Dream: Tarot Dream – Five of Egg Salads LUCID
Dream 20030918, 6:25 AM:
There was quite a bit more to this dream, but my focus on remembering the Tarot portion at the end made me lose track of the front part, so it became kind of fuzzy.
I am living in a space that seems like an apartment; it has a glass door on one end leading onto a small balcony or porch, and there is a hallway through the front door that has other similar doors along it. I remember a tank with baby turtles, which seemed to be brightly marked with yellow on their shells, and also a tank with fish. At one point the tank doesn’t seem well-lit enough, and I am concerned for the fishes’ health.
There is a man who lives down the hall in 415 or 425 (it seems like it shifts during the dream) – I figure out eventually that he is not real, because I try to go into his room once when he has walked into it and closed the door, and not only is he not in there, there is no furniture or anything, just an empty room. I have quite a number of interactions with him, trying to figure out who he is and where he disappears to.
I don’t remember what clues me in, but I realize at some point that I’m dreaming. I remember several lucid bits, including flying along outside around the corner of the building.
I decide that what I want to do, is a Tarot reading. I have a dream companion with me, but I don’t remember who. I go to a cabinet and pick up a set of cards; they seem to be individually wrapped in foil, like how baseball cards are when purchased. I flip through them, see the Phoenix Bird and several other bright-colored cards, and realize that these are not my deck; they belong to the imaginary man. I look at the cabinet they were beneath, and it has 415 painted on it, which seems to make sense to me, indicating that they’re his.
I get my own set of cards, and sit down to spread them out for the reading. I tell my dream companion to get a pad and paper to help me record the reading; I have several small blank pads of paper and a couple of pens. I deal the cards out, but once I look at them on the table, all they are is heart- and circle-shaped pieces of paper. These are still not the right cards. I pick up a more traditional looking deck, with the backs a dark color that seems sometimes emerald green, sometimes violet, sometimes red. I sort through them, and then see Deborah sitting across from me, holding a stack of the same cards. She has part of my deck, and I demand them from her, and she gives them to me, but makes some disparaging remark about me not feeling up to reading the cards. I shuffle the cards, and one of them has a raised piece on it that looks like a skillet in profile – like a miniature actually attached to the card. I can see it when I hold the deck up sideways – I say, “I guess I’ll know it, if I draw the frying pan!”
I shuffle again; Deborah seems to have vanished or faded out of attention. I am very focused on the cards. I start to lay them out in a Celtic Cross spread. I lay out the first card – the labels are in strong clear type at the bottom of each card, and each has a very busy picture. The first one is The Dry Experience – the picture shows a double bunk bed in a wooden-walled cottage room, and on the top bunk is a woman sitting in a rocking chair knitting. She is in old-fashioned clothes, sort of a Whistler’s Mother type. The card that I lay down crossing the first one is labled Happenstance Chappenstance, or it may have been Clappenstance – there is a figure lying in a bed, with a bunch of pairs of hands sticking out from various parts of the image, and one pair of feet; the hands and feet are all posed as if about to clap. The third card, the first position of the Wheel of Time, is the Five of Egg Salads – there is a wooden dining table, and atop the table (where the plates should be) are five imaginary men with cheese graters and hollow round cheeses. One stands at each of the four place setttings, and one is preparing to disappear down the hole in the center of the table. These descriptions are very clear in my mind as I’m reading the cards, but there’s no indication of their divinatory meanings. I draw another card and look at it before laying it down – it looks like a more traditional playing card, a Five of Hearts. I wake up.
I Always Wondered
I have always wondered what Tarot symbols look like from that side.
The symbolic work up of this could go on for weeks. I have a very clear and definite sense that the SC or some portion of it is desperately trying to transmit a message.
Hearts are cups aren’t they? 5 of Cups, heart break or reaping karmic consequences of squandering true love, freely given. Now love is sought but true love is never found.
5 of Pentacles, diamonds financial ruin, poverty, want, the karmic consequences of squandering the abundance of this world.
