Energy and Associations

There a lot of different ways to read the minor arcana in tarot, but the framework that works best for me is based on the elements.

I have been reading tarot since I was 13. I find it helpful to journal on my readings. This gives me a chance to reflect on the cards and whatever situation I’m reading on.

As an AuDHDer with alexithymia I find tarot, journaling and dreamwork especially helpful. Not the kind of tarot where you throw down cards hoping for a glimpse of what’s coming. The kind where you write and reflect and arrive at something new.

To me the elements can provide a good starting point (for the minors).

Swords

Air | Winter

• Current of divine / archetypal inspiration

• Human intellect and insights

• Clarity

• Thinking and reasoning

• Overthinking and anxiety

Cups

Water | Spring

• The wellspring of the unconscious

• Human intuition and psychic knowing

• Dreams

• Feeling and relating

• Withdrawal and confusion

Wands

Fire | Summer

• The inspiration of the Muse

• Human creativity and creative inspiration

• Expression

• Communication and purpose / identity

• Overwork and burnout

Pentacles

Earth | Autumn

• The energy of nature

• Human connection to place / nature

• Grounding

• Building and growing

• Materialism and attachment

Read my poem about tarot associations:

This post originally appeared in The Mystic Review at mysticreview.com

The video shares a recent experience triggered by somebody else’s dream. Whether you consider this second-hand dream guidance or a synchronicity, I think it says something about what is available to us.

I also talk about my nonfiction project which is a part AuDHD memoir and part spiritual journey. Probably the most interesting thing about all of this, is how it helped guide me back to that project.

I think that matters.

Please note. If you don’t want to get my metaphysical posts or ONLY want metaphysical posts, just go to www.substack.com/settings, find Writing on the Spectrum under “subscriptions” and toggle notifications on or off.

A short video about upcoming content on metaphysics and ancient mysteries and why I’ve come back to these interests.

For more content on ancient mysteries and metaphysics, please check out my YouTube The Mystic Review @ youtube.com/@MysticReview

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This post originally appeared on The Mystic Review at MysticReview.com

This post is about my renewed commitment to my metaphysical writing and studies and the dreams and synchronicities that influenced me. I experimented with a second newsletter for this content and have now decided to host it here. A publication name change may be coming.

Dream Guidance

For reference: I spent the last couple of weeks working on a romance novel based on a short story I wrote some time ago. There were issues with the story and, for a time, it consumed most of my attention. I put my metaphysical interests on hold during this period.

Last week, I had a dream that seemed to speak to this. The dream began in a lovely old-fashioned red and gold lobby. I was attending an event, even though I felt drawn to different event at another location. There was a scheduling issue, so I’d chosen the event/program featured in the dream. When I reached the auditorium I learned that the event I had chosen was about weddings or wedding planning.

There were other characters, conversations, and indications that the wedding event was fluff and not a good fit for me but I didn’t leave. Throughout the dream, a feeling persisted—I would have rather been somewhere else.

Two nights ago, I dreamt I was sitting down with an assistant who had been inattentive in the past. I asked her to begin with my day book, looking for conflicts. I felt that she should pay special attention to the energy. In the dream, the energy I mention has a magical feel to it. It is significant and alluring.

The wedding in dream one put me in mind of the romance novel. The scheduling issue in dream one suggested that time is an issue. It occurs to me that, in the dream at least, I can only choose one.

The assistant in dream two hasn’t done a good job but I’m giving her another chance. Scheduling conflicts and a kind of magical energy are key.

My Reaction

Dream one seemed to indicate a core conflict around my personal focus. There is the suggestion that I am focusing wrongly and that time is limited. The color red featured in the lobby reminds me of the alchemical process and the potential for transformation.

As a result of this dream, I decided to give myself time away from my romance writing. Almost immediately, a feeling of enthusiasm for metaphysical topics poured in.

I decided to write more metaphysical posts and felt good about doing that. Still I wondered if I was being reactive. That was when I had the second dream which seemed like a variation on a theme.

In Waking Life

I felt that this idea was being reinforced in my waking life, too.

The last few weeks have been hard everyone in our family has been sick. Because I have family members with serious health problems, illness always reminds me that nothing about the future is guaranteed.

When my dog Luna, became ill with hemorrhagic vomiting and had to be treated at the animal emergency something shifted for me. I started to think about what matters and what does not. Thoughts about life purpose and the limitations of time occurred to me.

And other events in my waking life seemed to expand on that theme.

A video by tarot reader Julie Poole talked about purging to make way for the new energies. A This Jungian Life video talked about Carl Jung and the Age of Aquarius. Points made about duality and Christianity and the Age of Pisces reinforced some of my old ideas.

I realized that I was still clinging to some of my old programming.

Old programming had a lot to with my decision to put The Mystic Review on hold in 2017. A family member had come close to death. I was scared. Returning to the Church felt safe. As time passed however, it began to feel restrictive. The Catholic approach to virtue and vice didn’t work for me. Shadow spilled into my fiction writing. Eventually I began to question.

I took classes at Rhine Institute. I connected with Jung. I returned to The Mystic Review. But I didn’t fully commit my metaphysical studies and everything that goes along with it then. Now, I have.

I will be sharing more metaphysical posts going forward!

The Videos

I found both these videos resonant. The Age of Aquarius video is produced by the Jungian analysts who teach the Dream School course I’m studying. The tarot video is by a reader I like.

The Aquarius video was especially helpful for me because it aligns with my own thinking about organized religion and where I’m at now.

My own Full Moon Tarot Reading on this topic. Note the top row which put me in mind of Luna’s illness, renewed hope and enthusiasm for metaphysical topics and Temperance which many consider to represent the sing of Aquarius.

This post is about Carl Jung, the Age of Aquarius and what leaving the Age of Pisces behind might mean.

What are the astrological ages?

Approximately every 2160 years, on the first day of spring, the sun rises in a new sign. This is the beginning of a new astrological age.

The astrological ages or World Ages move backward through the zodiac.

The Age of Taurus is estimated at 4300-2150 BCE. It included the Bronze Age, the invention of writing, the Near Eastern bull cults, and civilizations like Sumer, Ancient Egypt, and the Indus Valley.

Aries (circa 2150 BCE-1 CE) was the beginning of the Iron Age. It saw the rise and fall of several ancient cultures including the Akkadian Empire, Vedic India, and Ancient Greece.

The Age of Pisces began on or around 1 CE. It encompasses the rise of the Roman Empire and the West, Christianity, the Inquisition, colonialism, and two World Wars.

While none of these ranges are exact, the Age of Aquarius is expected to begin on or around 2160. It is predicted to be a time of increased communication, innovation, and humanitarianism.

I studied astrology and became fascinated by the astrological world ages. To me, this aspect of astrology was more interesting than any individual horoscope.

So when I saw that my Jungian Dream School instructors had made a video on the Age of Aquarius, I was excited. After watching the video I felt called to learn more about Jung and the Astrological Ages.

Jung and the Astrological Ages

In watching the video, I learned that Jung believed that the astrological ages influenced the collective. He saw the passing age of Pisces as a time of dissolution. He believed that the old energies would diminish and that new energies would be activated in the coming Age of Aquarius.

Jung wrote about the Age of Pisces and the influence of Christianity in Aion, which I am currently reading. To him, the psychological self was a totality that “must by definition include the light and dark aspects.”

Christianity, in the Age of Pisces, didn’t allow for that.

In Aion, Jung talks about the issue with seeing Christ as unadulterated light. For Christians, God couldn’t be a paradox. He had to be summun bonum (ultimate good). This caused the early Church Fathers to call evil an absence of good (a concept called privatio boni) because there is nothing of God in it.

Deviation from perceived good could not be tolerated in the heyday of the Christian age. Laws rigidly divided acceptable conduct from what couldn’t be tolerated. In some instances that worked. In others it was cruel and unnecessary.

The Dream School video

In the video, my Dream School instructors shared Jung’s belief that bringing the entire self into consciousness is superior to killing the bad and vanquishing it into hell.

I think that’s because vanquishing darkness doesn’t actually work.

This was one of the problems I had with Christian morality. Extolling virtue and denying vice works for some people but not all. And I don’t think it’s the best way to deal with things from a psychological perspective, either.

Dictating a moral code based on dualistic ideas about right and wrong isn’t necessarily effective either. In the video, one of my instructors, Jungian Analyst Joseph Lee suggested that the Aquarian Age might bring about a new ethic based on how the self (what some people think of as consciousness or the higher self) responds to our actions.

This would call for a morality based on dreams and inner work that connects us with self, instead of blind allegiance to religious law.

Joseph went on to point out that this is an individual approach to ethics. It allows for variation and may require a different kind of tolerance. It asks to accept that not everyone will be on the same page.

Aquarius is about humanitarianism but as Joseph rightly points out it is not the humanitarianism of the individual. It is innovative, communicative, and diverse. I think we are already seeing that. But as my instructors pointed out World Ages don’t go quietly. This would make the current upheaval largely reactive.

What this means to me

Carl Jung witnessed two World Wars in the course of his lifetime. He had personal visions of Europe covered in blood and, ultimately, as a site of great desolation. He felt that the only chance for humanity was for individuals to do the inner work that releases shadow and connects with the self.

Whether this will actually happen in the Age of Aquarius is yet to be determined, but it gives me hope.

In the days leading up to the new year, I like to think about where I’ve been, what I’ve accomplished, and what I need to do going forward.

