Edouard Joseph d’Alton’s Illustrations of Animal Skeletons (1821–1838)
Welcome to Dream Interpretation for Dummies, where Dear Abby meets Native Americana. Come to the campfire, peer into the yawning grave, and take a dive into the collective subconscious… or maybe just explore some weird clown imagery. We’ll wait for you here.
Howdy Note: This dream has been very lightly edited. Everything you are about to read has already happened, is happening, will happen…
Another Howdy Note: I have a Patreon now! Patrons will receive interpretations, spells, rituals, and the like, as well as other fun goodies. No pressure to become a member, but this does help me keep this newsletter free, as well as support my goal of doing this work full time. I’ll explain more in a mini essay and SPECIAL COLLECTIVE READING next time! Now…
Dear Howdy,
I love interpreting my dreams, but this one stumped me! I'll just jump right in. Last week, I dreamt that, in a movie-like camera move, I could see the very top of a head, and then a hand not belonging to the head reached down to grab a single, thick, wiry-straight white hair. Then I realized that the person was me.
Cut to.
Different scene. Sunny and in a desert, everything's close up, from my own perspective. I'm looking down and on my knee, there's a large, shiny pimple — around the height/circumference of a dime. Of course, I try to pop it, and I'm squeezing it, and it hurts, but then! It pops, and something flies out. I go to look for it because something's not right. I bend down near some sparse grass and pick up what appears to be a TINY DINOSAUR SKELETON. Like a pterodactyl fetus or something. It was extremely delicate and I was in awe and very confused and I really wanted to tell someone but I was alone.
I'm very excited to follow your work!
Sincerely,
Caitlin
Dear Caitlin,
Thank you for the gift of your dream. I’m always glad to hear someone share my love of mining the subconscious, the unconscious, the sub-unconscious. That this work I’m doing reaches people is, in itself, a treasure, one that I hold closely to my Spirit. Though speaking of spirits, I wonder what they think about all the Jung and Freud I’ve been reading. So far I’ve tapped into The Interpretation of Dreams, Dreams: From Volumes 4, 8, 12, and 16, and The Red Book: A Reader’s Edition, with more to come. It’s good to know your contemporaries, isn’t it? (Ha, ha!)
Theories to the side (or perhaps in the midst), into your dream we go. Have I told you that I see your (the collective) dreams like I am being led through them? I do. Though sometimes it is like flowing, like becoming a river. I can see the head, the hand, the hair, like they were my own. If we’re Jungians this week, maybe they are. Anyway, anyway. This white hair seems to symbolize wisdom and the plucking of it is the denial of wisdom, perhaps that inner wisdom inside of you that you distrust, or at least haven’t tapped into. I am not one to say that life is easy, nor that “believing in yourself” is the cure all, but you should, in fact, believe in yourself. There are things to learn here, my friend.
I think of the desert and I think of the Akwaeke Emezi poem what if mary auntie called me on my birthday and the line ‘have you been to the desert? little gods like you always have to go.’ I also think of the Bible stories of my youth. Of Christ, of John the Baptist, of all those prophets who wandered among the sands. This is to say, when I think of the desert I think of mysticism, of religion, of wonder. You go into the desert in your dream for the same reasons we all go, I think, to discover something about yourself you didn’t otherwise know.
This image of the pimple birthing the pterodactyl is incredibly compelling to me. It brings to mind Athena (goddess of wisdom, among other things) springing forth from Zeus’ forehead, of knee-clasping (see: supplication) in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Perhaps yours is a little more tied to the body, tied to a thing we consider (incorrectly so) unsanitary, but it is still important. And, of course, it hurts. Transition hurts. Change hurts. Learning things about ourselves, our shadows, hurts. You expect the thing that came from you to be something you can understand, but instead it is ancient, archaic. It is something older than you, yet it lived within you.
Tied all together – the wisdom, the desert, the ancient skeleton — this dream speaks to me of the ancestors, your ancestors specifically. They have something to tell you. Connect with them, if you find yourself led. If not, you fulfilled the request implicit inside the dream — you told someone, you told me. We’ve both seen it now.
I hope this helped. I hope there are more jewels for you to uncover. I’m sending you a dream of a rocky plateau, of a cave system. Everything is red rock and shining minerals. Let me know if you get it.
See you on the other side,
Howdy
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