It is nearly the winter solstice and time to plant seed-thoughts for the coming year. As usual, around these energetic times, I have strange dreams. The first involved a grey seal who was talking to me from the water. He was asking me for fish as there were none left in the sea as humans had taken them all to feed themselves and now the sea creatures who depended on them were starving. Worse, they were now forced to beg us for fish so they could eat! So many things to think about in this short dream.
The next one was longer.
I was staying, perhaps living, in a building where a group of witchy women lived. One of those women invited me into her home and inside, it was filled with bits of trees, leaves, nuts, dried flowers, old books, like the home of a wise old woman of the woods. She invited me to partake of some ‘substance’, which she kept in a box but I needed to make sure my daughter was safe while I did that. I went back to my flat to see if she was OK but remembered that she was an adult and had gone to stay with her friends somewhere. I had even taken her to the bus-stop but had completely forgotten.
On my way back to the woman’s house, I passed our swimming pool and saw some Froudian, female elementals swimming below the water. I waved to them in passing and, surprised, they waved back, not expecting to be ‘seen’. As soon as that connection was made, I found myself rising into the air, swimming as though I was in the water. The air felt solid around me and I did the breaststroke effortlessly, marvelling at how simply connecting to the water elementals gave me the ability to swim in the air. They watched me, laughing and enjoying my joy.
But when I crossed a different piece of ground the ‘water—air’ dissipated and I found that I was now connected to the earth, pulled down and solid. I understood that as I passed over different elements, I became part of that element and could behave as if I was part of it, much like the elementals do. It was a surprising, and happy, discovery.
I made my way back to the woman’s house but when I entered her front room I saw with horror that it had been turned over. Doors and windows were flung open; little boxes of stuff that I had previously seen on her mantelpiece were strewn all over the ground; her handmade furniture was tipped over on its side and the woman herself was nowhere to be seen. I had the impression, reading the energy of the room, that she had been taken by someone. Kidnapped, for whatever reason.
I hurried back to my flat and as I opened the door a friend rushed towards me, pushing me inwards.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. ‘They’re coming.’
‘Who is coming?’ Her words were panicked, urgent and I was scared. I began to stuff some of my clothes into my haversack to take with me but she tried to stop me.
‘You’ve no time to pack. We have to leave. Now!’
I stuffed what I could fit into the bag and followed her quickly out the door, feeling unsure of myself, and the situation. Who was chasing us and why? She seemed to know exactly who they were because she behaved as if this wasn’t the first time she had had to do this. I followed her until we came to another part of the dream.
Now I was being shown who the chasers were. They were male elementals of both land and water. They emerged, arrogant and cocksure, standing in a group like Marvel Comic superheroes on the side of the pier, their hands on their hips, chests puffed out, their faces grim. It was clear, as they stood against a sea of black and purple that they wanted control of all the elements and did not want the sensitive, human women to be in contact with the female elementals. They wanted to eliminate the wise ones, the sensitives, so they could keep the female elementals in thrall, thereby maintaining control of the world. They were like rebel elementals, dark and dangerous, not the true nature-based elementals who are connected and loving.
When I woke up, my immediate thought was, this would make a great book! But why did I have the dream and what did it mean?
On a personal level, as someone who works with elemental consciousness, it could symbolise my own situation. I am looking after my elderly father and do not have the time to do my elemental, healing work. In taking care of an ill man, I cannot do my own work because I spend every day with him, not getting home until 10 pm.
But this seemed too simplistic. And I know it is not forever. The dream spoke of bigger issues. World issues. Issues where strong, wise women were being hidden, and taken out of the mix. Women who do not fit the patriarchal mould.
The oppression of the feminine always makes me despair yet I know that everything has its time. As women become stronger, more independent, the patriarchy ups the ante and suppresses even harder. It is a dynamic that happens in all toxic relationships. But there are men out there who are open to the feminine, who have learned to love themselves too and who can change and grow, using the opportunity of women’s quest for freedom to become free of restrictive patriarchal structures too. All can benefit in this struggle.
But the dream tells me that we are not there yet. In many parts of the world women are oppressed and so we continue to change the energetic matrix of the collective unconscious to free them, and thereby free men too.
Or is the dream saying that we going to have to go back into hiding, while men figure their stuff out? Working in the shadows as we have always done? Or am I being given a history lesson?
What do you think? I would love to hear your interpretations.
Happy Solstice.