Dream of Kissing a Black Snake: My Sister’s Dream in which I Kiss a Black Snake in a Car Dad was Driving

My sister had a dream that featured me in the leading role. I like this class of dream. It affords me the opportunity to see how others see me.

Dad was driving, Paul in the front passenger seat and me and my son in the back. There was this black snake in the car, he was sitting there the whole time on the console in between dad and Paul in the front, I thought he was dead or maybe sleeping so no one paid any attention to him. Then all of a sudden he moved and slithered down in front under Paul’s feet. Paul wasn’t scared. He picked up the snake behind its head and held it up. We were saying throw him out the window but then dad saw a good bushy spot with a large rock and trees on the other side of a big open rocky field. So he turned the car around and pulled over so we could let him go there. Paul was still holding the snake with the two fingers of his left hand, then he gave the snake a kiss to say goodbye and I was trying to get a photo on my phone of him kissing the snake, then I thought maybe a video would be better. And then I woke up.

Like brother like sister (October 2017). She doesn’t read my blog. So don’t blame me. I’m not the causal seed. Her car-passenger dream contained elements that were similar in terms of symbolic language to two dreams I had recently published (February 2023). We have our dad in the drivers seat oblivious to the needs of the unconscious until the protagonist (me) takes control. We also have the black snake-black man tritagonist. Dangerous and unknown this blackness, which springs from the depths of the unconscious, represents a threat to the egoic construct.

From this biased framework we jointly considered the dream. It seems we are both working on the same unconscious problem. That being dad. We are captives of his will to work and because of that we have no control. This situation is holding us back. I’m taking on the bulk of the burden. My sister senses though that perhaps more of that load is coming her way. The black snake embodies this unconscious knowing. Death. An ending. The status quo is coming to its natural end. I picked that black snake up with my left thumb and index finger and kissed it. The snake, the marker of the sacred space in which psychical work is carried out, was for me a loving trifle (December 2021). See I’ve done the work. The left hand side in dreams represents the unconscious. Through my dreamwork I’ve tamed the unknowable. My sister said I’m ready to embrace the coming change. She said she isn’t. Because I say she hasn’t done the work. Like the 99% for whom the unconscious is unknown and therefore something to be feared. Then on the weekend I visited my sister. I was driving dad’s Japanese retro taxi, my sister was seated in the passenger seat and her son was seated out the back. I was driving down a hill when all of a sudden my sister not shouted out STOP. A big black snake was crossing the road. I was thundering head on towards it. I didn’t see the snake. We got out of the car and looked for the snake. It was gone. The snake had slithered back into the bushes from whence it came. There were lots of trees and rocks.

My sister’s best friend wondered if this dream of hers was a premonition. Perhaps. Did her awareness of the snake keep her on guard for potential hazards? Maybe. There is no way of knowing what may or may not have happened had my sister not shouted out STOP.

It does make for a nice synchronicity though …

My sister then made psychobabble noise about transformation theory. That raised my ire. I pushed back …

“There is no transformation. There is nothing to transform into. Ask Popeye the sailor man. I yam what I yam what I yam what I yam. You are complete flaws and all. You are you. Only unlike Popeye you have become estranged from your true self. For that I blame civilisation. It’s one hell of a big hammer. And to it you’re a tiny little nail. Civilisation is forcing you to conform to a model that the enate needs of your psyche resist. In the dream your son is the embodiment of those enate needs. You are a mother. As such you have obligations. You don’t have choices. Choices, especially for women, are an illusion. What you lack is a strong masculine figure to protect you. Women need that. The animus is too powerful. It overwhelms them (December 2022). And for good reason. Civilisation keeps men at bay. Without it men go hungry. And contrary to what the modern mythmakers say women don’t stand a chance against a hungry man. That black snake, a textbook Freudian phallic symbol, represents that danger. Dad means well. But he’s old. And I won’t be around to protect you forever. Freud would have something to say about the father-brother dynamic too but let’s not go there.”