Normally that involves looking at the year that’s ending. This year-end I took the long view.

Nine Year Cycles

Earlier this month, a friend shared a video on nine year cycles—and I shared a poem I’d written on the very first day of our current cycle.

January 1st, 2017.

I wasn’t thinking about cycles when I wrote that poem. I didn’t realize that 2017 was a number 10 (numerological one) year and the start of new nine year cycle. I’m not sure if I even knew what a nine year cycle was then or why it was important.

But I knew a new start when I saw one.

New Year's day was a Sunday that year. I was just coming out of a nine year spiritual journey that had begun with an incredible dream and ended in disappointment and confusion.

But that moment, that Sunday, that January 1st felt like the beginning of everything. Not in a hopeful happy way. In a one foot in front of the other kind of way.

I had no idea where I was going. So I went in and wrote the poem and I kept on going.

My Last Cycle

Over the next nine years I went from metaphysics to Christianity. I lost people. I closed my card reading business. I stopped blogging.

I worked my way through three very different Christian denominations. And when I finally sat down to write my return-to-the-church testimony, I found I couldn’t reconcile any of them with what I believed.

So I took some courses at the Rhine Institute. I learned a bit about the science of what I called spirit. I began to dream again. I noticed a wonderful synchronicity.

The mystery of the big dream I had some 18 years earlier, finally made sense.

Things happened.

I put my heart into a story and saw it fail. I wrote and rewrote and didn’t publish anything. I began to understand how I tell stories—and why.

I enrolled in dream school. I returned to tarot. I read Jung.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with autism. In 2025 I was diagnosed with ADHD. I started to see my life through a completely different lens.

I went back to blogging.

2008 was a year of wild optimism and excitement—hard on the heels of the worst decade of my life.

2017 was a do over I didn’t want but could not avoid.

Now, 2026 is the start of another cycle. None of us can predict where the next nine years will take us—but that won’t stop us from trying.

Where (I Think) I’m Going

When I look at cycles past, it occurs to me that one of the easiest ways to figure out where we’re going next is to look at what we’re on the brink of now. In my case, that means publishing.

My vampire story is finished. After one last proof and a lifetime of orphaned manuscripts, I’m going to publish my first novel. I understand now why people didn’t like draft 1 and why those same people probably won’t like the finished product. I know that my story isn’t really about vampires. Whether it gets read or not, I’m glad I wrote it.

My memoir is almost done. It isn’t a return-to-the-church testimony anymore but it is the truth as I know it. Getting there was part synchronicity, part muse.

Which is, as it turns out, my process.

To me, this year and this cycle was a year of planting, not of harvest, but I’m okay with that. Because I am on the brink of putting things out there and that has been a very long time coming.

A Card Reading

And because every new cycle deserves a card reading, here is mine:

This reading is for the entire nine year cycle.

Death is appropriate for the past. The 4 of Swords makes perfect sense for where I’m at right now. The 10 of Wands is what’s coming and it is not unexpected. My “need to know” card is the Hermit (card 9 in the major arcana) which is a card of great personal meaning to me. The 6 of Wands jumped out along with it.

I encourage you to take some time today to take a look back at the year and cycle you’ve just completed and think about what is on the way.

Wishing you a wonderful new year and a meaningful new turn around the wheel—however you measure it!

You can read my 2017 poem and my post on the Hermit card below:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

It was almost three A.M. on a summer night in 2007 and I was wide awake.

So I passed the long sleepless night on the computer, drifting from one website to the next, until I stumbled upon a bible passage I knew by heart.

The 23rd Psalm.

I remembered how I had committed this psalm to memory as a child and how I used to recite it before bed from time to time in the years that followed. So I said the old familiar passage right there over the keyboard and then I set aside my laptop and fell asleep.

I woke up the next morning with a sense of excitement I hadn’t felt in what seemed like forever.

I didn’t usually remember my dreams, but I remembered this one. It was detailed and magical and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

Heart pounding, I turned on my laptop and captured my journey through the night as quickly as I could.

Aside from the headings and a few minor edits, what follows is the account of the dream, as I typed it out that morning.

Part I: The Hospital

As the dream opens, I’m approaching a big hospital. I’m working as a nurse again and this is the first day of a new job and I’m not sure where to go (a common problem in many similar dreams). I go to several outside doors and find them locked. Finally, at the last door I find an elderly woman on the ground in severe pain. She tells me that she has had two difficult surgeries and that she will die before she goes back to the hospital again.

I don’t know what to do or say, so I go in through the door. I’m looking for the emergency room and at first I am lost. After asking for (and not understanding) directions (another common work dream problem) I wander onto an elevator. There is a young doctor in a brilliant white coat inside the elevator. I tell him what has happened, and he gets off and goes with me to see the woman and her relatives, who are there with her. He tells them that she doesn’t have to come into the hospital if she doesn’t want to and they take her away.

I am at a brightly lit a nurse’s station. I have the feeling that I’ve been working here for some time. And that there are no bad feelings associated with that (which has never happened to me in dreams about nursing or in my nursing career in general). The young doctor is at the station too, looking at charts. After a moment, he stops and says that he has to move away soon and that he needs to learn the route by traveling it. He suggests that we all need time away from our work and that we should go on an adventure together.

Part II: The Journey

We take two cars. There is an odd assortment of women (presumably nurses). One is very beautiful. Her eyes are a vivid sea-water blue and her face is high-boned and delicate. She wears a layered gown of shimmering blue silk and I find her very exotic. Around her neck hangs a deep blue sapphire necklace and some of the bluest lapis I have ever seen.

There is an older woman, as well. She looks like a woman I know in real life. She is sweet and lost and seemingly lonely, just like her real-life counterpart. There are several other women. One is young and withdrawn; the others have already faded. As it turns out, this is a journey of discovery. There are moments of awkwardness because I don’t know anyone well, but there are other moments that seem almost euphoric.

We are on a train and I spend time alone. I am sitting in a day car with many windows. The car is rushing through a sunny countryside though I am more aware of the streaming sun than I am the scenery. As I sit, an idea for a book overtakes me. The images and characters and dialogue are vivid. And they stream through my mind so quickly it is all I can do to write them down. The story is about a man involved with two women. One is young and beautiful, but she is also married and in the end, he chooses the one who is unencumbered. The manuscript flashes by from beginning to end. Somehow I capture it.

A lot of different things happen. Sometimes we’re on the train and sometimes it seems that we have disembarked along our way. We are in a jewelry store. I see many lovely things. I look at a small locket depicting a traditionally Catholic guardian angel with children, but it’s small and drab - nothing like the beautiful pieces worn by the woman in blue. I sense that it is all that is available to me but I don’t buy it. In another scene, the women and I decide to swap clothing. I have a single article of clothing I’m proud of—some sort of gold and red top. I offer it to the woman in blue and she accepts it.

Part III: Our Destination

It seems that we have arrived at university or school. The woman in blue shows me a sort of screen that is not a television but a bright flowing blue divided into many different shades which appear as if pressed between two panes of clear glass. The screen swivels like an old-fashioned chalkboard and the many shades of blue swirl together in changing breathtaking patterns. It is vividly blue and has a shine to it that is almost metallic. It reminds me of a sand art item I saw once in a variety store but much, much better. Its beauty and the spectrum of blue is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

The women and I are together in a classroom. A book review or lecture is being delivered. A man is showing us pictures from a book he has written. At first the content seems Buddhist and then it’s something else, but I don’t remember clearly just how it is different. We’re all moved by his presentation and find it very inspiring. For some reason, we know all about him and are surprised he’s become so spiritual. It seems that he was famous in some way earlier in life and that he had a bad reputation at that time.

Then I am outside with the young doctor. He asks me about my parents and I tell him something. briefly, without going into detail. He letters a sort of monument to my father (in cobalt blue). He invites me to letter the one for my mother myself, but his lettering is perfect and I have terrible handwriting (in dreams and in life). So I ask him to do it for me and he does. The monument only has my parents’ names. Or I think it does because I don’t recognize the characters or letters. The monument includes no information about who they were or what they did. But it seems complete as is.

My mother’s monument transforms into an ornament made out of clear glass with deep blue lettering. I know that I’m supposed to hang it in a tree at our family homestead and, all at once, I am there. It’s not the big main farmhouse where my mother grew up but something similar to the smaller house that she lived in before my grandfather inherited the farm. There is something about the tree having been cut back in preparation. I hang the ornament on a branch and leave.

Part IV: The Return Trip

I find myself back on the train and discover an old book. The cover is a work of art—old fashioned, intricate, tooled leather. It is dusty and a bit worse for wear, but still handsome. I’m very impressed with it. I open it and see I have written it. I’m surprised but, at the same time, I remember.

Finally, we’re at the end of our journey. We sit at a big table and talk about how we have changed. I’m wearing a sparkling red ruby or garnet bracelet. We decide that we should exchange jewelry as souvenirs of our trip.

I don’t want to give up my bracelet, but I offer it anyway, secretly hoping that the woman in blue will give me some of her lapis. Instead, she gives her jewelry to the older woman (who has nothing to offer her in return). I feel disappointed but understand that this is the right thing to do. Although my desire for the beautiful blue gemstones is strong, there is no associated envy or bitterness. I feel strongly that all is as it should be.

The young doctor thanks us and tells us that he now knows the route he should take to his new home. He does not return to the hospital and I am not sure if the women return either. I have a sense of parting. It is bittersweet, but I know it feels right and I have no regrets.

