Dawn told me that she was born and raised in space. Literally a dock-worker. She spent the greater half of her life space-walking, attatching cables and hoses to ships that would pull into her station. She has never even been in visible distance of a terrestrial planet, let alone set foot on any world. Her life was spent adrift in the sea of emptiness.
It showed, too. Her skin was pale, her eyes were sunken in and her body was long and slender. An adaption to life inside a humming machine, she would gracefully slide through the ship like a seal, laughing as we all clumsily bumped into the walls. The unforgiving and confusing physics of space was her home and while we awkwardly fumble, clinging to anything solid, she would only smirk as she would let loose her cable and drift out into the great distances between the docking ships.
Our work took us to our distant ancestral homeworld. Earth.
The old movies and story-books made it seem like it was some kind of paradise. The last recorded transmissions from Terra were of a ghastly desert of mankind's own making. Humanity was right to leave Terra, and those who stayed behind would rot and die with the planet. What was once the seat of the most great and beautiful civilizations was now only home to despots and pirates.
When we landed, I felt that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach when gravity begins to take effect. Everything that the other passangers did not secure to the bulkheads fell to the deck.
Dawn was not secured either and she found herself unable to get up.
The gangway to the craft opened and the thick, salty smell of the ocean filled my nostrils. I looked outside and scowled in disappointment. At first the light was bright, but when it settled I was almost shocked. This was our glorious homeworld?
To the west was a great and expansive ocean, blanketed by clouds. To the east was an endless stretch of lifeless desert. There was no life in either direction. The only distinguishing feature was a lone rock jutting from the beach. I was very disappointed. It hardly compared to the scenic photos preserved in ancient books and magazines.
Then I hear panting. Dawn was crawling onto the beach from the gangway. She could not stand, never having known how or needed the strangth to do so in space. She made her way onto the beach and the foam washed all around her. She fell to her side.
When I rolled her over onto her back, she stared up into the sky. I saw tears roll down her face.
"It's beautiful," I heard her whisper.
To see the dawn in your dream, signifies rejuvenation, enlightenment, and vitality. You are emerging out from a new stage in life and have a new understanding or a new start in life.
Seeing the dawn in your dream means rejuvenation, enlightenment, and vitality. You may be emerging out of a new stage in life, possess a new understanding, or have a new start in life
All things that flow and grow were regarded in early religions as a symbol
of life: fire represented the vital craving for nourishment, water was chosen for its
fertilizing powers, plants because of their verdure in spring-time. Now, all—or
very nearly all—symbols of life are also symbolic of death. Media vita in morte
sumus, observed the mediaeval monk, to which modern science has replied La vie
c’est la mort (Claude Bernard). Thus, fire is the destroyer, while water in its
various forms signifies dissolution, as suggested in the Psalms. In legend and
folklore, the Origin of life—or the source of the renewal of the life forces—takes
the form of caves and caverns where wondrous torrents and springs well up (38).
In a manner of speaking, space is an intermediate zone between the
cosmos and chaos. Taken as the realm of all that is possible, it is chaotic; regarded
as the region in which all forms and structures have their existence, it is cosmic.
Space soon came to be associated with time, and this association proved one of
the ways of coming to grips with the recalcitrant nature of space. Another—and
the most important—was the concept of space as a three-part organization based
upon its three dimensions. Each dimension has two possible directions of movement, implying the possibility of two poles or two contexts. To the six points
achieved in this way, there was added a seventh: the centre; and space thus
became a logical structure. The symbolisms of level and of orientation were
finally brought to bear in order to complete the exegesis. The three dimensions of
space are illustrated by means of a three-dimensional cross, whose arms are oriented along these six spatial directions, made up of the four points of the
compass plus the two points of the zenith and the nadir. According to René
Guénon, this symbolism—because of its structural character—is identical with
that of the Sacred Palace (or the inner palace) of the Cabala, located at the centrepoint from which the six directions radiate. In the three-dimensional cross, the
zenith and the nadir correspond to the top and the bottom, the front and back to
East and West, the right and left to the South and North. The upright axis is the
polar axis, the North-South axis is the solstitial line, the East-West the equinoctial. The significance of the vertical or level-symbolism concerns the analogy
between the high and the good, the low and the inferior. The Hindu doctrine of the
three gunas—sattva (height, superiority), rajas (intermediate zone of the world
of appearances, or ambivalence) and tamas (inferiority, or darkness)—is in itself
sufficient to explain the meaning of the symbolism of level up and down the
vertical axis. It is, in consequence, the intermediate plane of the four-directional
cross (that which incorporates the cardinal points and which implies the square)
which represents the world of appearances. Taking next the East-West axis,
traditional orientation-symbolism associates the East—being the point of sunrise—with spiritual illumination; and the West—the point where the sun sets—
with death and darkness. Passing next to the North-South axis, there is no one
definite interpretation. In many oriental cultures, the zenith coincides with the
mystic ‘Hole’ through which transition and transcendence are effected, that is,
the path from the world of manifestation (spatial and temporal) to that of eternity. But it has also been identified with the centre of the three-dimensional cross,
taken as the heart of space. Reduced to two dimensions—those of the contrasting
horizontal and vertical arms—the cross comes to represent harmony between
extension (associated with width) and exaltation (with height). The horizontal
arm concerns the implications of a given gradation or moment in an individual’s
existence, and the vertical pertains to moral elevation (25). William of SaintThierry, describing the seven gradations of the soul, observes that it ascends these
steps in order to reach the celestial life (14). If we seek an interpretation which
will justify the four points of the horizontal plane’s being reduced to two (the left
and right), we can find a basis for it in Jung’s assertion that the rear part coincides
with the unconscious and the front with the manifest or consciousness; and since
the left also can be equated with the unconscious and the right with consciousness, the rear then becomes equivalent to the left and the front to the right (32).
Other equivalents are: left side with the past, the sinister, the repressed, involution, the abnormal and the illegitimate; the right side with the future, the felicitous, openness, evolution, the normal and the legitimate (42). In all this, there is an apparent contradiction with the corresponding number-symbolisms: Paneth
observes that, in most cultures, the uneven numbers are considered to be masculine and the even numbers to be feminine. Since the left side is the zone of origin
and the right that of the outcome, the corresponding number-symbolisms would
seem to be one (the uneven or masculine number) for the left side (that is, the
past) and two (the even or feminine number) for the right side (the subsequent or
outcome). The solution is to be found in the fact that the number one (unity)
never corresponds to the plane of the manifest world or to spatial reality: it is the
symbol of the centre, but not in the sense of occupying any situation in space
which might imply a sequel. Hence we must conclude that two is the number
corresponding to the left side and three is that related to the right. Guénon
explains the way in which the cosmic order conforms with all this in a lucid
exposition of the relevant Hindu doctrines to the effect that the right hand zone is
the solar region; the left-hand the lunar. ‘In the aspect of this symbolism which
refers to the temporal condition, the Sun and the right eye correspond to the
future, the Moon and the left eye to the past; the frontal eye corresponds to the
present which, from the point of view of the manifested, is but an imperceptible
moment, comparable to the geometrical point without dimensions in the spatial
order; that is why a single look from the third eye destroys all manifestation
(which is expressed symbolically by saying that it reduces everything to ashes),
and that is also why it is not represented by any bodily organ; but when one rises
above this contingent point of view, the present is seen to contain all reality (just
as the point carries within itself all the possibilities of space), and when succession is transmuted into simultaneity, all things abide in the “eternal present”, so
that the apparent destruction is truly a “transformation” ‘ (26). Now, the seven
aspects that define space have been regarded as the origin of all septenary groups,
and in particular of the seven planets, the seven colours and the seven kinds of
landscape (50). Hence Luc Benoist can assert that the Christian Church, by
building on earth a mighty, three-dimensional cross of stone, has created for the
entire world the co-ordinate lines of a supernatural geometry. Benoist then quotes
Clement of Alexandria as saying that the six directions of space symbolize—or
are equivalent to—the simultaneous and eternal presence of the six days of the
Creation, and that the seventh day (of rest) signifies the return to the centre and
the beginning (6). Once the cosmic sense of spatial symbolism has been demonstrated, it is simple to deduce its psychological applications. And once the static
laws have been determined, it is easy to grasp the dynamic-implications, always
bearing in mind the symbolism of orientation. Here, we must point out that the
swastika—a solar and polar symbol—implies a movement from right to left, like the apparent movement of the sun; and that Clotho—one of the Parcae—spins
her ‘wheel of destiny’ in the same direction, that is, the opposite way to existence, so destroying it. Right-handedness is characteristic of all symbols of natural
life (28); hence, in the Egyptian system of hieroglyphs, to enter is to go towards
the right and to go out is to go towards the left (19); orienting these hieroglyphs,
we have the right corresponding with the rise and the left with the setting of the
sun. Similarly, the right side takes on an extra implication of birth and life, while
the left side acquires an association with death (17). Another consequence, apparent in allegories and emblems, is that the right side corresponds to the higher
virtues—if one may put it that way—such as compassion, and the left side to
justice. All of the above conclusions are logical deductions drawn from the study
of oriental tradition, supported by the findings of experimental psychology. But
they are conclusions which have also been verified by anthropologists and sociologists in their studies of the habits of diverse peoples. Ania Teillard, for example, has collated a mass of facts; she quotes J. J. Bachofen as asserting (in his
Mutterrecht und Urreligion und Grabersymbolik der Alten) that, in the important
and very common equation ‘right hand=masculinity’, the left hand harbours
magic powers and the right hand the force of reason, and also that in matriarchal
societies one always finds the idea of superiority attributed to the left side, and
conversely. To turn to the left is to look back upon the past, the unconscious,
implying introversion; to turn to the right is to look upon the outside world,
implying action and extraversion. At the same time, ethnologists are agreed that
during the first stage of any period of sun-worship, the right side becomes preeminent, whereas in lunar cults it is the left side which prevails (56). In paintings,
reliefs and other artistic creations of man, the left side is characterized by a more
vivid projection of the self (that is, by identification) and the right side is more
extravert.
Seeing or dreaming that you are in space, represents exploration. You are an independent thinker.
To see the beach in your dream, symbolizes the meeting between your two states of mind. The sand is symbolic of the rational and mental processes while the water signifies the irrational, unsteady, and emotional aspects of yourself. It is a place of transition between the physical/material and the spiritual.
To dream that you are on the beach and looking out toward the ocean, indicates unknown and major changes that are occurring in your life. Consider the state of the ocean, whether it is calm, pleasant, forbidding, etc.
To dream that you are looking toward the beach, suggests that you are returning to what is familiar to you. Alternatively, you may be adapting or accepting to the changes and circumstances in your life.
To dream that you are relaxing on a beach, signifies that the coming weeks will be calm and tranquil for you. Your stress will be alleviated and you will find peace of mind.
To dream that you are working on the beach, signifies a business project that will consume most of your time.
Dreaming of the beach symbolizes the meeting between your two states of mind. The sand is symbolic of the rational and mental processes while the water means the irrational, unsteady, and emotional aspects of yourself. It is a place of transition between the physical/material and the spiritual. Dreaming that you are on the beach and looking out toward the ocean indicates unknown and major changes that are occurring in your life. Consider the state of the ocean, whether it is calm, pleasant, forbidding, etc. Dreaming that you are looking toward the beach, suggests that you are returning to what is familiar to you. Alternatively, you may be adapting or accepting to the changes and circumstances in your life. Dreaming that you are relaxing on a beach means that the coming weeks will be calm and tranquil for you. Your stress will be alleviated and you will find peace of mind. Dreaming that you are working on the beach means a business project that will consume most of your time.
If you dream about an empty beach, you could be sensing an opportunity.
If you are sunbathing or watching other people sunbathe, you could be feeling happy with yourself and confident about your future.
To see a planet in your dream, signifies creativity, exploration, and new adventures. You are trying to align yourself with untapped energies that you never knew you had. Alternatively, to dream of planets, suggests that you are trying to escape from your own waking reality.
Look up the specific planet for additional significance.
To dream of a planet, foretells an uncomfortable journey and depressing work.
Seeing a planet in your dream means creativity, exploration, and new adventures.
To see your home in your dream, signifies security, basic needs, and values. You may be feeling at "home" or settled at your new job or environment. Alternatively, the dream represents your basic needs and priorities.
In particular, to see your childhood home, your hometown, or a home that you previously lived in, indicates your own desires for building a family and your family ideologies. It also reflects aspects of yourself that were prominent or developed during the time you lived in that home. You may experience some unfinished feelings that are being triggered by some waking situation. Alternatively, the dream may represent your outdated thinking.
To dream that you cannot find your way home, indicates that you have lost faith and belief in yourself. It may also signify a major transition in your life.
To dream of visiting your old home, you will have good news to rejoice over.
To see your old home in a dilapidated state, warns you of the sickness or death of a relative. For a young woman this is a dream of sorrow. She will lose a dear friend.
To go home and find everything cheery and comfortable, denotes harmony in the present home life and satisfactory results in business.
To dream of home-life in early boyhood indicates good health and prosperity. Good
sign of progress.
Seeing your home in your dream means security, basic needs, and values. You may feel at home at your new job or you finally feel settled and comfortable in a new environment. In particular, to see your childhood home or a home that you no longer live in, suggests your own desires for building a family. It also reflects aspects of yourself that were prominent or developed during the time you lived in that home. You may experience some feelings or unfinished expression of emotions that are now being triggered by a waking situation. Dreaming that you cannot find your way home indicates that you have lost faith and belief in yourself. It may also signify a major transition in your life.
It has a profound and clear-cut symbolism. Berthelot observes that
the Biblical prophets, in order to counter the agrarian religions based on fertility
rites (related, according to Eliade, to orgies), never ceased to describe theirs as the
purest religion of the Israelites ‘when they were in the wilderness’. This confirms
the specific symbolism of the desert as the most propitious place for divine
revelation, for which reason it has been said that ‘monotheism is the religion of
the desert’ (7). This is because the desert, in so far as it is in a way a negative
landscape, is the ‘realm of abstraction’ located outside the sphere of existence
(37), susceptible only to things transcendent. Furthermore, the desert is the
domain of the sun, not as the creator of energy upon earth but as pure, celestial
radiance, blinding in its manifestation. Again: if water is associated with the ideas
of birth and physical fertility, it is also opposed to the concept of the everlasting
spirit; and, indeed, moisture has always been regarded as a symbol of moral
corruption. On the other hand, burning drought is the climate par excellence of
pure, ascetic spirituality—of the consuming of the body for the salvation of the
soul. Tradition provides further corroboration of this symbolism: for the Hebrews, captivity in Egypt was a life held in opprobium, and to go out into the
desert was ‘to go out from Egypt’ (48). Finally, let us point to the emblematic relationship of the desert with the lion, which is a sun-symbol, verifying what we
have said about the solar symbolism of the desert.
To dream that you are walking through a desert, signifies loss and misfortune. You may be suffering from an attack on your reputation. Deserts are also symbolic of barrenness, loneliness and feelings of isolation and hopelessness. The desert landscape may also be a metaphor for feeling deserted and left behind.
To dream of wandering through a gloomy and barren desert, denotes famine and uprisal of races and great loss of life and property.
For a young woman to find herself alone in a desert, her health and reputation is being jeopardized by her indiscretion. She should be more cautious.
Travelling across a desert shows the inevitability of a long and tedious journey.
Accompaniment of sunshine indicates successful journey.
Dreaming that you are walking through a desert means loss and misfortune. You may be suffering from an attack on your reputation. Deserts are also symbolic of barrenness, loneliness and feelings of isolation and hopelessness.
At times a desert in a dream symbolises the unconscious and represents the dreamer's sense of separation from it. Deserts are generally barren with little vegetation or animal life. The desert in your dreams could be bringing up issues of stagnation and periods of little growth in your life. Also, the desert could represent your loneliness and feelings of isolation. However, if you live close to the desert or love the desert, this may be a positive symbol. For some the desert may be a place where they can commune with nature and feel a sense of peace.
