Lesson 3: Archetypes in Dreams
Archetypal Characters in Dreams
Exalted human beings that appear in dreams represent energies that are associated with the more evolved parts of our psyches.
King: The King in a dream may be an ancient royal figure or a modern CEO. He is a leader who establishes the prevailing mores and attitudes of the dreamer. So in a dream, he is the figure that carries the established beliefs within an individual or a culture. A sick king in a dream may be conveying the message that old personal attitudes or cultural or group beliefs are outworn and not fitting to the dreamer.
Fool: Sometimes a dream may present a fool figure to indicate ways we are being foolish. Or, a Trickster figure may appear in a dream to trip us up and we consequently end playing the fool. The Trickster often appears if we are too caught in ego, too puffed up, too full of ourselves. It will send us falling on our faces. Jung called this puffed up condition “ego inflation” and the Trickster figure will appear to pull us out of inflation for our own psychic safety. It sends us sprawling to the earth and forces us to become more grounded. There is also the figure of the Wise Fool and the Wise Fool in a dream may call you away from ways of behaving, thinking, and feeling that are culturally acceptable but which are harmful to you as an individual.
Sacred Harlot: The whore may appear in our dreams to tell us that we are prostituting ourselves in some way, violating our souls for gain. She may also appear in the dream of a woman whose attitude toward her own sexuality is too rigid, too pristine, or too cut off. In this context, the dream is acting as a compensatory function. Dreams are often compensatory, balancing in one direction a conscious attitude that has gone too far in the opposite direction. There is also a figure called the Divine Harlot. She is a figure, like Venus in myth, who is an aspect of the feminine that knows what she wants and settles for nothing less. She is not a character who will marry for security or for money – she marries only what she loves. In our dreams, she represents feminine value and deep integrity to personal values, not cultural or group values, but to what she truly believes and values.
Warrior: The warrior is the masculine force that goes out into the world and conquers. It is the part of us that gets us through graduate school or through any kind of training program that challenges us. If we are a lover of music, it carries us through tedious piano practice. In any field of endeavor, mastery demands practice, and the warrior carries us through what we must do to get where we want to go.
Sage, Priest, Priestess, …: A character often appears in dreams that is wise or is a vessel for spiritual knowledge and connection to the sacred. A goddess figure like the Black Madonna may appear in our dreams to chastise us. She is the loving, nurturing, dark Mother, but she doesn’t abide any foolishness. If you are being self-deluding or self-denigrating in some aspect of your life, she may show up in a dream to give you an abrupt thump on the head and to get you back on course.
