--By Hyperion Night
Messages from the unconscious. Mystery. Confusion. Dreams. Illusion.
Last night, I dreamed of a departed relative I’d had a contentious relationship with. She walked down the hallway of my apartment and sat beside me in the living room. Suddenly I remembered she was dead, and understood I was dreaming. But instead of the dream ending, like it usually does when I become aware, we talked – the kind of talk we’d never been able to have when she was alive. She apologized for some things she’d said and done, and helped me understand why she’d said and done them, and the reason wasn’t awful. It made a lot of sense. And I apologized too, because I hadn’t been innocent in the turn our relationship had taken. We forgave each other. I woke up feeling lighter. Free.
I’m still not sure if it was “just” a lucid dream or a visitation from my relative. I’m not sure if it matters. It was all very lunar, very moon-ish. And not just because the Moon card in Tarot can represent dreams. It also represents illusion, confusion, messages from the subconscious crawling up out of the muck like that lobster creeping from the water on the Rider-Waite-Smith card. And all of those things were in play. I’d created a false—or at least incomplete—story in my mind of the cause of my estrangement from my relative (illusion/confusion). The truth bubbled up from my unconscious in last night’s dream. If it hadn’t, I’d still be carrying that burden.
When the Moon card appears in a Tarot reading, it suggests we may not be seeing things clearly. But the truth is out there — or in there, as the case may be. In the card, a dog and a wolf, representing the refined conscious and the more primitive subconscious, howl at the moon’s light. How can you bring your subconscious impulses or knowledge into conscious light? The road between the two towers in the card is long, dark, and winding. Have patience. Be brave.