I see real insight on how to use tarot cards on this side. This is assuming you are not doing this already.
The last image is signifigant. It kind of sets the main theme. Here 5 of cups is betray of love or the unfaithful lover.
BWaahaa! I mean no disrespect but the tarot cards you drew just cracked me up. I want one of *those* decks!
I’m absolutely stumped. It almost sounds Erisian.
Raising An Interesting Question
What decks do you use?
Re: Raising An Interesting Question
Excellent question.
The one that I actually learned with, is the Hansen-Roberts deck:
I’ve been studying and trying to become more familiar with a couple of others, particularly Poppy Palin’s “Wild Spirit” deck:
I’ve also got four decks that are specific to dreams; one of them has some similarities to a Tarot deck, while the others are non-Tarot cards.
I’ve been thinking through your earlier comment. I appreciate your analysis, and can see some applicability from it, but have also been looking at it from a different angle. Rather than try to tie the reading back to traditional tarot cards, I’ve been thinking about the feelings that the images aroused in me – more of a Jungian archetype-based way of interpreting them. The Dry Experience seems to be a situation of competence (the knitting woman) but emotional distance, or separation from the situation on some level; the Happenstance Chappenstance seems to involve chance, but also counsels enjoying the situation. The covered figure seems to be either asleep or ill, but is clapping her feet, which puzzles me. I also wonder if the person is *dreaming* – i.e., representing my sleeping-but-dreaming self, or the act of dreaming. The clapping hands were separate, not attached to anything, in pairs like butterflies. The Five of Egg Salads seemed to relate more to Coins (I found that Five of Coins, and the cheeses looked exactly like that, with patterns like a nutmeg) – I think they also came from the beads that I saw on someone’s necklace yesterday. It seems like the four men were busy grating the cheeses, but the fifth was packing his up and disappearing into the hole in the center of the table – leaving mundane toil for an inner journey. It also reminded me of the four directions in a circle plus “spirit,” which is part of the invocations of the group I circle with.
Re: Raising An Interesting Question
I believe what you said here applies to what I said about this dream giving you an insight into the card reading process here at the level of waking consciousness. The two new arcana cards your dream created are fantastically rich dream and jungian archetype image wise. I also believe that just as there are universal archetypal symbols and images there is a personal set of these meanings with a context and meaning only relative within ourselves.
I have not even begun to get to work there. There seems to be an interesting cross circuiting between right brian imagery attempting to express itself in left brained symbols. The great thing about your journal is that there is a pretty comprehensive sample of dreams, dream imagery and dream symbols. This is a wonderful resource.
Re: Raising An Interesting Question
giving you an insight into the card reading process here at the level of waking consciousness
Ah, I see what you mean, now… that’s one of the reasons I always prefer an illustrated (post-Rider-Waite) style of deck – if it’s just five swords floating in space, I can’t ever remember what it means without the pictures. Now that I think of it, that’s a “problem” with the five of hearts card – it didn’t have a picture explaining it, like the Five of Egg Salads did.
This is a wonderful resource.
I’ve learned a lot from looking into it. I’m working on compiling some of it into a more organized format – kind of a map to my unconscious territory, and a bestiary of my imaginary world. It’s fascinating to see how the “traditional” meanings end up getting twisted and personalized in my own psyche – because of course since it’s an entirely internal dialogue, I have the privelege of a unique language. It seems odd that I’m having to piece it together bit by bit – because it seems like I’d be the one person who could fully understand it – but I think that’s a product of my personality being fragmented such that I have to take my ego and lead it gently by the hand down the path of self-knowledge.
Re: Raising An Interesting Question
I was going to ask how you read cards when you do it. Do you go by vibe, by the representation on the card or do you use a system like Kabbala?
Re: Raising An Interesting Question
It’s kind of a mix. I have studied the traditional meanings, and also go by the feel of each card, which is usually pretty much in line with the traditional meanings. Sometimes it will just seem to me like one card in one particular spot refers to something specific, and I usually go with that feeling when I get it.