Part V: Back to the Beginning

Finally, I am back at the hospital. Someone is holding a funeral for the woman who was lying in pain just outside of the door when I first arrived. The funeral is being held on the other side of the large parking lot. It is far away, at the edge of the lot, but I can see a seated effigy draped in red and understand that this effigy represents the woman who has died.

I am now inside the hospital. A patient on the floor where I work has passed and I remember that he was the man who taught us when we were away. I know his history, so I’m not surprised that he died alone. I’m not sad about it either because I remember his lecture and know that he was at peace.

As I am leaving his room, or perhaps the floor, a young girl comes in and asks for the man. She says that she is his granddaughter and I tell her he is gone. Surprisingly, I find the right words. I tell her that it’s alright, that he has changed, and for some reason her tears are cathartic for both of us. We leave the hospital together and I have the feeling that everything has come full circle.

Afterward

I finished typing out the dream and turned off my laptop.

I was sitting on the same couch I’d slept on, wearing the same sweat pants and t-shirt I’d worn the day before. The room was still small and cluttered, and the stereo from the house next door was already blasting.

But everything had changed.

This post is excerpted from my upcoming book The Spirit Dream.

© 2026 Barbara Graver. All rights reserved.

I incubated this dream on the Celtic holiday of Samhain. My question was, Should I revisit Celtic spirituality?

I’m watching a video of a group of women meeting in someone’s living room. I know it’s some kind of spiritual group. I’m drawn to it. The room is warm and inviting and I have the impression of bright, autumn colors. The women are probably in their thirties, sitting in a row of chairs that may be part of a circle. There are three of them or maybe four, all laughing and obviously happy to be together. They are attractive, and colorfully dressed with lovely long hair. One has dark hair, and I think another’s hair is auburn. They have pretty Celtic style spiral tattoos that I am very taken with. I realize that I am with them. My hair is short—a sleek golden blond. ~October 2025

Possible associations

The setting and the women have an archetypal feel. The golden hair is could be about identity or alchemy or something else but, either way, I think it suggests being in a good place. But I’m only viewing it. Close, maybe, but not really there.

And then there is the spiral.

According to one of my favorite symbol books, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Symbols by JC Cooper, the spiral is a complex symbol known since paleolithic time. It is found in ancient Egypt, Crete, Mesopotamia, Asia, India, pre-Columbian America, Scandinavia, Europe and Britain (all cultures that have spoken to me at some point in my life).

Cooper mentions too many associations to list. For me, personally, the primary association is my Scots-Irish ancestors.

How might this apply?

Dreams rarely tell us what to do. So I’m not taking this dream as advice. Instead I’m trying to see it as insight. A recorded dream me is with the joyful Celtic sisterhood but the POV dream me is watching the scene, not taking part in it.

Video and media were features in the other three dreams that night too. I associate media with communication, specifically how I communicate so I feel this scene is meant to communicate something to me.

I don’t do groups, so I don't think it's about a group in waking life. I'd like to associate the women with my heritage or ancestors.

I'm not with them exactly but I am paying atention and I like what I see.

Life has been a bit of a slog lately but this dream makes me want to do better. To try harder. To earn my place in that happy group.

It’s bad (paranormal investigation) form to say what I think it is before other people listen so I’ll share my thoughts below the image which will give you a chance to listen first.

The EVP follows the human conversation (near the end of the recording). What’s unusual about this EVP is that it seems to be responding to what I’m saying. It also has a quality I've noticed in other (apparent) spirit communications of slightly overlapping human speech.

The image used is of the actual cemetery we visited. The old meeting house still stands.

I’m including this for Halloween and because it's a good example of one of the special interests.

About the recording

This EVP (electronic voice phenomena) recording was obtained by me and a friend in the summer of 2005. The EVP is only 1 word but it is very clear and has not been enhanced in anyway.

PLEASE LISTEN to the audio before reading my interpretation below.

PLEASE LISTEN before reading my interpretation:

I thought this EVP was answering my comment about the recorder being on by saying the word good in a slightly German or Swedish accent.

This video first appeared on my YouTube channel at youtube.com/@MysticReview!

September was a tough month for a couple of different reasons. Chief among them, was the confusion I was feeling over a creative project. This post is about where I was at, the dream that came at just the right time and the synchronicities and good advice that followed.

Where I was at

I had been struggling with my memoir in progress for some time.

You’ve heard me mention it before. Depending on how I’m feeling about it on any given week, I might consider it a spiritual memoir or neurodiversity memoir or both. This is only part of the conflict.

As I worked on the project, last month, I decided to include a 2012 dream I believe to be a visitation dream. Then I decided I should write about the relationship it referenced, as well. This turned into an entire chapter on a very difficult time in my life. By the time I was done with the chapter, I saw the full impact this relationship had for the first time.

It was a lot to process and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue with the project at all. I talked about this in my neurodiversity podcast which I’ll link to below.

Before the difficult-time-in-my-life chapter, I was feeling good about that, thinking that maybe that was the major theme.

The more I thought about the failed relationship chapter, however, the more I second-guessed. Eventually, I took many of the spiritual insights out and focused more on neurodiversity and the struggles I have had as an undiagnosed AuDHDer.

For some people this wouldn’t have been a big deal. Projects change direction. But this is a thing for me. I create things, and then I tear them apart. I have come to think of this building-shredding process as a form of self-sabotage

Then as sometimes happens, I had a dream.

I called it the Rusty Key Dream and I couldn’t help noticing a connection between it the 2012 visitation dream (which was about the same failed relationship I’d been writing about).

Anyway, that was the situation. Here is the dream:

The Rusty Key Dream (9/6/2025)

Scene 1. I have a booth at an indoor flea market. There is an outdoor sort of fair, then the building where I have my booth. I think the building is masonry painted white with a large opening (like a concession or covered veranda) where a woman sits behind a counter or long table in the shade. She is probably in her 60s. She owns the business and is responsible for the leases. She has a rough voice like a smoker and short dark hair. I think she might have dark cat’s-eye sort of glasses. Either way there is something kind of 1940s or 50s about her. She seems harsh or abrasive. I tell her I am not renewing my rental agreement for the next month. It is summer and I have a sense of sun and greenery behind me as we talk.

Scene 2. I have just attended some kind of event at our local mall and people are filing out of the venue. I have the sense that the fair / flea market is on the second floor. I am leaving with a man and a child (possibly ten or eleven). I have a vague sense of them but recall no detail. I remember that I have the rented booth upstairs and that I will need to get my things out before the lease is up. I have a table, my mother’s cash or strong box and a green crocheted tablecloth (I own this tablecloth in real life) still in the booth. I am worried I won’t get these items back once the agreement lapses. I wonder if I can get the table down by myself but then decide I can manage.

“Go get the car,” I say to the man. “I canceled my booth and need to get my table before they throw it out.”

“I thought the key didn’t work,” he says.

I pull out the key. [I recall it very clearly.] It is a little like a strongbox key with a round head and simple geometric grooves. It’s made of lighter weight metal than a house key but is around the same size. The key looks old and is spotted w rust (in random circular areas where some kind of coating might have come off), not rusted overall.

Scene 3. I go back upstairs, I think by escalator. The woman is gone. I go down a white corridor maybe 15 ft long. It is a little shabby with closed doors on either side. Then I come to the door of my shop / booth. I put the key in the door and have trouble getting it to open. I’m not positive I get the door open but I remember seeing strong box and that the inside of the room being bare except for the items I came for so I guess I got in.

If you're interested you can read the 2012 dream here:

Possible Interpretations of the Rusty Key Dream

The man and child in the Rusty Key dream reminded me of a 2012 visitation dream that meant a lot to me. I’d found out that an old boyfriend had died in that dream and he’d had a child with him.

I remembered very little about the child in the visitation dream and even less now. I wasn’t even sure it was the same man. But the fact that all of this had been on my mind seemed relevant.

Around that time, the Dream School I attend offered a special workshop on dream art. As the panelists discussed the value of drawing your dreams I drew the Rusty Key Dream (below).

As I drew, I found myself drawing the man too dark (as you can see in the head and neck area). He was gray, I realized, not black. Immediately, I thought of a computer and how sometimes certain unavailable options are grayed out. When that happens, you can’t select them. They are not an option. I wondered if that was the message. The past could be processed but it could not be chosen.

I also started to think about the strongbox and wonder if it my meant to be my earthly mother’s strongbox or something else. Thinking about the items I was to retrieve—the table, the tablecloth, the locked box—I was reminded of an altar, a Catholic altar, complete with altar cloth. I remembered that the tabernacle is locked and that Mary is often thought of as the tabernacle (that holds the host/Jesus) in Catholic thought.

So there was an altar (which is my personal association with tables) and a locked box but the box didn’t contain the host. It belonged to my mother—but maybe not my earthly mother.

The Next Synchronicity

This made a lot of sense but I was busy tearing the manuscript apart and not ready to stop. I did the podcast below around that time. And, while I was happy with the podcast, I wasn’t sure what I was doing with the memoir or the past.

I knew I was sabotaging myself but I wasn’t sure if I was right or wrong. I thought maybe other spiritually minded women might have a helpful take on some of this.

So I started poking around online and found the following:

I loved how Jungian it was, using the same language used in the Dream School I attend. What if this is true, I thought. What if we aren’t really divided against ourselves? What if we’re not actually sabotaging? What if we are dealing with outlawed wisdom?

What if, instead shredding, we’re supposed to listen?

Where This Leaves Me

I can’t say for sure what’s happening with the memoir but I think I’m getting some sense of the general direction. How it will turn out exactly is anyone’s guess. There is a lot of work left to do, and it isn’t all about writing.

Related Posts:

UPDATE:

After writing this post, I found that the analysts from my school had a podcast on self-sabotage on YouTube. In this video, the analyst point out that while understanding self-sabotage always has value, we can’t assume it’s always pushing us in the right direction.

Subscribe now

A new tarot layout

I find tarot helpful in gaining insight on creative projects. Recently, I discovered a new tarot spread in a book called Tarot and Psychology by Arthur Rosengarten PhD that is especially good for this purpose.

This post is about that layout and how I applied it. It is also includes some basic tarot pointers.

Here is Dr. Rosengarten’s Layout:

1. What is for us?

2. What is against us?

3. What is known?

4. What is unknown?

5. What do we need to know?

One of the things I love about this spread is that the fifth card is NOT drawn. It is selected from the higher arcana based on the combined numerical value of the first four cards.

To me, this adds a bit of magic to the reading!

How I read

My approach is to look at the images on the cards in the same way I look at images in dreams. This means that the same rules of interpretation apply. Knowing a bit about symbolism and mythology is helpful. Knowing the cards is good too but, as with dreams, personal associations mean a lot.

When I read, I try to take it seriously. I dialogue with the cards and allow plenty of time to journal and reflect. I usually lay the cards out on my library table. Having a dedicated space is nice because you can sit with the reading for long as you like, but it’s definitely not required.

The ask

If you read tarot, you have probably heard all of this before but I think it bears repeating.

• The first step in any reading is to formulate a question. The question should be open-ended and leave room for reflection.

• Asking for insight and understanding is good. Asking the cards to directly tell you what to do is not.

• Asking about the future or a specific outcome (fortune-telling) is the lowest and most disempowering use of tarot.

NOTE: Not everyone agrees with this.

My question for this reading was, “What do I need to know about my new writing project?”

As I shuffle I like to consider the situation, looking at it from different angles, then try to enter into an open or detached state toward the end.

The reading

These are the first five cards I drew according to Dr. Rosengarten’s layout + two extra cards I’ll explain as we go.

1. What is for? The Fool (0)

2. What is against? 6 of Pentacles (6)

3. What is known? The Star (17)

4. What is unknown? 7 Cups (7)

5. What do I need to know? The Empress (0+6+17+7+=30=3)*

*Remember to reduce all numbers over 22 (the number of cards in the major arcana).

Looking at the first 5 cards

I journaled six and half pages on this reading so I’m just going include a few highlights. As you’ll see in the next photo, I have a second notebook I use to write down actionable ideas I come up with as I journal.

I try to look at each card like I’ve never seen it before. I’ve been reading cards since I was 13, so I know all the standard “meanings,” but I always try to focus on new associations in the here and now.

When I journal on a reading, I end each entry on each card with a question for further reflection.

Here is a condensed example of what I wrote in my journal on this reading:

1. The Fool (for) Idealism. Seeker. The journey. Beginnings. The Fool as I see him this morning isn’t only beginning a new journey filled with naivete and optimism—he’s embracing it. His arms are wide open, like he is open. The future is uncertain, the chasm yawns, but he is wholly in the moment. I see a visionary with his eyes fixed on the vision. I sense the energy of new beginning. How can I ride this wave?

2. The 6 of Pentacles (against) Earth. Generosity. Wealth. Over-spending. Need. I used to always read pentacles as money and I still look at that first. This is a card of flow. It can be seen as generosity, depletion or need. I’m not overspending but what about my energy? Pentacles are earth so this might be about energy lost through projects. I’m not doing too much (for me) but there are several steps left in getting my last completed project published. How does that affect this project?

3. The Star (known) Hope. Balance. Destiny. The unconscious. Like many major arcana cards there is a LOT that can be said about the Star. Today, the eight pointed star reminds me of Inanna and her descent. The pool is the deep well of the unconscious. I am reminded of archetypal energies pouring out the water of inspiration into both the deep well and the thirsty ground. These are familiar (known) motifs and associations but how might they apply to the story I’m writing?

4. The 7 of Cups (unknown) Water. Emotion. Fantasy. Confusion. Lack of discernment. The same card in the same position it was in last week. That reading was about fiction writing in general but its reappearance (like a reoccurring dream) makes me think I haven’t gotten the message yet. In some ways it mirrors the 6 of Pentacles (both show division). Cups are water and water is emotion and probably related to inner states. How I am divided or conflicted and how might this be showing up in or around the story? What have I missed?

5. The Empress (what I need to know) Fertility. Creativity. Venus. Queen of Heaven. Selected from the numerical total of the other cards (30 = 3 + 0 = 3), the Empress circles back a familiar goddess archetype. The project is a romance. Romance explore the feminine (note the symbol on the rock in this card). Many of my stories have themes of trauma and healing, including the vampire story I just finished and the romance I’m writing now. The Empress, seems to be addressing some reservations I have about my FMC. But is this accurate?

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Looking at Cards 6-8

Cards 6-8 are extra cards not in Dr. Rosengarten’s spread. They are the two aces in the photos above plus Strength.

Possible progression (6 & 7) I like to pull two more cards to join with the “what is known” card in the top of the spread. This is a little predictive on the surface but I think of it as where things are > where they may be headed.

The Ace of Swords (air, beginning, spirit, inspiration) > Ace of Pentacles (earth, beginning, material, building). To me, this shows a good progression, from conception to implementation. This is the energy of beginnings (which connects to The Fool), however, not of completion. Aces are especially meaningful to me, so much so that I once wrote a poem on the topic. It was about starting over. I'm starting over with a new story. What are my next steps?

An 8th card for clarification I wasn’t sure if my insights on the Empress were on target or not. Given the symbolism in this reading, I liked the idea of an eighth card so I shuffled and drew one. That card was Strength which is card 8 in the major arcana. It is also the featured card on my tarot calendar for August. The number and symbolism seemed synchronistic so I read what was written on the calendar.

I liked what the calendar said about strength from within vs. strength over others and the reminder that the original name of the Strength card was Fortitude—which is one of the four cardinal virtues represented in the major arcana. Fortitude is strength that does not break. The woman taming the lion in the Strength card (3rd from the left below) reminds me of Ishtar with her lions. The Star and the Empress suggest other related goddess archetypes (Inanna and Isis). To me, the mythology is relevant. But how might I apply it?

My takeaway

I think the questions posed by the 6 of Pentacles and the 7 of Cups call for further reflection. I liked the idea of fortitude as it might apply to both my FMC and myself. The aces call for a shift—from envisioning to building but it is all very preliminary right now.

I found the goddess imagery in this reading interesting. Related attributes like creativity, intuition and independence are qualities I want to further develop in my FMC and in myself.

As I journaled on this reading, I got some specific ideas about characterization and backstory—as well as some general insights about the plot. I found all of this helpful and I feel more optimistic about this project than I did before.

The cards will stay out on the library table until I feel that I’ve gotten all I can from them—but I already feel that I’m off to a good start.

💕 I'll be posting the first chapter of the writing project I was reading on very soon. Until then, please feel free to read my vampire story 👇

🩸 You can check out the first indtallment of my vampire story here:

Trancing Miranda: CH 1

I find number symbolism interesting. You can read my poem about that here:

If you want to know more about the Jungian approach to interpreting dreams which does carry over to tarot, please check out:

©2025 Barbara Graver. All rights reserved. This is an original essay. Do not reproduce or redistribute without written permission. This post cross-posted from MysticReview.com.

About the dream

This dream was one of a series of what I believe to be true visitation dreams. Each dream in the series was what the spiritualists would call evidential in nature (conveying or suggesting verifiable information I couldn't have otherwise known).

All of these dreams occurred over a period of a few months in 2012. Although I’ve had many wonderful, even life altering dreams since, this series was the last of its type.

The dream that follows is my favorite. The account shared here is taken from my metaphysical blog. I called the post Lost and Found.

Lost and Found

Today marks the one year anniversary of a good friend's passing. And I have been thinking of him even though our friendship ended many years ago.

We said goodbye apparently for good in 1984 when he was making plans to leave the area and I was making plans to marry someone else.

Naturally, a great deal has happened in the intervening years. So it's not surprising, or in anyway indicative of my feelings, that it has been a long time since I've thought of him at all.

But three weeks ago I had a dream—and my friend Tim was the leading character. He was young and handsome in the dream and taller than I remembered. There was a remarkable brightness about him. And I know that kind of brightness.

He looked different but I recognized his energy. Sensing it as if I was standing next to him, stepping back in time to re-experience the soul vibration of a person I once loved.

In the dream, we meet by chance. I am living alone in a big sunny apartment and he is working at a nearby market. We bump into each other at his work and he asks if he can see me. Later on, standing in my dream apartment he tells me he wanted to contact me before but was afraid that doing so would stir up old emotion.

Then he explains why he let me down so many years ago and the things that had influenced him. The information is new but surprisingly coherent, fitting in neatly with events I had wondered about but not fully understood at the time.

Seeing our history in this new light changes things. My old remorse lifts. It is obvious to me, even in the dream, that Tim has come to make amends.

A child of ten or eleven has joined us. The child takes Tim's hand, and the three of us set out together on a wide boardwalk with long strings of golden lights on either side. Some kind of festival is happening all around us and I am happy in a way I had almost forgotten.

