What if you had your own personal guide standing ready to shed light on your path, bring messages of encouragement and illumination, show you how to live a better life, or reveal your greatest stumbling blocks? Wouldn’t you listen?

Our dreams can act as powerful guides if we learn to listen and decode these nighttime messages. I have had vivid, sometimes haunting dreams my entire life. Sometimes my dreams come true. Occasionally they avert disaster. My life-long fascination with dreams has led me to pursue a degree in psychology and study dream interpretation in depth.

As far as I can tell from my research, every spiritual tradition in the world pays attention to dreams. There seems to be a universal understanding that the guidance offered through dreams, like Tarot, comes from a wiser place, a deeper knowing, than our everyday awareness can provide. Dreams can act like magic mirrors or scrying bowls, inviting our gaze and revealing and reflecting truth. Our task is to bravely face the looking glass and be willing to accept and act on the guidance we receive.

Dreamtime
Tarot is a pictorial book of ancient wisdom that speaks to us in the timeless language of symbols. Words are an imperfect means of communication but pictures are potentially perfect. Dreams speak to us in exactly the same way, through symbolic pictures and images. Using Tarot to deepen and enhance dream interpretation is a natural marriage of two symbolic languages. Tarot can unlock meaning contained within the sometimes confusing images from our dreams.

A powerful alchemy results from using Tarot to interpret dreams. Using Tarot images and dream symbols together seems to open a channel between the conscious and subconscious mind that is normally closed. After decades of exploring this combined way of working with the symbols, I believe reading Tarot to interpret dreams engages dream consciousness in the waking state. In a sense, we step through a portal or gateway, which is generally veiled between these two worlds, standing in both simultaneously. This may be akin to what Australian Aboriginal shamans do in Dreamtime.

Howling at the Moon
Qabalistically, the Moon (Major Arcana card 18) corresponds with the Hebrew letter Quoph and is said to have dominion over sleep. An aspect of the Moon’s significance relates to what is termed the “corporeal intelligence” and the subtle but powerful transformations that occur during sleep. As we travel the Path of Return we advance from the waters of collective consciousness to climb the mountain of spiritual attainment. Our dreams are a significant part of this metamorphic process.

I wrote Tarot & Dream Interpretation to share what I had learned about using Tarot symbolism and dream stories together. Tarot seems to act as a linking mechanism, revealing relationships between dreams and personality-level issues and enabling us to see patterns of self-defeating behavior that were previously unclear. Clients have reported life-changing insights and dramatic breakthroughs. Some people have experienced release of life-long limiting patterns in ways that seem magical and alchemical.

Dream Oracles
The most common remark I hear is, “I don’t remember my dreams.” Since we dream an average of five or six times a night, remembering all our dreams would be unwieldy. We can train ourselves to be receptive to important dream counsel and to dismiss what is merely routine processing of the day’s events. Sometimes we can evoke guidance from our dreams, asking for specific answers. In ancient times seekers visited temples where special techniques were employed to trigger significant guidance dreams. We don’t have the benefit of oracle temples in modern cities, so I have developed practices and suggestions to help create a personal dream temple in the midst of modern life.

I also wanted to create a comprehensive symbol dictionary that was tailored to working with dream symbols. The symbol dictionary in Tarot & Dream Interpretation can also be used to expand the understanding of Tarot symbolism.

Coaxing the Sandman
Working with dreams requires a conscious commitment on our part. We must be willing to keep a dream journal, humble enough to accept the guidance received, and courageous enough to take action in our lives. It’s worth the effort.

Sweet dreams!