The Dream
A tall slender black-haired man in a tux, the kind with tails, leads me to an upstairs room in a café. I glance at him and think of a dragon and Dracula. Something about him is not quite human. He directs me to sit on a red upholstered bench. I am surprised to notice I’m wearing a black leather backpack I had thirty years ago. A curly-haired woman in a 1950’s dress with a full skirt comes in and kneels before me on the red wall to wall carpet. She makes me uncomfortable. She's aggressive and doesn't feel quite human either.
“Did he tell you I’m a Demon?”
He didn’t.
She’s holding something that looks like four pie doughs wrapped in saran wrap. Still kneeling she piles them up on the floor in front of her and looks up and right into my eyes. It feels like she’s performing for me and wants to be sure I get her message.
“I eat human flesh.” She unwraps a package from the pile and pulls at it. It stretches like taffy or dough. She tears off a piece and stuffs it in her mouth as her eyes hold mine.
“Do you kill the humans you eat or buy them packaged?” I ask.
“I kill the humans myself.”
Either my daughter or my child self is now sitting beside me. The child is about five years old. I must get her out of this place, away from the cannibal woman.
I wake up, repulsed, revolted, sickened.
The Interpretation of the Dream
The art of interpretation involves looking at many aspects of a dream: the feelings you have in the dream and the feelings you have upon awakening, the dream setting, the various characters in the dream as well as the symbols in the dream. Interpretation requires amplification of each of these aspects of the dream.
The dream maker in each of us creates dreams to send communications to the waking self, communications which bring forward images that have been cut off from conscious awareness. A dream is like a movie or play created to make the waking self aware of something she hasn't yet acknowledged, or at least hasn't yet sufficiently acknowledged.
The Feeling in the Dream:
The feelings you have upon awakening as well as during the dream can be counted on to be true. They are the most trustworthy aspect of a dream. That's why they're a good place to look to begin understanding a dream. When I wake up from this dream I’m sickened by this brash woman cannibal. The dream bothers me like a burr under the saddle. No, more than a burr under the saddle, it shakes me up, makes me feel terrible enough to start to question if I am somehow symbolically a cannibal. Which of course I am, as it's my dream.
The dream makes me think I don't know myself as well as I thought. I feel compelled to work on this dream. I begin by looking at the dream setting.
The Dream Setting:
The setting is a good place to go next after looking at the feeling. The setting is where the dreamer has chosen to unfold the story. In this case it's an upstairs room in a cafe. A cafe suggests nourishment or at least coffee and perhaps socializing. But we are not in the main cafe but upstairs in a private room so it will not be the usual cafe food or experience. The room is very red, red carpet and a red upholstered bench, too red for my liking. Red suggests passion, devilry and anger to me. This room doesn't feel safe.
The Characters in the Dream:
Me in the dream, (the dream ego), who is being lead by the man
The man who reminds the me in the dream, (the dream ego), of Dracula and dragons
The brash woman in the 1950's dress kneeling tearing at the packages
The five-year-old little girl
Jung postulated that each character in a dream is an aspect of ourselves . What part of me, recognized or yet not recognized, does each of these four characters represent?
I begin with the man who reminds me of Dracula and dragons. Why has the dream maker chosen this type of man. He's not quite of this world. He has a more universal, archetypal aspect. He's something from a deeper layer than my personal unconscious. Dragons and Dracula are collective figures we all know about. But what aspect of me does he represent? Why is he in my dream? I google both Dracula and dragons. The word Dracula is derived from the Latin, Draco which means Dragon. Dragons are an old alchemical symbol and represent the unconscious. In the dream, the dream ego, me in the dream, is being led by Dracula/dragon man into an even deeper, redder realm of my unconscious. As I think more about dragons, I remember that one form of the dragon is the uroboros, the serpent swallowing his own tail. An important symbol in Jungian psychology, the uroboros represents wholeness and the ability of the unconscious to spark renewal in our psyche. In alchemy the serpent represents one stage in the transformation from base mental into gold, the incorruptible substance which represents the Self, the Divine aspect in each of us. It is the job of our dreams help us become more whole, to help us see what we don’t want to see about ourselves, in order to be whole. In this sense dreams compensate our conscious knowledge by showing us what we're keeping hidden from ourselves. Another thought about dragons is that in fairytales and myths they often guard treasure. The treasure in the human psyche is the Self, the part of us that is eternal and lives outside of time, our own spark of divinity. The Dracula/dragon aspect of myself has led me to this red room to show me something about myself. What hidden aspect does it want me to acknowledge?
Then there is the me, the dream ego, in the dream, the woman being led? The dream ego is the character the dreamer identifies with in the dream. She seems passive here allowing herself to be led around by this dragon/Dracula guy. Then she just sits on the bench. Where is her agency, her aggression? She does briefly question the woman to get more information and she decides to leave to protect the child, or perhaps to protect herself from the truth. She's wearing a black back leather pack which surprises her as she realizes in the dream is from a long time ago.