I tell him he is right about the emotion. "I can feel it," I say. "Can you?"

He doesn't answer or if he does, I don't remember. There is a knowing that our time together is ending and that he has brought me back to where I’m meant to be. When I wake up and consider the brilliance and the clarity of the dream, I know that he is gone.

I pull my laptop into bed and find the obituary online and see the same beautiful smile I loved so long ago. I learn that Tim died in a hospice, some eleven months earlier, at the age of 52. I’m sad I didn't know but glad to think he made it through okay.

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face… until we meet again.

Lost and Found first posted on my old blog on April 18th, 2012.

When I was involved in paranormal investigation, cemeteries were one of my favorite places for recording EVPs. So, on most Memorial Days, I’d take a digital recorder and visit the cemetery.

A Paranormal Memorial Day

Several Memorial Days ago, I visited the country cemetery where most of my family is buried. But while I'd remembered the begonias I wanted to plant, I’d forgotten my digital recorder.

So I decided to take pictures instead and see if I could capture an orb—but when I pulled out my fully charged phone, it abruptly shut down. I'd lost my previous phone, trying to take spirit photos, a year or two earlier. So I was annoyed.

The phone wouldn’t restart so I gave up on it, planted my begonias, paid my respects and left. When I was driving away, I sensed an energy, as if there was a presence with me in the car. It didn’t feel like a peaceful presence. Instead it felt jangly and hyper, almost giddy.

I’m not sure why but I decided to try to communicate with to the spirits I believed to be present. I talked about what I was up to, asked for advice and waited for a response. No answer presented.

A few moments later, my phone turned back on. I plugged in the auxiliary cable and started to listen to the audio book I'd played on my way to the cemetery, but all I heard was static. In between the bursts of interference, I clearly heard an EVP-like voice.

I was only able to make out a word or two. There was no message per se but I did feel that something was trying to communicate,

Eventually the gangly energy faded. My audio book played clearly through the stereo speakers. My phone was fine.

I haven’t done any paranormal investigation for some time, but I did keep one recording (from a different cemetery):

The Context

I’m finishing a paranormal novel based on a short story I wrote a long time ago. I like the world and characters, but have struggled a lot with the external plot. At the time of this dream, I was putting a lot of time into plot revisions and finishing the story was very much on my mind.

I was working on a nonfiction book, at the same time. This book was a memoir but I was conflicted about it at the time—unsure if it should focus on autism or spirituality or the dream the changed everything.

I wanted a new dream to share with my weekly dream group and something that would help guide my writing. So I incubated a dream for this purpose on a Friday night and remembered this dream shortly after I woke up on Saturday morning.

Two of my boys are in the dream. The third is not. The friend who once attended the festival in the dream is someone I reconnected with on Facebook. I haven’t seen her for a long time but always thought highly of her. I don’t know any of the other characters at all.

The Dream

I am attending some kind of festival at a big open-air arena. It is in the country in PA (possibly Lehigh county). There is a country vibe and I think the music is country or folk music. I'm aware of local people who are related to (sons of) the organizer standing on a hill overlooking the arena. I talk to them but can't remember what’s said. I sense that they and their mother are not good people and there is a vague sense of danger.

Now I am dancing with the crowd in the arena. I am wearing a red dress. There are a lot of people but with space between them—not packed in like at a concert. No one else is wearing red and I know I stand out in the crowd. We are dancing away from the festival and out of the arena. There are numerous vendors, but I don’t recall any specifics.

The arena is part of a business compound with other buildings (possibly a welcome center and shop) between the arena and the road, all owned by the same family. I remember that an old school friend attended the festival in a previous year.

I am supposed to drive home and pick up my younger sons James and Andrew so they can attend the event too, so I have to hurry. There is a downpour. A hard steady rain. I get wet but am relieved to think the festival will be cancelled and I don’t have to drive to pick up my sons and bring them back. Then the sky clears and I realize I still have to go get them.

I leave the venue. I’m in a car and there is an elderly man (I would say 80s or older) with me. He is tall w gray thinning hair. I have previously agreed to give him a ride home. I have a newer car, possibly silver, and have borrowed from someone (I think James). The elderly man insists on driving, saying he knows the way. We leave together.

The car is an automatic with a console shift. The man is shifting it like it is a standard, using all three forward gears. It is annoying. I tell him he doesn't have to shift like that, that he can just leave the car in Drive and he makes fun of that manner of driving. He is a bad driver in other ways too, having trouble handling the car in general. We go up a hill, left through a business district and then left again, going back in the direction we came from. We then pull into a gas station.

I know we have come back close to where we started. I'm upset because I can actually see the venue, which is a short way down what appears to be a state highway. I am stressed about being late to pick up James and Andrew. Especially Andrew, who really wants to attend the event. I am stressed about the amount of driving (1 or 2 hours each way) I still have to do.

I point out the venue to the elderly man and tell him we have wasted an hour going in a circuit. He is unpleasant. We are out of the car. I tell him to take his things and get his own ride home. He has lots of stuff in the trunk of the car (shopping bags, containers, etc.). I pile it all up on a bench. Then I see that he is having an issue with balance and cognition. I end up taking his arm to help him walk.

The man and his things are back in my car. I am at the edge of the gas station parking lot now trying to talk a group of people into taking the man where he needs to go. They seem judgmental about my lack of compassion for the elderly, but I feel if they knew him, they would think otherwise. A woman gracious woman with a southern accent is talking to the man sweetly, but after a while I sense she is getting exasperated too.

My Take Away

I am part of a small dream group that interprets dreams along Jungian lines. I took this dream to the group having no idea what it meant or what it had to do with the guidance I requested. What follows is a combination of suggestions I received and some insights I arrived at on my own after talking to the group.

• The dangerous woman and her disapproving family could be associated with shadow elements that crop up in my writing (in both fiction and nonfiction), the judgmental comments of some who've read my work and/or my own perfectionism and self-doubt.

• Dancing in the red dress reflects my creative energy. The abandon suggests freedom and release. The fact that I know I standout could mean there is something unique in my creative work and that I am aware of this. Red symbolizes alchemy and transformation.

• Rain is symbolic of clearing and renewal.

• My mixed feeling about my kids reflects the tension between family responsibilities and creative goals.

• The old man shifting badly might represent me and the way I've been changing things in both books. The old man's baggage could be my "baggage" i.e. past history and emotional issues. Feelings of wasting time and going out of my way for an "old" man reflects the passage of time and fact that our lives are finite. My impatience and hostility toward the old man may reflect conflicted feelings about my creative work.

• The gracious woman might represent both the approval (of others) and the possibility of people losing patience with my waffling.

Most dream don't advise us on aspects of our waking life, but I deliberately asked for information regarding my writing. I think this dream gave me info on my writing strengths and weaknesses and a bit of advice on my current projects.

My Weaknesses

1. Disapproving family: I am critical of my work, others have been too

2. Shifting: My tendency to second guess

3. Baggage: Being burdened by things I have compartmentalized

4. My impatience: Worry that time is short

My Strengths

1. Red: Creative energy, unique or standout creativity, potential transformation through writing

2. Rain: A fresh start or clean slate

3. My sympathy for the old man's cognitive issues: Cutting myself slack because of autism related challenges

4. The gracious woman: Others may actually like my work, perhaps I should give myself grace as well

Outcome

One outcome of this dream is that I making more allowances for myself in my fiction writing. I am going to finish the vampire story and publish it, even if it isn't perfect. Book 2 may be a short story cycle. I am looking into some of the things I have packed away and trying to better understand my challenges.

Because of this dream I decided that I was overthinking the memoir and that toggling back and forth between autism and metaphysics was unnecessary. So I’ve decided to just tell the story of the dream and what it meant to me. The title (The Spirit Dream) will stay the same.

UPDATE: You can read the full account of the Spirit Dream here:

In this post, I talk about Carl Jung’s famous essay, On the Nature of Dreams. This includes Jung’s theory of compensate in dreams, who is qualified to interpret a dream, big dreams, symbolism, dream structure and the importance of personal context and associations.

It’s a great essay. I’m not sure I’ve done it justice but I did want to share a bit about what I’m learning in my Jungian studies and I wanted to include some background first.

Dream School

I started Jungian Dream School last fall in response to a wonderful synchronicity involving Jungian analyst Murray Stein and the This Jungian Life podcast.

As you may already know, dreams have been an area of interest to me ever since I had the dream I call the Spirit Dream in 2007 which changed, or possibly saved, my life.

I’ve recently written my Spirit Dream / autism memoir up to the point where what I learned in those first weeks of Dream School becomes relevant. So I went back to module one and worked through it again.

In doing this I reread On the Nature of Dreams more carefully than I had done the first time around. And there was so much there, I wanted to share a bit of what I learned. I hope I will do it justice and not get too much wrong!

How Dreams Bring Balance

In On the Nature of Dreams Jung points out our dreams are rarely in accord with the sensibilities of our conscious mind. To Jung, this means that the unconscious (which he calls "the matrix of dreams") must have an independent function. In other words, the unconscious functions separately from our conscious self (which contains the ego).

In creating dreams, the unconscious may strongly oppose our waking paradigm. This is intentional.

The gap between our everyday attitude and the dream may be slight or great (or very occasionally absent). This relates to Jung's concept of compensation. According to Jung, the dream deviation is an attempt to correct (or compensate for) the errors of our conscious self.

