Born Under a Blood Red Moon Metamorphosis of the Feminine in the Dreams of Young Women © 2006, 2008  Jonathan Zap Edited by Austin Iredale A young woman I know sent me a dream with themes that resonate with the dreams of other young women I have interpreted, and now I wish  I had written down more of them, because so many of their dreams were powerful and illuminating of the state of the feminine after six thousand years of patriarchal history. In this essay I will discuss what I have learned from these dreams and from other cultural observations.  I will conclude with analysis of two  dreams, including the one from this young woman. The most consistent theme these dreams expose is the toxicity of promiscuous patriarchal sexuality.  Jung often used the word enantiodromia, a term he got from the Greek philosopher, ...

Some Things to Consider Before Dream Interpretation © 2000 Jonathan Zap The phrase, “dream interpretation,” can be somewhat misleading.  From my point of view dreams are not puzzles awaiting solution, but life experiences.  Dream interpretation is at least as subjective and limiting as “life interpretation.”  It would probably be meaningless, for example, to attempt an interpretation of what you did last Tuesday.  But on some Tuesday there could be a dramatic episode of the sort that would later become a frequently repeated story or anecdote. These dramatic episodes could be subject to interpretations such as, “That certainly taught me never to believe that people are who they say they are.”  Similarly, most of the dreams that people bring for dream interpretation are dramatic episodes where insistent meanings are breaking through from dream time to waking time.  Interpretation is still subjective, but the dream may be ...

A Gnostic Dream of 2012 © 2005 by Jonathan Zap The following dream about 2012 was reported to me by a young woman who originally contacted me because of her interest in androgyny. She had recorded the dream in her journal a few months before becoming acquainted with my work. I was standing on the stoop of the house I grew up in with Kurt Cobain, and we were talking like old friends. I asked him, "What's going to happen in 2012?" And he said "Nothing." Then, he took me somewhere where we saw a monument, an overhead view as if we were flying above it. I thought the monument had something to do with Kurt. Then he showed me people making a time capsule. The time capsule was a huge concrete cylinder, and people were putting tee-shirts in it. The tee-shirts had slogans on them. Finally, I ...

Hungry Ghosts Amongst Us? © 2006  Jonathan Zap I just had an all night experience in the dream time that seems highly related to the mind parasite subject. Usually we cycle in and out of REM sleep, with larger portions of REM clustering near the end of the sleep cycle.  Last night’s dream was unusual, even neurologically,  in that it seemed  to be continuous throughout most of the night. Dreams, by the way, usually last about as long as they seem to last, the notion of instantaneous dreams----which dates back to an anecdotal account of a Frenchman’s dream in the 19th Century---has been disproved by modern sleep research. When the dream begins I am hanging out in some sort of building where a basement construction project is happening.  Some floor boards are missing and beneath them I see glimpses of a gigantic sub basement where ...