While continuing my experiments with Dream incubation, I’ve discovered that I receive symbolic images primarily in the Hypnopompic stage. The following unprompted symbolism I don’t understand yet.
In a field of black a sword stood, perhaps laid against an unseen object. The base of the sword was cradled in blue flowers divorced from their stems. Below is a rough painting of the imagery:
In a poor attempt at interpretation, I got the impression that the blackness was water, perhaps a form of Chaos. In the western tradition we usually think of a single sword of significance, but I don’t think that applied here. The most interesting part of this that took me down a rabbit hole was my effort to understand what the blue flowers might represent. It seems traditionally they represent “the metaphysical striving for the infinite and unreachable”:
They taught me longing - Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower. Alister E. McGrath
This word, Sehnsucht, until now I only knew of it culturally from the Rammstein song and album but apparently it’s also a psychological term. A “longing, specifically longing for some unknown joy”. This reminds me of Thoreau’s comment in Walden:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. Henry David Thoreau
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