At the conclusion of my menopause on the day after Christmas, following six months of no periods or very light spots and just prior to the final spotting, I had a remarkable dream of a ritual:

I am outdoors descending a complex arrangement of circular stairs. It is constructed as though it were around a temple, although no building is there. There are numerous doors and compartments that are waist-high.

Many people descend with me. A fat woman catches up and crowds me. I feel uncomfortable as she pushes into some small comparrment with me as I go through. I try to think why her fatness bothers me so much and I realize I fear that she will smother me. I decide to let her pass, and she does, which pleases me.

As I reach the bottom of the strange descent, I see members of a family of artists I know, particularly noticing the man. They are welcoming some returning voyager. We greet and embrace.

We speak of a powerful predictive dream I have had that has to do with the breakage or loss of the middle front tooth in the lower jaw of their daughter...

Then the scene shifts and I am seated in a room on a chair, as part of a circle of people belonging to a special group. We discuss the same predictive dream of mine. It emerges that I am being accepted because of my skill in dreams, this one in particular.

The leader, a man with the bizarre code name of Cucumber, proposcs a toast to two woman who embody the principles of intellect and beauty. I say, "I'll drink to that," and picking up my wineglass set beside me on the floor, I proceed to drink the red wine that fills it. All join the toast.

Then the leader says something like, "Let's do a little Loga-Shana. A little Loga-Shana can't hurt anybody." Everyone rises and, still in the circle, we turn to face his direction. He, with his back to us, demonstrates certain movements and gestures that we follow. The idea is that this secret ritual is safe to communicate to others.

Now the women are goddesses. The leader turns partially to the right, at a forty-five-degree angle, and utters, "Loga!" as he spreads his arms open wide at shoulder height and lifts them upward. This is the invocation of Loga. He then withdraws his outspread arms to his body in an embrace, as though to incorporate Loga's essence of intellect; simultaneously he bows his head and dips his body reverently.

Turning to the left, with the same arm-opening gesture, he utters, "Shana!" and then withdraws his arms to his body once more in the identical movement to the left. Doing this incorporates the essence of beauty of spirit. We join the procedure, repeating it over and over.

Ethereal music begins. I know it comes from real singers somewhere in the house because this group does everything with quality. I sense that now at last I can learn some of the things I have yearned to know.

As we continue the repetitive gestures, crying, "Loga! Shana!" I feel myself slipping into trance. I see green fields with people moving over them. At the same time I seem to be writing a description of the ritual, in order to retain it, waking up with the effort.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• I never heard the word Loga before, but it reminded me of the Logos, the word of God that was said to create the universe; perhaps it could be a feminine form of intellect.
• Shana made me think of the Yiddish-German word for beauty ("schön") [in American Yiddish, rhymes with 'rain'] that in the dream implied more than physical loveliness. Surely wisdom and beauty of spirit are principles I wish to embody. Awake, it would never have occurred to me to think of them as goddesses who could be invoked and incorporated.
• The fat woman and my response to her make the descent into my depths more difficult. Not only had I gained a few pounds prior to the dream--later discovered to be a result of a thyroid imbalance that required treatment--but she had negative associations to heavy people I knew, including my mother at a stage when she was physically ill. By "letting her pass" I was able to contact the artist (symbolized by the artist family) within myself. This contact leads to special knowledge.
• From the chalice-like glass I drain the red wine, probably symbolic for the womb being emptied of blood.
• In the circle of the whole Self, I participate in a ritual that marks my new phase of womanhood.

A FEW WEEKS LATER

I was stunned to learn that the daughter in the artist family mentioned in my dream, just prior to leaving on a trip for Europe, awoke with her mouth and cheeks swollen with infection. She had unexpectedly developed an abcess in a front tooth rhat required emergency attention. My "predictive dream" was truly predictive...

How and why such events happen we do not yet understand. I cherish the content of this telling dream and the many of like nature that succeeded it. Surely there is more in dreams than we can fully comprehend.

--Patricia Garfield

EDITOR'S NOTE

I find this dream triply intriguing.

1. The rite itself--kinda goofy, but kinda moving too
2. The psychic hit, impressively exact--a specific person and specific illness
3. Most of all, a psychic dream that labels itself as such! I've had such dreams--I call them self-flagging; but few others have reported them, so I was excited that another well-known dreamworker describes one so unequivocal. I'm not surprised the report is from one of the most experienced dreamworkers since Jung; I too only started spotting this type after many decades of dreamwork. Such self-identifying dreams imply the dreaming mind is way more self-aware than most sleep researchers want to admit. This is NOT lucidity, where it's the ego that realizes it's dreaming; here, the dream producer, the so-called "unconscious", knows the dream's an extraordinary type, and warns the ego! Nonlucid, lucid, and a third state: self-flagging.

   Had one of these yourself? Email me. I'll add it to the list.

SOURCE: Women's Bodies, Women's Dreams by Patricia Garfield, 1988, pp.304-6.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites