Dear Dreamboat

The dream centres on a woman. I’ve known her for decades. She is married and has children, lives somewhere between London, Somalia and the coast of Taiwan. She is an eccentric, maternalistic blonde with the body of a Paleolithic fertility goddess.

It’s dark. She appears in a ruined landscape, broken nature, fallen buildings, shattered furniture … she is very clear to me, her blue eyes very intense, like there is light on her. She speaks vigorously, earnestly, almost hysterical: ‘You must have children, Hugh … you must have children … you must have children … you must have children …’ That’s it. — Hugh

Dear Hugh

The first thing that comes to mind when you describe the woman is The Venus of Willendorf, a statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made about 24,000 BCE. With her large breasts and abdomen and the detailed vulva, she was believed to be a fertility goddess. It is interesting that you describe the woman in a similar fashion.

A woman in a dream is the appearance of the anima, the feminine part of a man’s personality; the part that is in touch with the subconscious. From an older perspective Woman is the beginning point, the source of life. That is why in agrarian societies the fertility deity was a woman.

The child is a symbol of the future, but it can also be a symbol of that stage of life when the old man acquires a new simplicity. In essence the child can be the divine spark, the reawakening of the mystic centre. Jung saw the child as representing the formative forces of the unconscious, of a protective and beneficent kind. One dreams of a child when a great change is about to occur.

Your dream may be telling you that you are encouraged to get in touch with what you need to achieve in the next phase of life. Cast off the old and step into the new. It may be that some form of chaos pervades your life. Now is time

to clean out your house, look within and find the spark of regeneration that will pull you out of malaise and into greener pastures.

Dear Dreamboat

I dreamt I was in an empty tower. There were no windows yet it was filled with sunlight. The tower was circular. I stood at the base of the tower and had a sense of spaciousness above my head. Then the tower filed with water and I was caught in it. I was floating around underwater. It woke me. — Mishy

Dear Mishy

Because it reaches from earth to heaven, the tower is a potent symbol. It speaks about willpower, aspiration and transcending limitations. It is about striving and aiming for greater things. Your description of floating inside the tower puts me in mind of placental interiority, awaiting rebirth.

The tower connotes both phallic exteriority and feminine interiority. The fluid body is interpreted as intuitive wisdom. Immersion in water sybolises a return to the preformal state, with a sense of symbolic death on the one hand and regeneration on the other. Because the immersion takes place inside a tower, and since immersion intensifies the life force, it means that your journey is filled with possibility.

It appears that you are currently in the process of change. It may be daunting but keep going. When you are inside a tower, you can only ascend and go deeper inside. The greater the height the deeper the foundation.
Dmetri Kakmi learned to tell fortunes and interpret dreams by observing his grandmother when he was growing up in Turkey. Nowadays he combines that fledgling knowledge with Jungian, ancient and traditional symbolism. If you have a dream you would like interpreted email: dreamboat@troublemag.com