Terrifying Dream

[mikestar13]

I thought I'd post this because it is precisely timed, vary striking, and quite detailed. So it may be of interest to those of us who study the astrology of dreams.

Location: My home in Redlands, CA.
Time of wakening: Today Nov. 25, 2017 5:17:00 AM PST per living room clock synchronized to US atomic clock.
Actual awakening was a few seconds earlier, it took a while for my eyes to focus enough to see the clock.

In my dream, it was early January, 2018. A new law had been passed in December 2017 annulling any debt relief measures (including but not limited to bankruptcies) taken on or after January 20, 2009, 12 Noon EST (the legal start of the Obama administration) and outlawing any form of debt relief going forward. Your debts at death would be payable by your children, out of their own pockets if need be. Income and assets could be taken without limit to satisfy debts, with no exemptions whatever, to the point of your last cent. Sue and I had watched the extensive news coverage of the passage of this law with considerable fear but comforted by the essentially unanimous opinion that the Supreme Court would find this new law unconstitutional before it could go into effect.

But it wasn't found unconstitutional. There were postings in various places on the net (quickly taken down) suggesting the justices and their families had been threatened. So various collection agents backed by police broke down our apartment and took literally everything we had: our TV, our computers, kitchen appliances, all furniture, the food in the refrigerator and the cupboard, all our medicine medical supplies including my hospital bed any my unused ostomy supplies. They "graciously" allowed me to keep the bag I was wearing, and rolled up a few dirty towels to serve as a pillow while I lay on the floor. They even seized the cat food and the cats. Josh and Sue were allowed to keep the clothes they were wearing at the moment, and I was allowed to keep my current adult diaper, though my unused supplies were seized.

Then came the conversation with the government agent who explained it all to us. "As the value of your assets, including your bank account which we have seized, is insufficient to pay your debts, addition collection measures will be taken . . ." As Josh was able-bodied, he was sent to a forced labor camp, while my wife and I were sent to "hospices" for the disabled. We never communicated with each other again. The "amenities" at my "hospice" consisted of a hospital bed with sheets and blankets, A pitcher of ice water was placed on they tray table, as well as some pills. The attendant said "You can have this pitcher refilled if you want, but no food or medicine will be provided. You are here to die. If you wish to accelerate the dying process, take the pills, they are cyanide."

At this point, I awoke with a silent (mercifully for Sue) scream, gasping for air, my heart pounding so hard I thought it was going to burst out of my chest. The physical symptoms subsided quickly, but the abject horror is just now finally subsiding as I write this. Maybe I can get back to sleep now.

For the record, I don't believe Donald Trump would even fantasize about enacting something this evil. As to some of the shadowy figures in the dark corners of American capitalism, I am not entirely sure.

[TheScales_BothWays]

My goodness, that is quite a nightmare!
I'm astounded by the vivid detail and the length of the dream - if I were dreaming this, I would have gotten awake while hearing the news, or while the collection agents were raiding the home. That's how easily I would've gotten terrified and shocked by a dream like this. I hope you're feeling better now from your terrible dream.

I looked at your current Demi lunar return and I saw a transiting Mercury-Neptune square on your angles, with tr.Saturn moderately on the Descendant. I believe that DSLR Mercury partile conjunct your natal Saturn is the chief marker, with the Neptune influence for the dream and its terrifying vividness. (Both Mercury and natal Saturn are within the 2º orb of squaring DSLR MC.) Mercury-Saturn-Neptune describes so well of your dream! A dream (Neptune) of losing your properties, belongings (Saturn, or Mercury-Saturn) and your family/loved ones to a new law. (Mercury?) One may attribute the family/loved ones symbolism to the angular Moon-Venus square operative during the moment of waking up from your dream.

TBH, Mike, I've calculated this return of yours weeks ago after reading your "Last Post." It got me very afraid of your health. Thankfully, you're much better now.

Did this return manifest as a financially tight and worrisome/insecure period? That worry could've easily manifested as this dream.

You are, also, currently under a transit of Neptune semisquaring your Moon; a time of increased sensitivity and vulnerablity, emotionally amd physically. Getting in positive, happy and encouraging environments would be a great help, as you know.

If it would interest you, you may head over to an old thread of mine that I moved from the old forums about a sentimental dream I had. The astrological symbolism behind the dream was strong and profound. In the thread Steve also shared the astrological symbolism of another dream he had.

[Jim Eshelman]

Mike, a lot of us say we're living in a "nightmare" these days, but you had to go and make it literal! <I'm hoping to make you laugh >

That sounds pretty horrible. Fortunately, "it was only a dream." I put that in quotes because, while a useful phrase, it overlooks the fact that dreams are simply what our subconscious minds are going through anyway, whether we are awake or asleep, so the real dread and anxiety of the dream is likely what is sitting in your subconsciousness chronically these days - general anxiety, concern for how a broken system will treat your real needs, and (prioritizing by how early the premises were established chronologically in the dream) especially concern for your wife and son.