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhxDQ1g964U)

Her dream is yet another call to face the unconscious (June 2022). The appearance of the black snake in the waking world reinforces this claim. As within so without. In order for something to become a conscious reality it must first become an unconscious reality (November 2016). The appearance of the snake is confirming the validity of the unconscious to her. She should pay attention to the unconscious. She should listen to what it has to say.

She doesn’t need me to do that.

Dream of the Mountain Hike along a Rock Crystal Ledge that led to a Cave then down to a Restaurant and Opera Tickets to Cosi Fan Tutte

I was at the top of a mountain with Richard. Years ago when I was up there we would walk on a narrow rock crystal ledge. Not anymore. Richard still did that walk. He loved it.

‘I can’t do this anymore,’ I said.

Then I saw a safer route on the inside of the ledge. It formed a bowl-like cavity and led to cave-like platform.

Richard loved it.

The rock crystal felt wonderful under foot.

Richard said he wanted to go back up the mountain after dinner.

We continued down the mountain. We were part of a group now. Warren was with us.

Lower down I got some momentum going. I started to fly. I loved the feeling. Allan and Gemma saw me fly. I loved it.

At the bottom of the mountain Richard and Warren said they’d walk up the mountain again after dinner. They would take the cable car.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to go at sunrise?’ I said.

No. They were going after dinner.

We all went for dinner at a restaurant. Six people at the table at least. My sister was there. Opera tickets were obtained to Cosi fan tutte. I said I didn’t want to go. A guy, a proper guy, got tickets. My sister said we can ask a girl she knows to come, a real cutie (Olive was her name, I think). My doctor was sitting alone at the next table. He walked past us as Warren tried to open a bottle of champagne.

‘Fuck,’ he said. He was struggling with the bottle.

So I returned to a known dreamscape. From years ago. I don’t remember when. From Austria perhaps. Richard visited me there once. We hiked up the Hafelekar. Well we tried too. Richard didn’t have hiking shoes. When the mountain went vertical it broke him. We turned back. The mountain had defeated us. He wanted to keep going in the dream as in life he lived in Zürich and wants to return to the Alps.

But I can’t do this anymore.

I’ve transitioned. I want to be born anew. Like Zarathustra I want to behold the sunrise. I did that once. On top of the Serles The Altar of Tirol. That was something special. That sunrise, the most spectacular I’ve ever seen, crossed my mind the other day.

My friend Christina’s dad was Sepp Mayerl Tirol’s second most famous mountaineer. I loved Sepp. I was afforded the privilege of a bottle of wine whenever I visited his home. Christina said I was the only one of her friends afforded that privilege. I could barely understand Sepp. His dialect was indecipherable. But you see words lie you don’t need a common language to understand someone what you need is eyes and heart and feeling. He wrote a book Der Turm in mir. Translation; The tower in me. He told me that something deep inside his soul made him climb. As within so without. In actuality the real climb happens within. He saw that quality in me. He wanted to take me climbing.

But I left. And I may never return (January 2023). See I don’t need the Alps no more. I’ve moved on to the only mountain that matters, the inner mountain.

And on that mountain I felt the beautiful rock crystal beneath my feet. Then I lost my lucid edge. I sort refuge in a quasi-cave. I get the sense from my dreamscape that the cave is the domain of the feminine. I’ve seen it thawing (September 2018). I’ve seen the three fates block its entrance (January 2018). I’ve jumped into its abyss (February 2018) There wasn’t much happening in my cave. It was opened on all but one side and afforded an excellent view of the valley below. Then on the way down my lucid edge returned. I started to fly. Like before when I flew hand in hand with the feminine to Schengen (January 2017). I’m at the doorway of totality. I’m almost there. I’ve come a long way with the feminine. There is no more mystery. My cave is open. I see all (December 2022). Including Gemma, a Buddhist, whom I associate to Tibetan Dream Yoga because isn’t flying the goal of any lucid dreamer (November 2022), and Allan, her husband, which my inner mythos associates to Apollo.

