Such is the pursuit of dreams. We might catch up to them, but they never will be held captive for long.
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