According to Jung there are three compensatory possibilities:

1. If the conscious attitude is one-sided the dream takes the opposite position.

2. If the conscious is more in the middle, the dream may deviate a little from our waking attitude.

3. If the conscious attitude is correct the dream will coincide (though not mirror, because the conscious always maintains what Jung calls its autonomy).

The purpose of compensation is to restore wholeness or balance. This correction usually has something to do with what is going on with us at that particular point in time. Some dreams, particularly long series of dreams, are more far-reaching (Jung goes into this in greater depth in Psychology and Alchemy which I will have not read).

It's important to note, that compensation is not black and white. Dreams have their own kind of logic. Their relationship to our waking life is nuanced, complex and expansive. Understanding a dream is always a process.

Who Can Interpret Dreams

According Jung you don't have to be an psychologist (or any sort of professional) to interpret dream. Which isn't to say that anyone and everyone can do Jungian dream interpretation. The characteristics required to "diagnose dream compensation" according to Jung are: intelligence, some knowledge of psychology and life experience.

But these alone are not enough.

Jung is adamant in saying that an understanding of mythology, folklore, indigenous cultures and comparative religion is also required.

I loved hearing that. While I have learned through Dream School that we must always consider our personal association first when approaching a dream, I find mythological themes to be very important in dreams. Right or wrong, whenever it is there I apply it.

On the Nature of Dreams also contains a warning for people who decide that the dream "knows best” or readily believe that dreams predict the future. According to Jung, those who take this approach may find that their dreams become trivial over time. This is because these individuals are over rating the subconscious function and under valuing the conscious.

The conscious, per Jung, must fulfil its own appointed duties. It has developed for a reason and has an important role in our lives. The dream, according to On the Nature of Dreams, may fill in the blanks, correct our attitude or move us forward after our best attempts have failed. This is not to say that they never provide real life guidance, only that most of what they have to tell us relates to our internal states.

Dreams tend to be mythic, symbolic and poetic. Because of this they offer much more than ordinary, everyday advice. While some dreams are precognitive (as Jung was well aware) most are not, and it’s important to properly understand the dreams role in our life.

Dream interpretation can be challenging. While a lot has been written on it by Jung and his contemporaries very little of that is what I would consider an easy read. The book Dream Wise written by three of my Dream School instructors makes Jung's ideas accessible—as do the writings of Jungian analysist Murray Stein.

Stein’s short book Four Pillars of Jungian Analysis talks about dream interpretation in concise and understandable way.

Big Dreams

Big dreams are different than other dreams because they contain symbolic images found in the collective unconscious of the human race. These images are reflections of invisible energetic forms Jung calls archetypes.

Archetypes have existed at all times in human history and in all places. To Jung, this proves that there is both a personal unconscious and a collective or universal unconscious accessible to all. Archetypal images include thing like dragons, initiations, fairy tale elements or alchemical substances. For me personally, they tend to present as specific deities, symbols and themes.

Big dreams come from the collective unconscious at critical stages of our lives. They may hard to interpret, Jung says, because of the lack of personal meaning. Often, we need to go back to the mythology in order to understand them.

This is why a knowledge of myth and folklore is so important. If we don't know these stories we may fail to recognize important elements and messages in our dreams.

We can identify big dreams by their mythic themes and "poetic force and beauty." Often these dreams haunt us, becoming the "richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience." (CGJ) This, in my experience, could not be more accurate.

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The Stages of Dreams

A key point in On the Nature of Dreams is a the idea examining a dream through its structure.

Jung provides four stages that describe the structure of most dreams.

1. Exposition: The statement of place, introduction of key dream characters and the initial situation of the dreamer.

2. Development: The plot of the dream as it becomes more complicated and tension develops.

3. Culmination or Peripeteia (a Greek word for an unexpected reversal or point where the situation changes dramatically): The point where something decisive happens or something changes completely.

4. Result or Solution: While not every dream will have a fourth stage Jung looks at this last stage in relation to the solution sought by the dreamer.

I like to look at the structure of the dream and question each stage keeping in mind that every aspect of a dream is there for reason.

There is a lot to be learned from the structure of the dream. The setting, key characters, action and turning point are all important. When I look at my own dreams, I always consider the result or solution. Sometimes this fourth stage is little more than an idea or impression which may be easy to overlook—but it is still important.

Context and Associations

It is also crucially important to do what Jung calls "taking up the context" by exploring personal associations for each dream element.

Because dreams are closely tied to our lived experience, it's also helpful to think about our current situation as we try to understand how our unconscious might be trying to restore balance in the here and now.

Most dreams are not big dreams. But every dream we have is important in terms of our day to day life. Many apparently "lesser" dreams can be mapped as part of a dream series that may be factor into our individuation process (a Jungian term that describes the process of becoming the person we are meant be).

Dreams offer an immediate and crucial course correction as we journey from day to day. They do not (in the vast majority of cases) tell us what to do. Instead they help us orient ourselves to a life that aligns with our greater purpose.

I'll be writing more about what I'm learning about dreams and Jung in future posts!

Read about the synchronicity that put me on the Jungian dream path here:

I've had a few dreams I consider big and one that figures prominently in my memoir and in my life as a whole. You can read it on The Mystic Review here: The Spirit Dream. You can learn more about Jungian Dream School via the This Jungian Life website.

It is often difficult to see how a single dream compensates the consciousness of an individual. If there is a dream series available, the meaning of the compensation often becomes more evident. — Murray Stein, Four Pillars of Jungian Analysis

I had the first dream in what I’ve been calling the Dream Gate series last year and the most recent a few weeks ago.

The dreams so far are as follows:

1. The Dream Gate: Technically two dreams divided by a short period of wakefulness but effectively a single dream.

2. The Dream Wall: the longest dream in the series which made the theme of the series (the interpretation of dreams and my Jungian studies) clear to me.

3. The Dream Vault: The most recent dream which can be found below.

In this post I’ll share some of what I’ve learned about how a dream series works, the Dream Vault dream, Jung’s theory of dream compensation and how all of this comes together for me.

About Dream Series

One of the primary functions of dreams, per Jungian thought, is to compensate for (or correct) the many erroneous attitudes of our waking life. This is Jung’s theory of compensation in a nutshell. (For more on this topic, please see my post On the Nature of Dreams.)

While there’s a lot you can say about the dream series idea, the really fascinating thing to me is how a series can help us better understand compensation—and where our waking attitudes may be out of balance. For me, this is a relatively new way of looking at dreams.

Before I was introduced to Jung, I liked to imagine that dreams, were meant to encourage me. Dream series, in particular, seemed to be showing how I was progressing in life. According to the theory of compensation, however, our dreams usually aren’t telling us what we’re doing well. They’re telling us what we can do better.

Not as flattering, obviously, but a lot more actionable.

Unless we’re stuck, the guidance we get from our dreams changes over time—and this is true even within the boundaries of a given dream series. While each dream in a series is a variation on a theme, the specific message will, and should, change from dream to dream. In my experience, these messages usually point to something I need to address.

When I first started working with the Dream Gate series, I was looking at the individual dreams as indicators of personal spiritual progress. Now I see them in a more actionable (and down-to-earth) way.

The Dream Vault Dream

What follows is the most recent dream in the Dream Gate series. This dream was short but powerful. Audio is rare in my dreams but there was sound in this one.

I’m walking through a long underground chamber or passageway As I walk, heavy battleship gray iron doors crash open one after another to let me pass. The mechanism is automatic and the doors are are loud when they open and I know that they are signaled somehow by me. They remind me of doors on a vault. My impression is that the passage is rectangular or square (not arched) with heavy girders overhead. The space has an industrial feel. It isn’t bright but I think lights come on as the doors open for me. I am moving fast and feel a strong sense of purpose. There is an energy to the dream and a feeling of determination or even command.

This is the only dream in the series that occurred underground. It is similar to dream one because the dream doesn’t reveal what’s on the other side of the door (or doors). It is similar to dream two because I am being proactive, In all three dreams, vital information is withheld.

The Series as a Whole

In this present study of alchemy I have taken a particular example of symbol-formation, extending in all over some seventeen centuries, and have subjected it to intensive examination, linking it at the same time with an actual series of dreams recorded by a modern European not under my direct supervision and having no knowledge of what the symbols appearing in the dreams might mean. — Carl Jung Psychology and Alchemy CW Vol. 12

I like what Jung says about tracing particular symbols through a series of dreams. I haven’t read Psychology and Alchemy so I can’t speak to how he did that. But I think it’s okay to make connections between symbols that aren’t absolutely identical.

Dreams are fluid, in my experience, and symbolic elements are rarely fixed. In the Dream Gate series, the first (the Dream Gate dream) had a wall and door/gate. The second dream (the Dream Wall) had only a wall. The last (the Dream Vault dream) had a series of doors. To me, these elements are all closely related.

The common symbolism revolved around boundaries, passageways and a strong sense of the unknown. While these elements presented in different ways, I believe they’re connected.

Dream One (the Dream Gate)

I didn’t know what was on the other side of the door in dream one but the volkknot symbol over the old arched doorframe supplied context. I knew the dream was talking about what I used to call “the other side” but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make that kind of connection or enter into that reality again or how I could reconcile it with Catholicism. Sometime later, a synchronicity provided additional insight.

To me now, the land of the dead and the other side and the collective unconscious and its archetypes are one in the same. And I am not afraid of it.

Back then, however, I was wary.