According to Piobb, the Graeco-Roman conception of the ocean
encompassing the earth was a graphic representation of the current of energy
induced by the terrestrial globe (48). Setting aside its grandeur, the two most
essential aspects of the ocean are its ceaseless movement and the formlessness of
its waters. It is a symbol, therefore, of dynamic forces and of transitional states
between the stable (or solids) and the formless (air or gas). The ocean as a whole,
as opposed to the concept of the drop of water, is a symbol of universal life as
opposed to the particular (38). It is regarded traditionally as the source of the
generation of all life (57), and science has confirmed that life did in fact begin in the
sea (3). Zimmer observes that the ocean is ‘immense illogic’—a vast expanse
dreaming its own dreams and asleep in its own reality, yet containing within itself
the seeds of its antitheses. The island is the opponent of the ocean and symbolic
of the metaphysical point of irradiating force (60). In keeping with the general
symbolism of water, both fresh and salt, the ocean stands for the sum of all the
possibilities of one plane of existence. Having regard to its characteristics, one
may deduce whether these potentialities are positive (or germinant) or negative
(destructive) (26). The ocean, then, denotes an ambivalent situation. As the begetter of monsters, it is the abysmal abode par excellence, the chaotic source
which still brings forth base entities ill-fitted to life in its aerial and superior
forms. Consequently, aquatic monsters represent a cosmic or psychological situation at a lower level than land-monsters; this is why sirens and tritons denote a
sub-animal order. The power of salt water to destroy the higher forms of land-life
means that it is also a symbol of sterility, so confirming the ambivalent nature of the ocean—its contradictory dynamism (32). The ocean is also to be found as a
symbol of woman or the mother (in both her benevolent and her terrible aspects)
(56). As Frobenius comments in Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes: ‘If the blood-red
sunrise is interpreted as the “birth” of an astral body, then two questions arise:
Who is the father? And how did the mother come to conceive? And since she, like
the fish, is a sea-symbol, and since our premiss is that the sun plunges into the sea
and yet is born in it, the answer must be that the sea previously swallowed up the
old sun and the appearance of a “new sun” confirms that she has been fecundated.
The symbolism here coincides with that of Isis whose twin lunar horns embrace
the sun.’ This appearance of the sun and its disappearance back into the deeps of
the ocean confirm that the ‘Lower Waters’ signify the abyss out of which forms
arise to unfold their potentialities within existence. Thus, the ocean is equated
also with the collective unconscious, out of which arises the sun of the spirit (32).
The stormy sea, as a poetic image or a dream, is a sign of an analogous state in the
lower depths of the affective unconscious. A translucent calm, on the other hand,
denotes a state of contemplative serenity.
To see an ocean in your dream, represents the state of your emotions and feelings. It is indicative of spiritual refreshment, tranquility and renewal. Alternatively, the dream means that you are feeling empowered and unhindered. You have a positive outlook in life and are not limited by anything. If you are sailing across the ocean, then it signifies new found freedom and independence. You are showing great courage. If the ocean is rough, then the dream represents some emotional turmoil. You are doing your best to handle life's ups and downs.
The state of life will be as the ocean is perceived to be in dream, viz., calm and
peaceful life when the ocean is calm and troublesome life when the ocean is stormy, etc.
To dream of the ocean when it is calm is propitious.
The sailor will have a pleasant and profitable voyage.
The business man will enjoy a season of remuneration,
and the young man will revel in his sweetheart's charms.
To be far out on the ocean, and hear the waves lash the ship, forebodes disaster in business life, and quarrels and stormy periods in the household.
To be on shore and see the waves of the ocean foaming against each other, foretells your narrow escape from injury and the designs of enemies.
To dream of seeing the ocean so shallow as to allow wading, or a view of the bottom, signifies prosperity and pleasure with a commingling of sorrow and hardships.
To sail on the ocean when it is calm, is always propitious.
Seeing an ocean in your dream, represents the state of your emotions and feelings. It is indicative of some spiritual refreshment, tranquility and renewal.
It traditionally represents our great unconscious, memories, emotions, and individual soul and collective experiences. Look at all of the details in this dream. Is the water clear or murky? Is it calm or turbulent? Are you catching fish, or are you stranded and afraid? Look, listen, and try to comprehend the messages in this dream. No one is in a better position to give meaning to your dreams than you can. Concentrate and learn for yourself.