Remember I am Apollo (October 2015). The archetype is being reactivated. Why, I don’t know. But I can feel it. I’ve pushed him down for several years. I had to. I had to do this work the great work in order to climb my inner mountain. Apollo would have chased the feminine away and I needed her, her unconscious intuition, to complete my journey.

Richard’s always on to me about opera tickets. Last night we saw Adriana Lecouvreur. I’d never heard of the composer one Francesco Cilea. The music was divine. And true to form there was no need to read the program because the soprano always dies. I haven’t seen Cosi fan tutte. I don’t know the storyline. I looked up the wiki stub. Translation; ‘Women are like that.’

They’re made for tragedy.

The dinner was a celebration of the feminine. To that the number 7 (six guests plus my rational doctor at a table all on his own) is associated. My sister was the feminine protagonist. Olive brings us back to Apollo because I met Daphne, Allan’s daughter, swinging on the giant South African Olive tree in my front yard (September 2015). And I’m not in Sepp’s league. Opening that bottle wasn’t easy. I’ll need Apollo’s rational function for that. And I didn’t feel worthy just yet because I compared myself to a proper guy, whatever that is.

I thought only women thought like that?

Whenever Warren fucked up at uni he’d say ‘bugger.’ He never said fuck. Nowadays fuck is a more acceptable word than bugger.

We live in a fucked up world.

Dream of Drawing on a Glass Ceiling and Attending a Lecture on the Evolution of Whales from Frogs

I was an academic artist. I was finishing off a work. A drawing on a glass ceiling. I had started this drawing in another dream. The woman with me a Revan type got up on top of the glass ceiling and started to walk around.

‘Not that one,’ I said referring to the glass pane I was painting on. Thankfully it didn’t break. I was making a perspective drawing of a big two story colonial building. I left my pencil sketches of boxes etcetera beside the vanishing point.

Then a crowd surrounded me. This was Rachel my art teacher’s place. This was where I was working. She was selling up. She was moving to Hoffman Street. The neighbours were all about. It seemed she owned the entire block.

Rachel’s son came over to me when I asked, ‘why move?’

He was getting married. He wanted investment advice. He said he wanted to read about investments first.

‘Excellent starting point,’ I said.

He then recommended a Russian self-help book.

‘I don’t know that book,’ I said.

I then saw kids from university coming down the escalator. The next generation, I thought.

Then later a great lecture at Roger the Frenchman’s group about the evolution of whales from frogs. Myself, a girl, and another guy attended the lecture along with Roger. A chemistry lecture was being held concurrently but I wanted to see the evolution lecture. I saw the frog emerge from the whale, a big thing. The whales could move across the seaside rocks on land. These whales were terrestrial as well as aquatic.

Then the fresh bread was brought out.

‘Wow,’ I said.

When the lecture finished leather straps distracted me. A crowd arrived for the food. The crowd gathered at the table where the bread was placed and rapidly consumed it.

I made a joke about the hordes.

The frog is my own private self-conjured symbol brought forth from my inner depths when I asked my dreams for a symbol of totality (May 2020). To that I associated the frog-prince fairytale where male ugliness is tamed so that it can be united with feminine beauty aka the unconscious to create a balanced whole. The frog therefore is the synthesis of complete integration. It is an adaptable symbol. At home on both land (conscious) and sea (unconscious) it can traverse worlds like the hierophant (October 2016). The frog was birthed from the belly of a whale. Like Jonah one must be swallowed and taken down deep. You have to face your fears, surrender all hope, and simply believe. For three days Jonah endured the underworld. Then he was vomited back into the world. In doing so he transitioned from 3 to 4. He became that longed-for balanced whole.

Do you understand?

