Dream Time Articles Index
CLASSIFYING
UNIVERSAL DREAM THEMES--EMBRACE OR LOVE, #1.5,
SUBCATEGORY--MARRIAGE/WEDDING DREAMS
BY
RITA DWYER
Sixteenth International Conference of the Association for the
Study of Dreams
University
of California, Santa Cruz, CA, July 6-11, 1999
When Patricia Garfield first proposed the idea of this symposium,
I volunteered to approach the project from the subject I have
been researching --marriage and wedding dreams. I am still collecting
dreams but reviewed the ones I already have, attempting to classify them within the universal dream
categories. Because I learned early on to theme my dreams to bring
them into focus, I found the classifications
helpful from a sorting-out viewpoint, although not all dreams
could be squeezed into a single universal dream category and seemed to
fit into more than one in an overlapping fashion.
Sometimes I felt a need for a entirely
new category or
subcategory, such as one which would include dreams of the Divine, or
spirit and spiritual
guidance, certainly a universal theme across time and cultures.
Dr. Garfield suggested that some of my difficulties with overlapping
categories might be eliminated if I considered the use of motifs,
which did help. My presentation today is a preliminary overview and is
not concerned with the meaning of these dreams, nor statistical
analyses of my sampling. It is simply a discussion of
my beginner=s
attempt at working within the universal
dream classification system outlined in Dream Time (1).
(Background--Why this topic? My interest was piqued some
years ago when a man shared a dream in our Metro DC Dream Group of his
reluctance to kiss a blemished bride whom he was marrying. In taking
the dream as my own as we do in our groups, I suddenly found myself
overwhelmed with emotion. His dream became mine,
and as I worked at embracing the scarred parts of myself, I was
led to a new level of understanding. My experience showcased that
marriage/wedding dreams were very powerful metaphors for integration
and wholeness, as well as actual unions of male and female, or the
masculine and feminine sides of self. Carl Jung in his book Man and
His Symbols said, AMan=s
knowledge (Logos) then encounters woman=s
relatedness (Eros) and their union is represented as that symbolic
ritual of a sacred marriage which has been at the heart of initiation
since its origins in the mystery-religions of antiquity@.
(2)
My interest was renewed in 1997, when two of my three children married within a month of each other,
leading to all
sorts of marriage/wedding dreams being shared in our
family. I decided I would like to do an in-depth study of
marriage/wedding dreams and began to collect them.
I am grateful to those who sent me their dreams and to those
who might still be interested
in sharing theirs with me.
Since some of the dreams in my collection came from e-mail and anonymous
sources, I cannot do a truly scientific study not having full
information about my subjects, but
I can tell you that the dreams
come from both men and
women, young and old, who want to marry or who don=t, who are happily or unhappily married, and happily or unhappily
single. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a marriage dream refers
to just that waking life occurrence, but then again, many times
not......remember, we are focusing today on dream classification not
dream interpretation.
#1.5 EMBRACE OR LOVE
Looking over the universal dream classification system, it seemed
obvious that my collection of dreams would fit into #1.5(Embrace or
love, etc.), as a subcategory,
and this is indeed true for many of them.
However, I also discovered that some marriage/wedding dreams
touched upon a range of the universal dream categories.
#10.0 ( Disasters, natural or manmade) was
surprising absent in the
dream collection , although waking life marriages might turn into
these. Some of the dreams appeared to have overlapping themes, while
in some, the dominant theme was something other than embrace or
love. I have
excerpted some of these dreams as examples:
A perfect #1.5(Embrace or love) dream, in which the
dreamer is the bride:
I had a dream about my
wedding. I look down at my ring, the diamond is very small, I am
thinking do I want to marry this person, and I do.
Throughout my dream I keep seeing 3...6 heart cards. (3)
Happy, happy bride, but then again, we find the reluctant bride, who
also seems a bit lost (#11):
I am in a king-size bed with a man...we are at opposite edges of it, as
far as we can get from each other and still both be in the same
bed...he is all the way to my left, I am all the way to his right. He
says to me, ACan
you tell me again why it is that we are getting married?@ and I say to him AI can=t
think of any good reason. (4)
Note: Telepathy/Precognition: Within the system of classification, I personally would like to see a
way of marking those which reflect telepathy or precognition which are
universal cross- cultural experiences. ( I applaud Tony Shafton=s
excellent article, AAfrican-Americans
and Predictive Dreams@
in the most recent issue of Dream
Time.)(5). Perhaps
there could be a way of cross-referencing so as not to lose dreams of
this nature within the rest of the system. There certainly were a
number of seemingly precognitive dreams in which the dreamer met
his/her prospective spouse in a dream. This one from the popular press
is a classic:
Reported in 1884 by Pearl
Tyler, daughter of John Tyler, 10th President of the USA:
AI
had the most amazing dream,@
she told her mother and sister-in-law.