Dream Two (the Dream Wall)

In dream two, I crossed a wall to speak with the Interpreter of Dreams. This gave me the general theme of the dream. To me, the old man (the Interpreter of Dreams) and the scroll he was holding represented dream interpretation and Jungian psychology—both of which I was then actively studying.

I still had reservations, however, about what I was learning. Not long after the Dream Wall dream a second synchronicity helped lay those reservations to rest.

I liked the imagery in the Dream Wall dream and was happy to have found my way to the wise old man.

This, I thought in the aftermath of the dream, shows progress—but I hadn’t read Jung’s thoughts on compensation then. If I had I would have realized that while I had overcome my prejudice I still had a LOT to learn.

I realize this now. The Interpreter of Dreams did not show me his mysterious scroll or provide an interpretation of the dream I’d brought him. I was in the right place, but I wasn’t getting it.

And, in some ways, this is still true.

Dream Three (the Dream Vault)

The Dream Vault dream is a great example of Jung’s theory of compensation at work.

The person striding through the underground vault in this dream isn’t me. The heavy iron doors of the underworld don’t crash open at my command. There is no actual power or mastery. This is not where I’m at or even where I’m ending up.

Because that isn’t how compensation works. Dreams aren’t a pat on the back. They’re a gauntlet.

And I understand why I’m being challenged. I have NOT been focused. I have NOT been studying. I have NOT been working with my dreams. And I need to do better. Not crashing through the gates of the underworld better, necessarily, just an hour or two here and there.

Because knowledge IS power and if you want it you have to work for it.

Next Steps

There have been a lot of kind of cool symbols in the Dream Gate series so far. Medieval gates, dark symbols, mysterious scrolls, walls—both broken and intact, underground passageways, wise old men, a journey through a winter wood looking for answers.

I know that each of these symbols are important or they wouldn’t be in the dreams. I know I need to make time to reflect and look individual elements up in my symbol books and journal about related mythologies like Persephone and the Descent of Inanna.

I love doing that and I love that Carl Jung thought myth and symbol were necessary tools in the toolbox of dream interpretation. But I don't actually spend a lot of time filling that toolbox—or haven’t been—and I haven't been spending a lot of time with my dreams or engaging in active imagination or reading Jung either.

Which makes me think about my priorities and the general structure of my day-to-day life. And it occurs to me that the scrolls that need to be read and the doors that need to be opened aren't actually in the dream. They're here.

• I wrote a post on Jung’s theory of compensation in dreams and will link to it below. I’ll also be writing more on this topic. So if you find it interesting, please consider subscribing to my newsletter!

• If you want to know more about the other dreams in the series, please click on the appropriate links: 1. The Dream Gate 2. The Dream Wall

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Of New Dreams and Old

Some symbols are universal. Others are personal. For me, circles are both.

When I have a dream that has a sphere, or a disk, or a looping path that brings me back to where I started, it always seems to mean something. So when a recent dream had a circular element, I paid attention.

And the more attention I paid, the more the structure of the dream reminded me of another, older dream—one whose full meaning has always eluded me.

I had that dream in 2008 or maybe 2007. My life was at a low point and the future seemed bleak. And then there was the dream. A big magical dream. Brimming with color. Filled with mysterious symbols. Making me think that maybe God had remembered me.

I called it the Spirit Dream and, for the next ten years, I went from one metaphysical stopping point to the next, trying to make what I found fit. But it never did or, at least, never did for long.

Then, a couple of months ago, I heard Murray Stein interviewed on This Jungian Life, and something he said did fit. It fit so well in fact that it cast the Spirit Dream in an entirely new light. And in that light I saw that the dream wasn't really about a particular spiritual practice or deity or decision. It was about my inner life.

I didn't really know what to do with that, but I felt like I was supposed to do something. So I enrolled in Jungian Dream School and joined a Jungian dream group.

Then, I had another dream. The new dream wasn't as big or as beautiful as the old one, but it was still a dream about a journey, and I was still encountering things along the way. I felt that this new dream helped explain the Spirit Dream, or that maybe it picked up where the old dream left off.

The Journey by Bus Dream

In the first part of the dream, I have a boyfriend who is remodeling a house for me. I’m happy about this because I like him. He has a second house that he is also remodeling. My memory of the dream boyfriend is that he is a tall man and may have blond curls.

Someone has given me a metal disk. It is gold or brass. The back is gold colored. The front is red with a gold center. It seems important to me but I don’t know what it is or how I got it.

I am in the town I live in. I am going to my house to meet the boyfriend and some other people. I am driving north on North Main Street and miss the right turn up the hill. I’m stressed about being late and looking for a turn.

Most of the side streets are one-way (the wrong way) and the only one that isn’t is very steep. I remember hearing a story about a city bus—which is what I’m driving—that went up the steep street and how all the passengers bounced right out of their seats when they hit the crest, so I keep on driving. This part of town is kind of run down.

I pass a roadside parking area on the right. The parking area is a small dirt lot that’s part of an old, abandoned motel. I remember that there used to be motorhomes for psychics there and that you could go there for a reading. I think there is still a sign advertising the psychics (in the dream). But now the psychic motorhomes are gone and all that’s parked there are various work trucks.

I reach the larger intersection (with a hard right) I’ve been looking for and see there is roadwork and traffic barricades in place. A man is directing traffic and I realize that the road I want to take (the hard right) is temporarily closed, so I turn left into a small thrift shop. I go into the thrift shop and see there is a big pile of journals for sale.

I sit down on the floor and start to look through the journals and realize they are all mine and I have donated them to the shop. One has my writing in it and I think I should probably buy it so other people don’t read it but I buy another bigger (unwritten in) journal instead. I hear water running like a shower.

I go back out and see the roadwork is done. The man directing traffic is gone. I have to make a U turn which is a big wide swing and difficult to negotiate with the bus but I manage it. I am waiting for the light to change so I can go left up the sloping hill to my house.

I start thinking about the boyfriend and realize that the second house he is remodeling is for him to live in. I feel okay about that, but I know we'll have to discuss it. I decide to tell him I’m autistic and that it’s good that we won’t live together because I don’t do well with live-in relationships, anyway. I’m relieved to realize that I have a way to explain myself.

From Point A to Point B

The Spirit Dream described a full round-trip journey to a mysterious location, while the new dream was nothing more than an ordinary drive from point A to B. But, even though the drive was short, I passed things that seemed to have meaning.

The steep hill road. The abandoned psychic parking lot. The thrift store, full of old journals.

Three events. Just like there were three events in leg one (and leg two and three) of the Spirit Dream journey.

So I decided to submit the new dream to the dream group and see what they had to say, and I got some fascinating insights.

One member pointed out that the journal choice might represent a fresh start. Another said that the boyfriend who planned to maintain his own home might be an animus figure. Everyone was curious about the red and gold disk. The group connected the disk to amulets and to alchemy—and it seemed to me that this was the real key to both the new dream and the old one.

I'd always thought that the color red in the Spirit Dream symbolized my own unevolved spiritual nature. Now I wondered if I'd got wrong. Maybe red wasn't about failing or being at spiritual ground level. Maybe it was about transformation and the possibility of change.

But I wasn't sure if change was still possible. It had been a long time since the first dream—and there were parts of the second one that seemed to reflect some of the mistakes I had made.

The lot where the psychics once parked reminded me of the various spiritual practices I'd tried and abandoned.

The old journals made me think about the hundreds of thousands of words I have written in the Mystic Review and a long line of unpublished manuscripts. Words which sometimes seem to have served no purpose whatsoever.

The steep street seemed to reflect all the opportunities I had missed and all the things I'd thought I'd accomplish, but didn't.

But that wasn't where the A to B journey ended.

Instead, it ended when a road block was removed and I was able to correct my course.

One really interesting things about the Journey by Bus dream was that it followed the actual layout of the town where I now live. So I know that the turn I was getting ready to make when the dream ended led to the same place as the steep hill road.

Home.

Which makes me wonder if the Spirit Dream was ever about a mostly external spiritual journey. Or about writing my opus or discovering the truth with a capital T or doing any of other things I’ve imagined and then left undone.

Maybe the dream was really just about getting on with my life after I'd been laid low. Maybe it was about taking a chance when it felt like there wasn't one good thing left in universe.

Or maybe not.

Because, unlike signs, symbols point to a constellation of things.

About the Video

In this video I talk about how a recent synchronicity showed me how to apply a bit Jungian theory to my dream, The Spirit Dream. Three things stood out to me in this experience: It explained what a synchronicity was, provided and example AND helped crack a dream I've been wrestling with forever!

Please Note: I misspoke when I was talking about Jung's concept of the self. It is psychoid membrane not memory :)

This post first appeared in the MysticReview.com

• You can read my blog post on this experience on my off-site blog (MysticReview.com) or right here on Substack (A Creation in Time). The blog post makes a bit more sense (I think) than the video.

• You can read the Spirit Dream in full here: The Spirit Dream (only available on the Mystic Review at present).

And if you’re on YouTube, please check out (and consider subscribing to) my channel at: youtube.com/@MysticReview

The Podcast

I discovered a wonderful new podcast this week. It's called This Jungian Life and it's hosted by three real-life Jungian analysts. Each episode presents a topic, and ends with the analysis of a listener's dream. I have really enjoyed the dream segments and like doing my own analysis to compare to that of the hosts. I also like the topical portion of the show. A lot.

The hosts are articulate and knowledgeable and so unexpectedly funny I found myself laughing out loud as I listened. More importantly, I feel I've already learned things from them. 

I have heard several episodes (including two on the shadow which were excellent) already but the episode I want to talk about in this post is called Unlock the Power of Symbols (video follows). The guest in this episode was Murray Stein, author of Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction and I was so impressed with him that I bought his book the second the show was over.

When I was in my New Age phase I talked about synchronicities a lot even though I didn't really understand them and to be honest I'm not sure I understand them now. But when Stein quoted Jung as saying that a synchronicity is an act of creation in time I felt like I was being shown another, more theoretical perspective.

And an example followed.

The Spirit Dream

So there I was, doing the dishes and listening to the podcast and wishing I could ask Murray Stein to help me make sense of the Spirit Dream.

I was thinking that I wouldn't even have to get him to take on the whole dream. I would just ask him to help me figure who the lady in blue was and why she seemed so important—and what was up with the whole color thing (read The Spirit Dream in full if you'd like more context). 

I have often thought that the spectrums of blues I was shown in the dream exceeded anything I've ever seen with ordinary waking vision. Sometimes I have wondered if there isn't something reminiscent of an NDE in that, but I've never been sure about any of it.

The interplay of red and blue in the Spirit Dream seemed significant to me from the start and I have always supposed that color was the key to the dream. 

Murray Stein

I was thinking about these things and how nice it would be if Murray Stein could tell me about my dream, when he answered a question about the difference (or relationship) between a symbol and an archetype and said the following:

So there are archetypes and there are archetypal images... [and] Jung makes a very important distinction (you can read about this in a paper he wrote called the Nature of the Psyche in Volume 8 and I use that a lot in my book Jung's Map of the Soul).

He [Jung] lays out a spectrum [and] says the psyche is like a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared.

On the infrared side it disappears through a psychoid membrane into the body, into physiological processes and there's an interplay between body and psyche—the psychosomatic interplay. The psyche can affect the body. The body can affect the psyche through that psychoid membrane.

He says on the other end of the spectrum there's the ultraviolet end of the spectrum that's blue—the psyche disappears again through a psychoid barrier or membrane into he says "what I can only call Spirit,.." and that's where the archetype exists.

And the archetype emits... [and] influences the psyche. The archetype influences the psyche by giving it images so when you have powerful images coming into your dreams, for instance, we call them archetypal images [or] Big Dreams that are related to mythology and fairy tales and all that.

The archetype... beyond the psyche in the… spiritual world is emitting some energy and it's coming into the psyche and then it takes the form of a couple of things: It can be an image or it can be a big idea [that] can be an inspiration, you know, [and] suddenly [the] aha light goes on you understand something.

So… the psyche disappearing into the spirit world on the one hand... [and] the psyche disappear[ing] into the material world on the other hand... Now there's where Jung tried to tie that together—the material world and the spirit world— in his theory of synchronicity: Something happens in the material world and in the psychic world at the same time. It has meaning. 

It delivers meaning.

Does it ever.

The Video

This is the video of that episode. I prefer to listen via podcast but it's nice to have the video to share, You can hear the content I quote above at the 35 minute mark but I encourage you to listen to it all. It is incredible.

My Takeaway

Does the Spirit Dream all make sense to me now? 

No. Not yet and maybe not ever. But I feel I'm much closer to understanding the central mystery of the dream: The identity of the woman in blue and why she appeared to me.

I will be returning to the Spirit Dream again better prepared to understand it. And I will be reading Stein's book and, hopefully, some of Jung's as well.

As always, there is a lot more to learn but I believe that the overlap of  This Jungian Life and the Spirit Dream was a meaningful thing.

I won’t be ignoring it.

• You can buy Murray Stein's book Jung's Map of the Soul on Amazon.

• You can listen to This Jungian Life on most popular podcast apps and on YouTube.

• You can read the Spirit Dream in full below:

I had three dreams about stone walls in 2024 [actually two is more accurate because dream one was really one dream divided by a short period of being awake]. While the dreams were far apart, I believe they were episodes in a single dream series. In a dream series, each dream is connected by a common but developing theme.

These dreams, or this series of dreams. began last year around Easter, so I decided to share the final dream now. You can find a link to the first two stone wall dreams at the bottom of this post.

The Dream Wall Dream

In the dream, I was at a house in my old neighborhood in suburban Michigan. The development changed a lot over the ten years we lived there but in this dream is was a lot like I remembered it in the beginning.

The homes were scattered across a large track of old growth forest. Most had large lots that were entirely wooded in the back and you could walk for a long way then without seeing any manmade structures at all.

I was in a part of the development near the home of a childhood friend. There were two houses. One belonged to an unnamed and unseen dream friend who was about to get married. I was inside a second house, very close by the first. Both houses were ranch-style homes.

I understood that the friend about to be married had dreamt a dream he felt was important. I knew that I needed to interpret it but I was not supposed to leave. This was a problem because there was someone I had to talk to about the interpretation. I had a sense that dream interpretation (or possibly seeing the person who would help with that interpretation) was actually illegal and I had to sneak out the back without being seen and walk quickly into the woods to find him.

It was winter, and the sky was gray, and the ground was covered with snow. The trees were just as I remembered them, tall and thin with bare black trunks. It felt like evening or maybe early morning and I set out in the direction I would have taken to our old house.

I saw that there was a wall built through the woods, or rather several adjoining walls because they were all different. I guessed that each wall was the back of a different property and, as is the case with houses, some were better maintained than others.

At one place, the wall was built out of crumbling cement blocks. It was quite low, but I could see that the wall for the next property was high and well built out of carefully laid fieldstone. There was a young man there who seemed to be a sort of guard or gatekeeper, and he confirmed that I was in the right place.

So I climbed over the low next door wall and cut over toward the house that went with the high, well-built wall.

The house was a mansion, and the occupant was renowned for his ability to interpret dreams. I was invited in. The interpreter of dreams was an older man sitting on the floor of a large, carpeted (possibly unfurnished) room. He was holding a mysterious scroll which he did not explain.

I told him about my friend's dream and shared my own awkward interpretation. I don't know if he provided feedback or additional insights. If he did, I can’t remember. And I don't remember my own interpretation or what the dream was about either.

The Synchronicities

I had the first and second wall and gate dreams around Easter of last year. Those dreams made me wonder if dream interpretation and the Catholic faith were compatible. The first and second dreams came at a difficult time when I was struggling with my writing and a group I belonged to then.

The third dream came when I was struggling to reconcile my faith with the Jungian perspective on dreams and consciousness.

A few days after the dream, I talked to our parish priest about my interest in dreamwork. He seemed to have a healthy interest in dreams and saw no harm in recording them or reflecting on them. He even shared a dream of his own.

When I got home from Mass that day I decided to listen to a Murray Stein video.

Murray Stein is the Jungian analyst who convinced me (via the This Jungian Life podcast) that Jung's approach to dreams was the right approach for me. What was especially interesting about the video I watched that day was that it mentioned that Murray Stein was a Christian.

Who would have thought?

Not me, certainly. But I couldn’t help feeling that there was a connection and that it all circled back to the dream.

The Dream Wall Revisited

I think it's relevant that I wanted to interpret a friend's dream (in dream 3) and felt that it was not allowed. I think this speaks to my uncertainty about the Church’s position on dream interpretation which was something that was on my mind at the time of all three stone wall dreams.

In the third dream, I had to sneak away to find the dream master. When I did, I encountered a wall. It was made of stone, just like the wall in the dreams I had at Easter 2024. It was not the same wall, but it was a similar sort of barrier. In dreams one and two the barrier stopped me. In dream three, it did not.

The wise old man and the mysterious scroll were important elements in dream three. The scroll may represent “learning, knowledge; the unfolding of life and knowledge; the scroll of…destiny.” To Christians it is “The Book of Life,” also associated with St. James the Great, Isaiah and the prophets. The Greeks considered the scroll to be an attribute of Aesculapius. The Egyptians associated it with knowledge. (Cooper, J.C.)

To me the old man and the scroll represent ancient knowledge and a mystical perspective. My own awkward interpretation of the dream reminds me that there is still a lot to learn.

The synchronicity of talking to my parish priest and learning that a Jungian analyst I greatly admire was Christian helped resolve much of the confusion I had with the first stone wall dreams. The priest’s open and accepting attitude was a sharp contrast to that of others I was dealing with at the time.

The Dream Series Theme

I am in a different place, now, than I was in 2024, and had to be, I think, to begin to understand the series as a whole.

The common elements were the walls themselves and the mysteries beyond them—the volkknot and illegible letters in dreams one and two and the unread scroll in dream three. The various walls in the third dream may represent different or incorrect approaches to the mystery.

Most importantly, I think the wall in each of these dreams represents the “passage from outer profane space to inner and sacred space; also symbolic of the sacred enclosure, which is both a protection and a limitation.” (Cooper, J.C.)

I was concerned about going through the door in the walls in dreams one and two. In the last dream I recognized that my concerns came from an external source (an expectation or law). Once I was in the forest I forgot these concerns and easily found a way around the high wall.

There is a lot that can be said about the elements in dream three—especially the mysterious dream master and the journey through the forest. To me, however, the theme is about barriers—both real and imagined—and how they may be breached.

Other Dreams in this Series:

About Dream Series

Dream series are more common than a lot of people realize. I talk a bit about them in this video:

Read about my Murray Stein experience below:

Reference: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper