I dreamed a dream

Cosmic Tarot

I had a dream last night and I can't remember any of it except this one part. I was lying in a bed and looking at a ceiling decorated with very intricate patterns. I lay there and contemplated the patterns, very comfortable, the mattress was soft and the covers were warm, but I knew that I couldn't move from this bed. I was confined to it. As I lay there counting off the many strokes that made up the complicated ceiling decorations, I knew that my body was soft and spreading across the bed. I was very fat, I was confined to this bed as a result of my own choices. It was strange, realizing this and feeling nothing. (This sort of thing happens to me often in dreams; for example, I might see a face that should be truly frightening, but in the dream I am not afraid, I just look at it. And in this dream, the grief and regret weren't there. It's only when I think back on the dream in my waking hours that I connect the image to emotion.) I had completely forgotten about this dream until I picked up my deck to shuffle this morning, I had the urge to draw one card to help me understand the meaning of this dream. And I drew The Star.

 The Golden Dawn magical title of this card is 'Daughter of the Firmament, Dweller Between the Waters.' Her path on the Tree of Life is Yesod to Netzach, 'The Victory of Fundamental Strength. Venus acting through Aquarius upon Luna. Hope'. She is said in GD tradition to be a synthesis of Isis, Nephthys and Hathor. When I think of these three goddesses, I think of rebirth, death, life (mother, lover, joy)--they are like the Maid-Mother-Crone. 'This path forms the portion of the Astral Triad of the Tree that is most concerned with the act of meditation. This is the conscious searching for Divine Light by employing meditation--a combination of knowledge and imagination. The initiate here casts the fish hook of the Hewbrew letter tzaddi into the Waters of Creation (pure consciousness) to catch a bit of Divine Knowledge.' (The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot).And so, a dream that at first seemed to me to be about eating too many cookies and getting fat, really seems to be about stagnation and complacency on a much higher plane. Why was I lying on my back contemplating the beautiful pattern above me? Why was there a feeling more of forgiveness than recrimination, even though I was taking no action when I knew that I should be? True, there were physical manifestations of the lack I was experiencing, but they were not the end of the matter. The patterns on the ceiling were a calling, the spreading flesh a result of stagnation.

Ding dong - Goddess is calling? Calling me back to the dusty corner of my neglected meditation space, to spiritual practices, ritual, observation. To even thinking about my spirituality at all, which I have not done much of late. What a gentle call, to show me the beauty above from the deep comfort of a bed, but to let me know by the soft spreading of that flesh in my dream (a thing that would really get my attention, as it is a deep fear of mine) where my excesses and my complacency may lead.

Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya.