4: Masculine and Feminine Imagery in Dreams
May 22nd, 2020 · 47 mins 24 secs
About this Episode
Dreams from this episode:
- A pair of swords can bring protection, but one is stolen
- A menacing deer by the river
- Stealing back our gold and setting a fire to destroy pursuers
- Offering jewelry to a child
Themes from this episode:
- The unconscious uses masculine and feminine characters and imagery to communicate with us about different parts of our personality.
- Everyone, regardless of gender, has masculine and feminine aspects of their psyche that they can use at different times when needed.
The unconscious constantly uses the masculine/feminine dichotomy to symbolize opposite forces inside us, because it’s such a well-known pair of opposites that we see in external relationships where people balance and complete each other.
Feminine/yin/lunar characteristics:
- Feeling, sensing
- Appreciating beauty
- Connection and relatedness
- Soul, imagination, interiority
- Slower pace, time for reflection, being (rather than doing)
Masculine/yang/solar characteristics:
- Thinking and organizing, order and reason
- Action and doing
- Analyzing
- Differentiating, classifying, making boundaries
- Competing
- Aggression and power
When a dream detail seems particularly strange or unexpected (like a deer in the forest seeming menacing, or expensive family heirloom jewelry that turns out to be superglued together), it is often a really important part of the dream to examine for hidden meanings, since the unconscious has gone out of its way to offer an image that seems wrong somehow in order to draw your attention to it.
Gold in dreams can symbolize:
- Inner treasure or resources
- The Self, the deeper wholeness in your psyche
- Perfection or wholeness
Elephants in dreams can symbolize the maternal, matriarchy, or feminine wisdom.
Important Links:
Recommended dream interpretation books
Dream interpretation subreddit
Send me a dream!
[email protected]
or
use Send a Dream! tab in upper right corner