Dream Archives

"Sleep, this seam of your life that you yourself don't possess." -Jorge Luis Borges

My dreams are highly symbolic and complex, and there are many recurring elements. Symbols, themes, locations, characters, and tropes are found spanning back to even my first dreams as a child. Storylines may continue and evolve between dreams through the years. On this page, I will be exploring these patterns, as well as recounting the dreams of my childhood, along with my first dream.

I will also explain some of the meanings I have found, though I will mostly be expounding on the context, not my interpretations. I will leave that to the reader. However, I have included a list of general Jungian interpretations for some recurring elements. I have not recounted every single dream in the archives; the highly recurring ones, like fishing, flying, or leading people to safety, are explained only if they are notable.

Childhood Dreams

I have had unusual dreams all my life, though they only became clear and numerous in my late teens. As a child, they felt even nearer to the unconscious in a visceral way. I remember recalling these dreams in high school and feeling disturbed by them. There was a place I would go in them, and I felt a strange confusion about if this place was a memory or if I had been there before. I couldn't even tell if these had been recurring dreams, or if there was only one. I couldn't tell when they had happened either, because they were embedded into something closer to my memories, and the disconcerting haze gave me a strong sensation that I needed to return to this place, if only I could find it again.

The place I speak of is a forest, and it was somehow tied to my deep childhood, playing in a place perhaps similar. We would make camps in the thickets, and play kingdom, scrambling over the creek and briars on fallen trees, and hiding under the dense tangle in spots cleared out on the ground. My dreams returned to a place like this, but the pure numinosity felt so cranked up that it possessed me with an indescribable feeling.

My first dream I can recall was also in the forest. Like other dreams I have had since, it was nothing more than an image, imbued with intense feeling of familiarity and yearning for something unknown that has stuck powerfully with me even now, despite that unsettling feeling draining out over the years. The image was a small pool in a dark forest, with a log hanging over the middle. Striking, powerful, primitive. The age I had the dream is unknown, but certainly before the age of 10.

Recurring Tropes, Storylines, and symbols

• Leading people to safety: These dreams were very common throughout the first few books. I was always the only one flying, and I would lead a group of people away from an unseen, unknown threat.
  
  
• Flying: This is the most common recurring element of anything else, and I have been flying in my dreams since childhood. Interestingly, my skill for this gradually improved over the years. At first, as a child, I would jump off high places and flap. I struggled with agility for a long time, and was cumbersome for a long time. I struggled to dive or fly well because I was still a human, and my center of gravity was off. There were also many frustrating obstacles in the air, like power lines, or viginetting in my vision. Over time, with practice, I improved, and people stopped trying to pull me out of the air or chase me as much. I got more nimble and would sometimes even transform into a bird. This also involved some waking practice, as I visualized it. I have flown in most of my dreams.
  
  
• Crossing Bridges/rivers: Most common during my time of knowing Jason, I have crossed or driven on many bridges and rivers.
  
  
• Riding horses: An old symbol from the beginning, my ability to ride horses in my dreams has improved with my mental health. Horses are a powerful statement towards my sense of control in my self and life.
  
  
• Catching fish: The second most abundance theme in my dreams, behind flying, is staring into water and trying to catch fish with my hands. Like riding horses, my ability to catch them improved with my mental health. At my worst, I would stare into impossibly deep water in a pond or creek and see monstrous fish looming beneath the water.
  
  
• Natural disasters: Especially at the start, I dreamt of many storms, blizzards, and other natural disasters consuming me. Fires were common as well.
  
  
• Transformation: An uncommon but persistent element in many of my most powerful dreams involve transformation from one thing into another, often an animal.
  
  
• Snake biting hand: A strange symbol that I don't understand involves a snake painfully biting my hand twice, and I grip its head to tear it out.
  
  
• Imposter snake: Uncommon but old, I have a strange recurrent dream of my snake's tank being invaded by a second, more dangerous and larger snake. I don't know why.
  
  
• Collecting items: In many of my dreams, I collect things for my 'collection.' Similarly, my journals and camera are often in danger or missing, and I am upset about it, or I am trying to save memorabilia from a disaster.
  
  
• Looking for an item: Since I was young, I have dreamt of browsing in markets and old stores for some trinket that I never find. I don't know what I am looking for, but it feels important.
  
  
• Grandmother's death: My grandmother died a few years ago, and I have dreamt of her since then. Bizarrely, these dreams have had something like a storyline. At first, we reunited and caught up like old days. Then, she became ill, and weaker. She died, and came back as a ghost. Finally, she reappeared as the living, and we reunited again.
  