Next, we come to the woman in the 1950's dress. She is kneeling before the dream ego eating the human flesh which looks like pie crust or taffy. What ritual is she acting outing by kneeling? Though she’s kneeling she’s no supplicant in the usual sense. Is she making fun of me by kneeling as if in worship at the same time she’s trying to shock me? What is she asking of me? To be acknowledged as part of me? Her demeanor reminds me of a tarot card reader I saw twenty-five years ago. She was loud, direct, brash, aggressive but very intuitive. She pointed out to me at the time that being a Libra I was more concerned with setting the table and having pretty manners than just digging in and eating, getting down to the business of it. My bawdy, earthy side, along with my aggression was too repressed in her opinion. I also notice the woman cannibal's directness. "Did he tell you I'm a demon?" She doesn't try to hide her true nature. She wants to make sure I know she’s a Demon. Because she’s in my dream she is my inner demon, my inner cannibal. In what way am I symbolically a demon? a cannibal? In what way have I killed, and eaten people symbolically and then buried the memory? I am up against it now. How much can I bear to see about this part of myself?
The fourth character in the dream is a five-year-old child who just seems to be there at one point. It's unclear if she's me at age five or my daughter at age five. My daughter was five, twenty-five years ago when her father and I divorced. Babies and young children in dreams can represent hope, growth, renewal and innocence. The child could be pointing to something that happened to her or to me or to both of us at age five.
The Symbols in the Dream:
Black leather backpack
1950's dress
Demon
Cannibal
Packages of flesh wrapped in saran wrap
The number four
Dreams speak in symbolic language. They prefer images to words. It's useful to amplify each symbol to understand what the dream maker is trying to communicate.
The black leather backpack :
I have a clue in the black leather backpack I’m wearing in the dream, I no longer have the backpack in waking life. It was a gift from my then husband about thirty years ago. The dream is pointing to that time. I need to look at something related to him that happened back then. We divorced twenty-five years ago when our daughter was five. Was that breakup and divorce so selfish on my part that my psyche sees it as greedy and dark as cannibalism? Have I not sufficiently acknowledged the degree of harm I did, especially to my daughter by breaking up our family? And how was my own self at age five hurt? Am I a demon-cannibal, cannibalizing hearts in search of being loved rather than loving?
The 1950’s dress:
I like 50’s dresses. I was a child in the 50’s. I wore a lot of 50's vintage dresses in graduate school where I met my husband and during our marriage. The dresses as well as the backpack suggest something related to this marriage, to my then husband and to my daughter. The time and the issue the dream is commenting on have roots back twenty-five or thirty years ago.
Demon
A demon can be a devil, a dark spirit, a tormentor. The idea of demons and devils and monsters created fear in me as a little girl. Demons, devils, cannibals, dragons, Dracula are all universal archetypal symbols in the collective unconsciousness. They are infused with mythic power that can attack us. They hurt and destroy life.
Cannibal
A cannibal is literally one who eats human flesh. I find literal cannibalism shocking and horrific. But cannibalism is also a metaphor for all consuming love.
The Packages of Human Flesh:
Last week my daughter made pie dough for four apple pies, wrapped them in saran wrap and stacked them in the refrigerator to chill. They looked just like the packages the woman in my dream had. Have I hurt four people in an unspeakable way? Is my own daughter one of the four I have hurt; have I harmed the person I love most in the world? What else can I say about these packages? The woman has killed the people herself. She didn’t buy these in a grocery store. But they don’t look like flesh any more than packaged meat looks like the animal. Could my psyche also feel that animal flesh is sacred, and I should not be eating animals? Do I feel I am a demon and a cannibal for eating animals? There’s little evidence for this in the dream, though in waking life I sometimes feel this way.
The Number Four:
Why four packages? Have I cannibalized four humans? Do the four packages represent four times I’ve acted the cannibal, four humans whose flesh I have symbolically torn and eaten? The demon’s cannibalism is so sanitized. Have I sanitized the hurt I’ve inflicted?
What can I learn about myself from this dream?
This dream is partly about my inner demon-cannibal and the acts of symbolic cannibalism she committed twenty-five or thirty years ago. The work is to acknowledge these repulsive aspects of myself, welcome them into consciousness and live with them, to sit with the truth that they are part of me. Jung called it owning your shadow, bringing the shadow into consciousness, allowing it to live as part of the personality rather than cutting it off.
But this is not all the dream is about. Even the darkest side of us has two aspects. My cannibal woman has good qualities too, which I have also repressed as part of my shadow.
Jung reminded us that there's gold in the shadow as well as darkness. Shadow aspects also come with gifts. Our shadow aspects are not one-sided. On the positive side the cannibal woman has energy, healthy as well as non-healthy aggression and she's honest. She’s up front, direct.
The Dracula/dragon man also has positive qualities. As the uroboros he represents wholeness. He leads me to where I am faced with a disowned aspect of myself. The presence of the child suggests new growth, new hope. I want to protect her. The only way I can protect her is to own my shadow, see it and integrate it so it doesn’t hijack me. Repressed shadow parts of us grow more wild when left in the dark and denied access to the whole psyche. If we don't bring them to light and purify them they they putrefy and poison us.
Integrating these aspects of my psyche requires a painful look at what the dream is pointing to from the past around my breakup and divorce and facing my part in it, and in whatever other acts those four packs of flesh represent. What have I been unwilling to admit about myself? Shame and guilt are often involved in what we can't face. Who have I hurt? However many times I have acknowledged my selfishness, ruthlessness and guilt in past relationships, it has not been enough, or I wouldn’t have had this dream. I have more work to do to accept this disowned cannibal aspect. This part of me which is now kneeling before me asking to be seen, owned, admitted to consciousness and no longer kept in shadow. To become a more authentic, more whole, human being I must invite her in, inquire into everything about her, accept her as me. The task is self-inquiry, not self-judgment. And ultimately the task is to forgive myself.
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