AI
know I saw the man I will someday marry. He was sitting on the porch
of a cottage on the side of a hill. I walked up to him, and he rose
and came to meet me. He looked like Lord Byron with his dark curly
hair and flashing eyes.@(6)
Pearl had the same dream for two nights running. Later, when
Pearl, her mother,
and sister-in-law attended a session at state capitol, Pearl saw the
man of her dreams, Mr. Ellis. Her
mother arranged a meeting and the couple fell in love and were
married. When Pearl went to her husbands home for the first time, she
discovered it to be a cottage on the side of a hill just as she saw it
in her dreams.
And a #1.5 in which the bride liked it so much she is going for the
second time around:
...I have
decided that X and I will get married again. I am in the midst of
helping Mother with the invitations...I think we=ll
do this wedding a few (5 or 6) weeks from now and realize I=d better register. I make a mental note to do so and write it down on my
calendar. But just then...it occurs to me that you probably can=t
marry someone you=re
already married to, and for 27 years. My mom is saying, AWell,
you can say you=re
renewing your vows.@... (7)
A #1.5 within a #1.5:
I=m
person of honor at X=s
wedding: I=m
attending some church ceremony and as things come together more, I
realize it=s
X=s
wedding. She=s
being given away by Y, who also looks great. I=m
having mixed feelings a bit, but I=m
okay. I look for Y, but
don=t
see him. I do find Z, who=s very overweight and we hug. She seems especially affectionate when we
hug, so much so that I almost get uncomfortable... (8)
A #1.5 (with an overlap of #7.5,(Dressing harmoniously), in
which the dreamer is the bride but not the only one:
I was in my house-mate=s
bedroom with her and my other house-mate (female) A close friend of
ours stormed in the room and said he had to marry us all. W e laughed
and my house-mate said she could not as she was to marry her
boyfriend. My other house-mate and I prepared to get wed. She was in
red and I was in cream. I do not remember where this was located. I
think it was in the vicar=s
room of my church at home. At the last minute before were close to be
married to our friend, we changed our minds. (9)
Perhaps the classification needs to be changed, too?
A different twist in which
the dreamer is a bridesmaid, with #5.5 (Giving an outstanding
performance) and
#7.5 (Dressing harmoniously) overlapping
#1.5:
In my dream my sister was getting married but not to her fiancee. I was
confused because I didn=t know how she knew this man and why she was getting married to h im. At
first it was going to be a secret wedding and I was bridesmaid,
wearing a similar dress to hers...Then my sister started acting out
different scenes (can=t
recall what!). But I sat there wondering what was going on. Different
people in the room were getting involved, near the end, this man my
sister was marrying got this sparkly shoe and tried it on different
people=s feet, and when my sister tried it on it fit. She was now sitting
beside me. Everyone realized they were getting married and thought it
was great. Everyone thought it was a very original way to get
married..(10)
Some of my marriage/wedding dreams included fairy tale symbolism. This
Cinderella found her fella and her shoe!)
Another
Ahappily
ever after@
#1.5 dream in which the groom
initially struggles with
#5.0 (Poor performance) and #7.0 (Dressing inappropriately):
I=m
sitting in the balcony of a church on a pew.
I=m
looking around, when suddenly I start to hear the organ playing the
Wedding March. I looked around to see who was getting married, when it
hit me!!@Oh
shit! I=m
getting married!@
I realized I had nothing together, no clothes, no ring, nothing.
I jumped up and ran down the stairs to the back of the church,
where I came upon my father, my brother X, and my mom sitting at a
card table. I ran up to them frantically and said. AI=m
getting married. You=ve
got to help me. I need a ring.@
So I stepped up to my Dad and he took off his college class ring and
gave it to me. I put it alongside my finger but realized it was far
too big for my new wife. I stepped up to my brother X and he took off
his ring and gave it to me but it looked so mannish and the stone was
all wrong. I stepped up to my mother and she took off her ring and
gave it to me. I slipped it onto my finger and thought it was just
perfect for my new wife. They all beamed at me with good wishes, and I
felt relived now that I had a ring, I could get married. The end.(11)
(Yes, Goldilocks, too big, too small, just right!)
#7.0(Inappropriately dressed) features strongly in two same-night dreams
of a soon-to-be bride:
In my first dream, I was at the church that I went to as a child. I did
not know anyone there. My future husband did not show up! The next
thing happened was a bunch of men with canes and wearing top hats came
dancing down the aisle.
And...
I dreamed that I showed up for my wedding wearing a
multi-colored wedding gown that was torn in many places and my
mom would not let me change into the dress that I had planned on
wearing. (12)
Then there were dreams in which the dreamer is not the bride or
attendant and the wedding is only peripheral to the main action in the
dream:
Get me to the church on time...#3.0 (Vehicle trouble), #8.0 (Missing
transport), #11.0 (Being lost or trapped),and finally #11.5,
(Discovering new spaces/places):
I have to get back to CA from my childhood home area in New York. I have
a day and a half to get to a train station in NYC. I have a wedding to
attend on the way, but the train leaves at 5 AM so I have to get up at
4 or 3 AM the night after the wedding to drive to the city...but I am
shocked to see a stop and go traffic jam in the direction I want to
go. In order to get into
the line to go left I have to turn right and go to the end of the line
going left. I am worried and I think I should skip the wedding to get
to the AM train on time.
Someone tells me there are changes on the road, and I should have taken
another route. Then the light changes. Then the cars ahead of me go
and by the time I reach the light, intending to get away from the jam,
I see the road is empty. I
go up it out of curiosity to see the changes that have been made. It
is narrow, curved, newly paved looking and it goes off mysteriously
into a clearing. I drive on worried I will reach the jam. I come to a
building, get out of my car and enter. I walk through. (See lots of
stairways and rooms) At the other side of the last bedroom, someone
calls to me and waves me over. We look out a door and see an excellent
road. We jump down onto
it and start going very fast down and up when suddenly we stop at an
edge. A body of water is beyond. To the right and above is a train
track. I consider going up to it, but see that it ends just a little
farther along.
I jump in the water and swim. First it is shallow with a sandy
bottom.,then it is deep. First I see simple stream type fish, then in
the deep water, salt water type tropical fish. We come to another
building with a dock-like entrance. I ask a woman there if I can take
some fish to California. She says, AYou
can but they will be dead@. I give up on that. Then I find out I can rent or buy a dune buggy
there to go the rest of the way to the train station to head back to
California. I think it is expensive, $5000. End
(13)
Patricia suggested that instead of classifying dreams such as these in
another or other overlapping categories, they remain in the
sub-category of marriage/wedding, but that we look for the pattern of
motifs that exist in that set of dreams. She suggested that the above
dream might have a motif
of obstacles en route to the wedding, and others mentioned
earlier might be further delineated by motifs such as descriptions of wedding
attire, symbols of love and marriage, emotion expressed, etc. (14)
This helped me a great deal, but there are still dreams which I had
difficulty placing within the system because of strong overlapping
themes. One of
these is 12.0 Death.
Wedding/marriage as death for the single self: Not
all of these dreams which include death relate to real death. In
reading over my collection of dreams, there were other instances in
which death was symbolic, as in this dream of a young woman
considering marriage:
I am shopping with my mother. We are visiting shops with women=s
clothes and shoes...Suddenly we are underground. There is also a big
shopping centre. And...a huge door opened for a while. My mother shut
it immediately. I only had the time to notice that a quite different
world exists behind this door. The entrance to that world was
forbidden, but I decided to get there and I did.
There was a sort of huge, long, never-ending church hall, like a tunnel.
On both of its sides there were catafalques put in lines. Dead young
women were laying on them. All dressed like brides in wedding outfits,
white flowers and some green in their hair etc. Every one holds a big long candle in her hands which were lightening up
the holy space. They were all waiting for something. Something was
going to happen to them. They were dead but it was a beautiful view.
They were so innocent, so pure, dumped in shining darkness and silence
of eternity but not death. I felt there very well...
Close to the entrance I noticed a separate catafalque. The young woman
laying on it had her head turned into my side. She had a gently
transparent curtain on her face. Somehow I knew that she had open
eyes. I was afraid to look into her eyes by my curiosity was stronger
than the fear. I saw her eyes for a moment. They were blue, big and
dead--as if suddenly stopped blind.
That was a very strange view. I was afraid to look into these
eyes. But I wanted to do it once again, to Aread@from
them...that was just looking into the eyes of death..(15)
#12.5 Messages from the
dead also featured
in some of my sampling. In
correspondence with Cynthia Pearson, she told me she=d
noticed a connection between death issues and wedding dreams.
She mentions some of these
in her book, Parting Company: The Caregiver=s
Journey: Understanding the Loss of a Loved
One.(16) actual
physical death, and/or
the death of a loved one and the grief process which follows.
Dr. Garfield=s
book, Dream Messenger also contains examples of these, one of
which involves a young woman whose father came to her in a dream at
the time of his unexpected death, telling her he was Agoing to marry a woman named Grace.
He had been very devoted to the Virgin Mary and his daughter
felt he was going to join Her. (17)
Connection with spirit and spirit guidance:
Because I have long been interested in dreams and spirituality, I have
become aware of wedding imagery found in dream unions which contain
contact or connections with spirit or spiritual beings. I would like
to see a separate classification for Dreams of the Divine/Spirit
with a sub-category of Connection with spirit and spirit guidance:
Some examples:
A spiritual connection: This was a long and complex dream. The best I=ve
had for ages. It started with me with loads of women on a holiday. We
were staying in a hotel by the sea...When we got there I was told that
I had to have sex with this man. Every woman was allocated one. Mine
was ugly, a soccer thug, everything I find unattractive, but I knew
that I had to do it. The moment that I accepted this was my duty, my
fate, I was told that I was to play the part of a 16th century famous
woman (a saint or sorceress or something, in a remake of a film.
It was taking place at this church just up this hill.. I wore a
long flowing white dress, (a shroud?). I danced my way to this church
feeling very special and spiritual
The more I danced and the closer I got to the church the closer
I felt to God and to my self. I felt very special, spiritual, full of
energy and love. I was aware of this other person being inside me I
woke up feeling better than I have for ages .(19)
And another, a dream from a woman who is Catholic but was dating a
Wiccan and feeling guilty about it......
I dreamed that I walked in a beautiful garden full of pleasant paths
through flower-beds thick with both wild and domestic flowers. In the
midst of these flowers, I saw a woman who looked like the Virgin Mary,
amid the roses, with the most radiant happiness in her face. ..Looking
away for a moment I saw another woman in the garden, hastening towards
us. She had wild chestnut hair blowing unrestrained in the wind, and
wore scarlet chiffon. I stiffened, knowing this to be my boyfriend=s
goddess.
To my surprise she fell down at Mary=s
feet and kissed them, and both she and Mary giggled like children
playing a game. Then to my utter shock Our Lady took the Pagan goddess
by the hand and raised her to her feet, saying, ACome,
Sister Creature--let=s
play in the garden.
Then she looked at me and said, AWhy
are you so shocked? Sister
Nature only wants to bring your beloved to her Father, as I want to
bring that priest to my Son. Go ahead and marry him!@
And then I woke.
(I did marry him, twelve happy years ago, and we are more in love all
the time. Our Lady gives good advice). (20)
(So it=s
not just in fairytales that folks live happily every after!)
CONCLUSION
This set of marriage/wedding dreams, dreams which had a common subject,
did not always seem to
have the predominant theme of
#1.5, embrace or love,
etc., demonstrating
yet again that symbols, even those which are considered archetypal,
have different meanings for different dreamers.
In classifying dreams, one arrives at a kind of focus, but
there should also be a
caution against losing the dream=s
rich overall picture and its shadings in trying to reduce it to
a single color or class. It is here that motifs help to retain the Alife@ of the dream, not allowing it to fall into a left-brained file cabinet.
There was excellent dialogue between anthropologist Dr. Curtiss
Hoffmann and Dr. Garfield in the most recent edition of Dream Time.(21)
It is clear that the Universal Dream classification system is still in
a preliminary stage and will no doubt create questions and areas of
uncertainty which must be worked through. It is difficult to fully
explore outer and inner space using a telescope with a single
lens, but that sometimes that=s
how we have to start when the system in which we live and move and
dream is so vast!
_________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:
1. Garfield, Patricia. AThe
Universal Dreams@,
Dream Time, Vol 16, #1 &2, Winter/Spring 1999.
2. Jung, C. G..
Man and His Symbols, Doubleday, NY, 1964.
3. LtMsDotCom .
4. SEW/W=head.
5. Shafton, Anthony. AAfrican-Americans and Predictive Dreams@, Dream Time, V16,
#3,
Summer 1999.
6. Gaddis, Vincent H..@Romantic
Dreams--Do They Ever Come True?@,
Family Weekly, March
1, 1979.
7. CPT
8. CW
9. JP104
10. JP254
11. RW1
12. L=chad
13. W=head
14. E-mail message, DreamSign7 to DreamRita, 6/2/99.
15. ESH
16. Pearson, Cynthia. Parting
Company: The Caregiver=s
Journey: Understanding the Loss
of a Loved One (pending)
17. Garfield. Patricia. The
Dream Messenger.
18. JP199
19. DJN
20. Hoffmann, Curtiss. AUniversal Dreams, A Response to Patricia Garfield@
and Garfield, Patricia, AUniversal Dreams, A Response to Curtiss Hoffman=s
Response@, Dream Time,
V16, #3, Summer 1999.
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