I don't think we need to get into any 'depth' analysis (treating concrete details as symbols) because the imagery and story are so clearly linked to the anxiety of your real-life situation. (The symbolic level is always present, but this cigar seems to actually be about cigars first - se we'll start there.)

And BTW thanks for sharing such a useful example with us.


First, let's take a look at your own chart in a chronic sense. Long-term patterns aren't usually useful in understanding dreams except they can show long-term patterning in subconsciousness. (For the dream itself, we want more the acute, immediate push of something up from subconsciousness.) Your solar and lunar returns show the background, what I think is the heart of the dream, concern for those you love. This theme especially thrives in your SSR, and reiterates in later charts. The closer we get to now, the more there is a sense of looming crisis: Your Demi-SSR and current SLR are increasingly loud on this.

Finally, your November 14 Demi-SLR takes a new turn, and is a chart of acute, mortifying anxiety, with Saturn and Neptune on the angles and Mercury conjunct natal Saturn exactly on EP. Even the bare beginner of Sidereal astrology would know at once that you would feel really bad during this time, that it would be wearing and debilitating. (As a reminder, if your actual condition isn't any worse today than it was two weeks ago, then the likely increased dread, apprehension, and [is this too strong a word?] loathing today is "all in your head" to the extent that it's not factually anchored in changes in your condition.

Anyway, that's the background, the setup. For the dream itself, I'll start new post.

[Jim Eshelman]

First the easy part: Close (generally partile) transits at the time of the dream tell us a lot about what was going on. This was the sole tool of the great A.G. Farnell who brilliantly wrote the astro-dream column for American Astrology for many years. It makes sense, too, since these are pattern that dominate the psyche for a day or so and show what's bubbling around.

Looking at your transits, we get a most pleasant surprise! In addition to some wider outer planet transits that have been coming and going (Neptune to your Mars, Uranus to your Moon, Saturn to your Jupiter - all of which have their themes and scenes in the dream in terms of, e.g., frightened panicky adrenaline pumping, brutal invasion into your home = psyche, financial destitution), we find two partile transits that show what was mainly and immediately erupting in your psyche. (I use the word "erupting" most intentionally.) One is Uranus conjunct your Mercury. The other is Mercury square your Jupiter.

The main one is Uranus conjunct your Mercury. This dream was indeed a psychic eruption, the psychological equivalent of a rupturing abscess. This is a very pleasant surprise, because, rather than being the start of something, it is much closer to being the completion of things boiling around in subconsciousness and festering. (You've been trying not to think or talk of these things perhaps? If so, that just adds to the pressure and toxicity.) The psychic abscess burst, the zit popped, the denied and hidden became disclosed and forced open just as much as the collectors burst into your house (routinely a symbol of your psyche and how you have it neatly organized). [Symbolic aside: In Qabbalah, Mercury corresponds to a Hebrew letter that means "house" in several senses in your dream, both literally a house or enclosure - its equivalency to your psyche, or Mercury aspect, in general - and in the sense of generational, genetic lineage, in the same sense of "House of David."]

So, the good news is that this was a healthy bursting, the dream intended to get what was already there in your psyche out into the open. I don't know the exact importance of the Mercury-Jupiter transit, but I suspect it was the benevolent healing quality of stirring disclosure and conversation.

In the next post, I'll move to the dream chart itself.

[Jim Eshelman]

I wrote a book a few years back called Visions & Voices. I thought it would become a gigantic hit among the small pool of Sidereal astrologers (and even Tropical astrologers, since side-by-side charts were given), but has been almost totally ignored in the astrological community. I especially thought it would catch the attention of those interested in dream analysis.

The book explores the astrological pattern (and symbolic linkages) to a series of intentional, induced visions undertaken by Aleister Crowley for which (in all but a couple of examples) he regarded the exact date, time, and place. These visions are essentially the same as dreams, except they are undertaken while one is awake. (The subconscious mind is always awake but, like the night sky, is overlain by waking conscious when we are awake, in the same sense that the light of the daytime sky hides the night-sky from us. Inducing vision is like inducing a solar eclipse so that we see the night-sky during the day time, learn to witness subconsciousness in real time when we are awake. Essentially, its content is indistinguishable from a dream. Crowley used the technique to place his attention squarely on a series of spiritual principles, or psychic constructs, and to let his subconscious respond to them by generating visions, or waking dreams.)

I mention this because these several dozen examples clarified what astrological factors are most operative in describing the dream content. One surprise is that, other than in the most simplistic way, it had very little to do with the dreamer's own horoscope, but almost everything to do with the chart at the time of the dream. I think this isn't so true of normal dreams, because Crowley was trained in methods of calming his mind and getting a fairly "blank screen" before he started, and of concentrating his mind on specific symbols so that little personal content penetrated; the normal dreamer doesn't go through this.

In chapter 4, I summarize the factors that emerged as most indicative of the content of the dream. Most of these deal with the "astrological environment" at the time of the vision.

Planets on the angles. All day long, these show content rising into the fore of everyone's subconsciousness. At the rising of Mars (for example), any dream (even if the mind were absorbed by Venus or Jupiter ideas) would be expected to display something of a martial quality simply because the tone of the psychic environment would markedly express the qualities of Mars in everyone's personal subconscious at the same time. This conditioning of the "ambient astral" is a most fascinating topic, and teaches us so much about how astrology actually operates, how planetary operations interact with our psyches.

In the several dozen visions studied in the book, the angular planets at their start usually described the overall tone or theme of the vision, but sometimes only its earliest moments. This makes sense for the "induced visions," because part of the technique Crowley used shielded his mind as it dove deeper into subconsciousness, more focused on a specific idea he wanted to pursue. Even despite this, often we could see the evolving trend of the vision as new planets rotated into prominence as it occurred, e.g., Venus would cross an angle three-fourths of the way through an hour-long vision, and about three-fourths of the through the vision there would suddenly be a burst of Venus symbols.

Of the 35 visions studied in the book, 29 began with one or more planets on the angles. Of these 29, ten had the angular planets match the symbolism so closely that I rated it "nearly flawless." In 11 more (21 total of 29) the match was "solid." These angular planets were a very stong factor in the dream themes.

Sidereal Moon Sign. Even stronger, though - the single strongest individual factor - was the Sidereal Moon sign during the vision. Probably one reason Tropical astrologers didn't flock to the book is that, even though I gave Tropical and Sidereal charts side-by-side so everyone could draw their own conclusions, the evidence was overwhelmingly pro-Sidereal

Of 33 visions for which exact dates and times were given, the Sidereal Moon-sign averaged a score of +2 ("solid"), while the Tropical Moon-sign averaged a score of 0.

For the Sidereal Moon-sign, once more we had about a third of them (10 of 33) in the "virtually flawless" realm, and about two-thirds (21 of 33) as "solid" or better. In contrast, for the Tropical Moon-signs, there were NO instances of "virtually flawless" and only seven (one-fifth) were "solid."

Excluding the seven instances where Moon was in the same sign in both zodiacs left 26 charts to compare. In 4 cases I couldn't objectively say that one (TZ vs SZ Moon) was better. In 21 instances (89%), the Sidereal Moon-sign had better symbolism than the Tropical. In ONE chart, the Tropical seemed to have better symbolism than the Sidereal.

These are remarkable numbers! They heavily endorse the Sidereal zodiac, and also document the extreme importance of Moon's sign in understanding dreams.

Lunar Phase. To keep this short: Lunar phase seemed to show the amount of overall psychic intensity in the series of visions (which mostly stretched across a month-plus period of time). The closer to Full Moon, the more intensity was reflected in sub-consciousness. (This doesn't reflect in Mike's dream, which was a little shy of First Quarter.)

What the mind dwells on. I've paraphrased the title of this paragraph. In the book, this refers to the inherent symbolism Crowley took into his intentional visions - where he placed his attention, what symbols he was consciously exploring. But in normal dreams, this is equivalent to the existing landscape of subconsciousness, what's happening in the subconscious mind when the dream occurs - obviously one of the most important factors in understanding dreams, as the entire course of dream exploration from Freud, through Jung, and on past them has confirmed.

[Jim Eshelman]

So what's going on in the actual chart for Mike's dream?

First, the world was in a complex psychic / psychological landscape. Though not particularly important at the time of Mike's dream, there's an ongoing Mars-Uranus-Pluto T-square that shows things like volatility, explosiveness, threat, etc. Jupiter closely trine Neptune is consistent with surrealism (in this case dystopian), and economic anxiety. Mercury-Saturn (for the day) and Moon (for a period of hours) fed into the Mars-Uranus operation. This is the background.

But (all these posts have been leading up to this), the dream-chart speaks its message in two factors.

First, Moon was in Capricorn. The whole dream was a Capricorn dream, and the emotions around it were Capricorn emotions. (It's really that simple.) Don't think "What are Capricorns like?" Think, "What images does Capricorn classically bring to mind?" The answer is destitution, Dickensian poverty or worse, abandonment, soul-emptiness, material horror, or just plain demonic horror.

Second, the only planets near the angle were Moon and Venus, with Moon probably crossing IC during the course of the dream (Mike probably is unable to give us a starting time). Moon and Venus are square, i.e., a Moon-Venus square dominates the foreground. This is my original basis for assuming that (in the context of the Capricorn pattern already set) the main "story" of the dream was his concern for his wife and son, his (I'd call it maternal, more than paternal) dread for them, and the paradoxical way that dreams (subconsciousness in general) expresses our love for someone by, e.g., the acute pain of losing them, or of pain coming to them.