  
• Being other people in other times: I have dreamt of perspectives of other people numerous times. A young boy, a shaman, a leader, a baby; they take place in various times and locations- past, present, and future.
  
  
• Aquariums: I kept aquariums and other creatures for years, and this experience worked its way prominently into my dreams. I have had countless ones involving aquariums, both my own and others. This must be related, but distinct in some way, from my other fish dreams.
  
  
• Eggs: I have had a few dreams involving eggs, both bird and fish. In most, they are being eaten. In one, I am a goose trying to find a place to lay them.
  
  
• Discovered rooms: I have had many dreams of finding unknown rooms in many different places. My own home, castles, libraries, etc.
  
  
• Being a shaman/spiritual: My spiritual ventures deeply influenced my dreams, and quite a few have involved either myself or others as shaman. I have had religious or otherwise spiritual moments in dreams as well, which are always powerful.

Recurring animals

I have dreamt of many animals over the years, but some particulars are recurring. Most of my animal dreams occurred during the loneliest and most painful time of my life, and themes of isolation and lack of humanity were common.

• Fish: I always watch them, sometimes catching them.
• Snake: Sometimes venomous, other times I am saving them.
• Deer: The most prominent animal that I transform into or have aspects of within myself.
• Horse: Always involved in riding, to varying degrees of success. One dream, with the Cremello Mare, acted as a spirit guide.
• Bull: Dangerous.
• Birds: Very common, with many variations of symbolism. Sometimes I transform into a bird.
• Cats: Less common, but typically watching me.

Recurring Locations

All these locations have different symbolic meaning, but I still don't understand most of them.

• Grandma's house: I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house as a child, and my family lived with them when I was very young. It is somehow distinct from my childhood house. It seems to symbolize something closer to memory and my relationships with people.
• My house: Less common as a location than the prior house. It seems to directly serve as allegorical for my Self. I had many dreams of trying to escape my mother within it, and flying to the roof.
• Cedars: Complex, and always a deep and spiritual place. Inspired by one of the most influencial places in my childhood on family land that we visited for reunions.
• Temples and churches: These two are subtly distinct. Temples seem to refer to more primitive, shamanic elements, and churches are more aligned with religious symbolism, and often coincide with schooling and a teacher.
• Water: Extremely common, more than any other. Fish are always connected to the water. Most often in freshwater, but sometimes the sea.

Recurring characters and relationships

I understand very little about what these characters mean. Their personalities have been consistent in my dreams for years, but their meaning still eludes me, especially ones that I also know in real life. Their personalities are unlike those in reality.

• Old man: A figure that typically interacts with me in dreams in which I am a young boy, often comforting or helping me. Sometimes he is a teacher, offering instruction.
• Old woman: Subtly different than the old man. She can also appear in dreams in which I am someone else, like a young boy, but also not, and she seems more interested in dispensing wisdom. Some of what she says is unsettlingly akin to as if she is a god that has been watching me.
• Mother: Rigid, demanding, angry, dissatisfied, unreasonable, sometimes aggressive. This is at best, an exaggeration of parts of her real personality. In my worst times, she merely ignored me, and was emotionally negligent and misunderstanding, like my father.
• Father: Strangely often supportive, which is extremely unlike his real personality.
• Brother: A common character whose personality is indistinct. Sometimes supportive, other times angering me.
• Childhood friend: My brother often appears if she does, and whose dreams involve childhood memories.
• Teacher: Often strict, guiding, sometimes angry, and set in churches.

Jungian Interpretations

Although I have left out most of my own personal interpretations of my dreams, I have included a list of those described by more general Jungian analysis, at a cultural level.

• Dreams experienced from the perspective of reading a story are more distant to the ego.
• Deep water and subterranean things like earth, tunnels, or things found in the dirt are all symbols of the unconscious, and facing things alien to your own perception. Your reactions to what you find are key to how you feel about the psychic unknowns of your life.
• Finding rooms you haven't seen before is symbolic of exploring an unknown aspect of yourself
• Riding horses or driving cars are symbolically descriptive of how you perceive control of yourself and your life. Where you are sitting in the car in the dream, as well as who is with you and if you are driving, all describe parts of the dynamic. Similar can be said about horses.
• A voice that comes from nowhere is a voice from the Self.
• Rooms in your house are symbolic of the Self. Whether the dream occurs in places like the living room, basement, bathroom, or even an unknown room you have never seen before all serve as symbolically unique aspects of the interpretation.
• Crossing something, like a bridge or river, is symbolic of facing a difficult transition and 'crossing' between different stages of your life.