Dreamcatcher: Sufi-monsters

Sufi-monsters

There were a lot of "Where the Wild Things are" styley monsters who were out to destroy the world and started by dismantling the Canada Line subway stations.. somehow after that was all done, having lost my siblings in the process, the monsters came down with a curse that caused them all to menstruate profusely. there were a lot of uvulas in the dream. just like, chillin out. Oh, also, they all commenced to admit to practicing Sufism, but only recreationally.

The Dictionary of Symbols

They are symbolic of the cosmic forces at a stage one step
removed from chaos—from the ‘non-formal potentialities’. On the psychological
plane, they allude to the base powers which constitute the deepest strata of
spiritual geology, seething as in a volcano until they erupt in the shape of some
monstrous apparition or activity. Diel suggests that they symbolize an unbalanced psychic function: the affective whipping up of desire, paroxysms of the
indulged imagination, or improper intentions (15). They are, then, par excellence,
the antithesis—or the adversary—of the ‘hero’ and of ‘weapons’. For weapons
are the positive powers granted to man by the deity, and this is the explanation of
the mysterious, miraculous or magical context of weapons wielded by heroes in
myth and legend. Weapons, then, are the symbolic antithesis to monsters. Diel
has pointed out that, paradoxically, the chimerical enemy—perversion, the fascination of madness or of evil per se—is the fundamental adversary in the life of
Man. On the social plane, the motif of the monster ravaging a country is symbolic
of the ill-fated reign of a wicked, tyrannical or impotent monarch (15). The fight
against a monster signifies the struggle to free consciousness from the grip of the
unconscious. The hero’s deliverance corresponds to the sunrise, the triumph of
light over darkness, of consciousness or the spirit over the affective strata of the
unconscious (31). In a less negative sense, the monster may be equated with the
libido (56). Monsters are closely connected in symbolism with fabulous beings,
which afford a wider range of meanings embracing some that are wholly favourable
and positive such as Pegasus, the phoenix, etc. Some of the principal monsters
known to tradition and perpetuated by art are the following: the sphinx, the
griffin, the siren-fish, the siren-bird, the lamia, the bird with the head of a quadruped, the bird-serpent, the winged bull, the dragon, the giant fish, the giant seaserpent, the chimaera, the Gorgon, the minotaur, the triton, the hydra, the salamander, the merman, the harpy, the hippogryph, the sea-demon and the Fury
(36). The head of a monster, dragon or sea animal, with one or more human heads
in its mouth, is a mediaeval symbol of hell. Psychologically it represents the
danger of being devoured by the destructive forces of some species, a danger
which may affect only the more noble parts of the human being, such as his moral
sense or his reason. For Walter Abell, in The Collective Dream in Art (Cambridge,
1957), monsters also symbolize the latent and dangerous forces, in a greater or lesser state of freedom, of the human unconscious in its aggressive and ugly
aspect. He points out that monsters are the principal characters in the 7thcentury Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. He establishes an interesting comparison
and asserts that, in later prehistory (the Neolithic Age, the Age of Metals), the
monsters dominated the gods; between Antiquity and the Romanesque period,
the gods succeeded in counterbalancing the monsters, who, nevertheless, still
played an important rôle (as revealed, for example, in miniatures and capitals of
the time); and in the Gothic period, the angelic spirits triumphed over the monsters. In more than one aspect, contemporary art, especially since Blake and
Goya, might be taken as pointing to a certain ‘resurrection of the monsters’ and of
the monstrous, as seen particularly in the surrealist movement.