TND- Dreams and synchronicities
when you open your mind and pay attention, things are less and less what they seem.
The past few weeks have been incredibly disorienting. From one day to the next my experience shifts from beautiful synchronicity to chaotic confusion. Inspiration pulls in and out like the tides. My reality is destabilizing; it feels as if my life is a snowy television screen and as I adjust the “rabbit ears”, glimpses of clarity flash in and out. It doesn’t feel bad or wrong, it just feels uncomfortable.
Photo by Fran Jacquier on Unsplash
Take for example February 9th into February 10th. On the night of February 9th, I pulled my first three cards from the fantastic Mirra Visions Tarot. I didn’t have a spread in mind, so no significance of the three cards as an indicator of past, present, future, or the like. My intention: help! I pulled The Hanged One/Sacrifice, Three of Chalices/Three of Lotuses, and The Fool/Death.
(The Mirra Visions Tarot is a lenticular Tarot deck from Prisma Visions that combines the Prisma Vision Tarot with the Cosmic Visions Oracle. Each card contains two cards in one; the image shifts depending on how the card is angled. The Prisma and Cosmic combination adds a depth of meaning to each card.)
The Hanged One is my card for February, so this immediately resonated for me, yet the Sacrifice image departed from the way in which I was interpreting the Hanged One (shifting my perspective). The Three of Chalices, which is typically about shared joy in community did not feel very resonant at the moment, but the Three of Lotuses is about synchronicity. Again, in the moment, I didn’t feel particularly “helped” by this card. The final card, Fool/Death, brought The Hanged One/Sacrifice into clearer perspective. What must I sacrifice in order to begin anew? The presence of the two Majors in my reading told me that this was about the bigger picture rather than the moment. I took some notes on the cards, still feeling unsure about everything, and went to sleep.
That night I dreamt about finding a sword along the shore of a lake. I was wading carefully in shallow water, barefoot. There was someone with me, trying to assure me that I need not step so carefully; the shoreline had recently been cleaned up and there wasn’t anything I could cut myself on. And there it was, sitting in about a foot of crystal clear water, nestled on smooth stones. It was a short sword with an intricate braidwork hilt. There was something in another language engraved on the hilt, and the engraving suggested to me that it was not an ancient sword. It was, however, quite rusted and the sheath it was in was disintegrating. It felt like it was Celtic in origin, but not centuries old…
As the dream progressed, the lakeshore became the scene for a huge party. There was drinking, smoking, performers of all kinds. It was hard to keep my attention on my newly-acquired sword, and I was quite clumsy in handling it. More than once, someone snatched it away from me, but I always reclaimed it, sometimes inflicting small cuts on my hand in doing so. Towards the end of the dream, an old man stopped me to ask me about the sword. He wanted to know if I knew what it was intended for. The man went on to explain that the sword was for removing hearts; literally cutting the heart out of someone. But not for the heart itself, he informed me, as that is really of no value, but for what “flows from it”.
That’s the highlight reel from the dream. There was more, but nothing so profound as the discovery of the sword and it’s design for removing matter (the heart of the matter) from the immaterial. What flows from it was not referring to blood, of this I was sure. It is worth mentioning that in the dream I was acutely aware of the Arthurian vibes, and the notable absence of the Lady of the Lake, although dream-me did crack a Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke about the futility in ascribing authority based on finding a sword in a lake.
The dream included some nods to what I have been reading recently; the party scene was a direct reference to Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.’s “The Mastery of the Self”, in which he describes reality as a dream. When we are aware that reality is a dream, but those around us are not aware, it is like being the only sober person at a party in which everyone’s experience is clouded by inebriation. The sword’s ability to excise matter in order to access the flow of the immaterial felt very alchemical and connected to the book I’m reading concerning The Emerald Tablet.
A few weeks ago, I had dreamt a dream that felt very significant and had ushered me into a more serious study of alchemy. The dream was one of those that spanned days; in the beginning of the dream Ruth (a life partner and my co-conspirator in all things) and I arrived at a monastery in a tundra. The tundra turned to desert. The dream ended with Ruth and I working together in a meditative state to form the horns of a dragon. There was no mistaking what this dream was about. In astrology, the lunar nodes of the moon are referred to as the head and the tail of the dragon. The north node is the head of the dragon and can show us where are desires are leading us in this lifetime. The south node is the tail of the dragon, showing us where our past experiences have us rooted, the place we may wish to linger because it is comfortable.
Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash
I immediately informed Ruth of this dream and the obvious significance; our fates are entwined, we will find our “destiny” in shaping something new together. Also, she is inevitably stuck with me for life. Ruth and I are already co-creators of our podcast, Medusa’s Circle. We are also collaborating on a much bigger project for this coming fall. And while all of that is exciting, I know we are going to create something more, something innovative. The dream also felt significant in that we are empowered in shaping destiny rather than beholden to a fixed outcome.
All of this dream-speak to say, my dreams have been very informative in helping me understand my direction. They have also coincided with the cards I have been pulling and the astrology of the recent days. The more attention I put on my dreams and the more I write about them, the more they continue to reveal to me. Also, if you have read this far, I appreciate you sticking it out. Listening to others describe their dreams is never as interesting as experiencing dreams first-hand.
So, February 9th I pulled The Hanged One/Sacrifice, Three of Chalices/Three of Lotuses, and The Fool/Death. I dreamt of finding a sword that could help me understand the immaterial that flows from the heart. On the 10th, I frantically jotted down the details of the dream and then revisited the cards from the night prior. My blog post from the 10th was the result of the reading on the evening of the 9th: It is necessary for me to continue to refine my desires and release any attachment to what the manifestation of that desire looks like (The Hanged One/Sacrifice). My pursuit of joy and desire will act as my guide as I shift my attention to the subtle nudges from the world around me (Three of Chalices/Three of Lotuses). When I put to death attachment to outcomes rooted in Capitalism/materialism, a new way of being/reality will open itself to me (The Fool/Death).
On the 10th, before writing my first entry in The Noodle Diaries, I pulled a card from Mirra Visions and an oracle card from Magical Spirit Oracle. I pulled The Devil/The Vessel from Mirra Visions and Truth from the oracle deck. The Devil is about what we attach ourselves to, often deceiving ourselves into the depth of the attachment. The Vessel refers explicitly to materialism. From the Magical Spirit guidebook on Truth, “...this card can be a sign that you are currently navigating this path… a quest for Truth… if you continue to live within the space of Truth, you will achieve an abundance…” One of the keywords for Truth was Knight. One of my own associations with swords (beyond those in the Tarot) is Truth.
Using my Honeycomb planner (which uses my natal chart to calculate my natal transits and includes global transits as well), I peeked at my astrology for the day, a practice I had let slip for a few weeks. While I had no notable natal transits on the 10th, Mercury in Aquarius was squaring Uranus in Taurus. Nadia Gilchrist of Ruby Slipper Astrology notes, “This is the crisis that forces a re-think… Clarity and absolute truth are delivered… with harshness… Issues around money, the body… or survival in general have changed to the point where you must define them differently. You must accept a new truth or detach from what you considered yours.” As a global transit, this square affects all of us. If you are into astrology and have your own chart, you can see where this square is affecting you by looking at the houses ruled by Aquarius & Taurus.
In retrospect, the cards, the dream, and the astrology composed a trifecta of synchronicity (the Three of Lotuses). The synthesis of these abstract ways of knowing were shouting at me; now more than ever I have to tend to my reality with precision. As I continue to read more about the nature of reality and our powerful and innate ability to shape it, I feel as if I am dancing in and out of an outdated reality and the new one. It is not easy to put aside a reality that is threatening and persistent, especially one that has felt so inescapable and crushing. Despite the fact that the reality of capitalism, authoritarianism and materialism is so toxic and harmful to our very spirits, we have been indoctrinated into believing its inevitability.
We have also been indoctrinated into a complex system of belief that has taught us that anything that smacks of magic is delusional and impossible. While I have many thoughts on why we have been crushed into material realism and intentionally removed from individual power, it is apparent that in order for the old way of being to persist, we have to be disempowered in every way possible. We have to reject our intuition and subversive ways of knowing, divorce ourselves from desire, and commit all of our time and energy to surviving oppressive structures. For those of us who are clinging to our intuition and magical thinking, we must also navigate a cacophony of voices shouting that spirituality means this or that, that magical practice can only look like x or y. It’s just another bid at silencing our own ways of sensing into personal truth, demanding we submit to a different kind of authority outside of ourselves.
Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
So what does this mean for you, dear reader? Why would you give a shit about my dreams, the Tarot cards I pull in moments of personal crisis, the way that all of this melds with the stars above? While all of these things do hold significant and personal value to myself and the path I am forging, I want to encourage everyone to indulge in the idea that there are other ways we can exist at this moment in time. What if you allowed yourself just to play with the idea that things are less inevitable than they seem? What if you practiced shifting your attention to the subtler gnosis around and within you? Could it hurt to be a little “delusional”?
I don’t want to cheapen The Noodle Diaries by making it into a marketing tool, but, I do want to remind folks that my dream for the Oracle of Ibis is to help folks connect with these concepts in a more tangible way. My readings, whether Akashic or Tarot, can help tease at almost any question, but some of my services are geared specifically towards playing with reality and connecting to desire and personal truth. And while I absolutely want to refrain from being another voice shouting at you about “the right way” to explore spirituality and magic, I do want to empower folks to define those experiences for themselves. If any of this resonates for you, please take a look at my current offerings. If you book an appointment prior to February 25th (even if the appointment is for a later date), you can use code BIRTHDAY36 for a 36% discount on any service.
Thank you for taking the time to read my meandering thoughts. It is my hope that folks can find something from these writings, that we can all experience dreams of personal and collective liberation; transmuting them from our subconscious minds into a shared reality.