There was actually one other foreground planet. At the time Mike awoke, Jupiter was 8° above Ascendant. I don't know for sure what this means. It doesn't seem typical of planet behavior that, as Jupiter was getting farther from the angle things were getting worse (it was, after all, still foreground). I'm willing to leave this un-interpreted. My best hit is that it signaled this was a healing dream.

So... that's what I've got on the matter.

[mikestar13]

...TBH, Mike, I've calculated this return of yours weeks ago after reading your "Last Post." It got me very afraid of your health. Thankfully, you're much better now.

Did this return manifest as a financially tight and worrisome/insecure period? That worry could've easily manifested as this dream.

You are, also, currently under a transit of Neptune semisquaring your Moon; a time of increased sensitivity and vulnerablity, emotionally amd physically. Getting in positive, happy and encouraging environments would be a great help, as you know.

If it would interest you, you may head over to an old thread of mine that I moved from the old forums about a sentimental dream I had. The astrological symbolism behind the dream was strong and profound. In the thread Steve also shared the astrological symbolism of another dream he had.

Thanks, Scales, for your analysis and for the link to the most interesting topic concerning your dream. Your dream was quite striking in its own rather different way. I've no doubt you would have been a fundamentally beautiful soul regardless of what circumstances you had been born into, including but not limited to gender.

I will comment about the financial issues and other stuff in a response to Jim's post's in an hour or two. Right now, our family is getting ready for a late breakfast. Almost as soon as I finished writing my initial post, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

[Venus_Daily]

It's great that you remember your dreams with such clarity, I can't. I have a theory that the reason I can't remember them that often is due both slight neurological pathology and a conflict between the conscious and unconscious mind, which suppresses any therapeutic symbolism.
I really like the idea of recurring themes in dreams as well, (not trying to derail this thread), but since I was a child, the few dreams that I can remember have always had the same theme, tone, or event. It feels more like a vision because I'm never in the dream, I'm just observing what is happening, but I get the sense that I am witnessing something billions of years into the future or something outside of time and space. There are different sentient creatures doing things that are just indescribable. These have probably been the most regular and vivid dreams that I can remember. I can have these dreams at any time, and I never notice a real pattern, and they happen at regular to sparse intervals.

[mikestar13]

I underestimated how long it would take to get back to this topic--no problems, just life in session. Medically, I'm improving. So it is rather likely that my current astrological indications refer to my psychological state. This is indeed a fearful time financially, as well as the general free-floating fear of the unknown during this time.

A specific financial issue that has come to our attention: Josh's Social Security Disability dependent's benefits will be cut off when he graduates from high school this June. It would be cut off in January if he weren't still in high school. In any case, the financial hit will be about $800/mo. Josh will need a part-time job, as will I if I stay home, and as will Sue if I am placed in a skilled nursing facility. Her both working and caretaking me is out of the question given her health. And if a am sent to a facility, I effectively can't work for money, as anything I earn would be taken to help compensate Medi-Cal for the cost of my care. Nothing would go to Sue and Josh in that case--they would get about $500/mo. of my benefits, but every dollar in excess of that would go to Medi-Cal. (Barring the ridiculous possibility that I were to earn in excess of the circa $14,000/mo. that my care would cost.) so the financial situation is dire. Just not so dire as my dream.

I have some experience with vivid dreams, though this one's time is unusually well-documented. In 1973, I experienced a very lengthy dream about the future history history of the USA, culminating in World War III in 2020. The details of that dream have mostly been false, but too much of the spirit of that dream has come true, including the the incredible backlash against minorities, women, and LGBT people. Also the ramping up of bigotry and demagoguery in American politics.

Thanks, Jim, for the detailed analysis including the Visions and Voices quotes. I find the comparison and contrast of my dream with Crowley's visions fascinating. Maybe the Universe is telling me that times will be hard, but not to the degree I fear. God has it covered, as always. At any rate, that has been my growing conviction as the day progresses.

[mikestar13]

I find it rather interesting that one salient point ot this dream came true (though not in the gruesome fashion it did in the dream!)-- I am indeed "here to die", I will never leave this place except to go to the hospital or the morgue. No one is in any hurry for me to die and I am provided with food and medicine as needed. I have not been diagnosed with any terminal conditions save the one I was born with--life itself. I might be here ten or fifteen years, but in the fullness of time, I will be leaving "feet first". And I'm at peace with all of this. Another huge plus vs the dream--my ability to visit my family physically is limited only by their availability, and we can keep in touch daily limited only by how my wifi is working.

[Jim Eshelman]

It helps to keep allegory distinguished from physical facts, even when each has its own value.