In my frog card dream there were 3 piles of cards from which a conductor was trying to order a solemn mass. The frog card made it 4 and therefore whole (May 2020). And at the frog lecture there were 4 attendees that together constitute the self.

Rebirth.

A new Paul.

Of course Tony was the seed, again. His trip to Sydney gifted me great dreams (January 2023). Tony worked for Roger in France The Land of the Frogs where every day at work he kissed the girls good morning and good night. Tony speaks with a quasi-French accent. He triggered my frog. It was greeny-blue this time. Perhaps this change in hue indicates an increasing degree of conscious recognition? Because that’s the goal ultimately to bring up what is under blue water into the light of our conscious green world.

Those whales were also coming into conscious light (June 2020). They’re mammals. They went from land to sea. Frogs came from sea to land. Do you understand? Full circle. Evolution. Totality.

And the bread. It smelled so good. That’s the best thing about France. The bread. Jeff toasted fresh Turkish bread for me in Wagga Wagga. It smelled so good. That smell reinforced the idea of France and frogs. The leather watchstraps balanced out that longing. They represent my earth-bound family burdens (August 2021).

As for curriculum choice there is no choice. I side with dreams. Chemistry is a waste of time. Listening to Tony’s travails reminded me of that. Tony said I made the right choice to leave. I’ve heard that from former colleagues lately. They’ve come to the realisation that they are but a small cog in a gigantic global education racket that I say has been designed to preoccupy the young so as to lower both youth unemployment and counter-revolutionary tendencies whilst staking a claim on the next generation’s income potential, effectively locking them in to neofeudal servitude, with the added bonus of selling degrees to foreigners to aid an abet the other great racket of our time, the immigration racket, without which GDP in the West would be at the zero bound. And that’s placing so-called academic research to one side. Effectively the public intellectual space has been privatised. The independently minded pure researches of old have been weeded out. Unless you’re making RNA for the Dr. Benway and the Masters of Mankind aka the man you’re toast. It’s a great deal for the man. Rather than hiring one scientist they hire ten kids the free service of a quisling supervisor and state-of-the-art research facilities at almost zero cost. And IF by some miracle a valuable product is obtained they won’t honour any patent or IP contract. They settle for a pittance and make billions. If it’s junk they float it on the stockmarket and on-sell it to dumb investors. I know how it works. I worked for a company. They had an army of lawyers. The university clowns are cannon fodder for these guys. They eat them alive. For breakfast.

What are you going to learn there dancing with fools and thieves?

Tony gets it now. But it’s too late for him. To stay his course ignorance would have been the better path.

And anyway the intellectual space has moved on. To the Internet. A great example is Seymour Hersh. The holy trinity, The White House, The State Department and the CIA labelled him a mere blogger the other day in response to an article Hersh self-published on his substack about who blew up Nordstream. I saw that one coming (August 2022). Freethinkers challenging the status quo are no longer permitted in the privatised public space.

(https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream)

By this way of academic chicanery we arrive at academic art. The psyche is preparing for my return to art class. What should I paint? A giant canvas waits for me in Rachel’s studio. Should I finish the double portrait of my parents or move on to something new. Revan’s always sending me ideas. With art she walks on glass. She’s fearless. Whereas I’m more cautious. I tend to finish what I start even if I hate it. Revan sent me the architectural paintings of Einar Jolin. I liked them very much. That’s my style. But I’m stubborn. I finish what I start even if I hate it.

Investments like chemistry take me away from art (August 2022). Of course art here via Rachel is once again associated to the blue frog, which brings us full circle to masculine and feminine totality (August 2021). Seems I’m being called back to the Temenos. Rachel’s son is a working artist. He is therefore in unity with the feminine. He suggested I read a Russian self-help book. He’s right. Forget the Russians. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do irrespective of what I think or feel (January 2023). Turn off The News. Like investments and chemistry it’s polluting the psyche.

Go and paint.

Paint a frog.

Depict totality.