Last posts on christiane riedel dream interpretation

INITIATION TO ALCHEMY

2021-04-14T20:30:00+02:00

Dear blog friends,

You certainly remember how in our previous study the dream surprisingly advised Loren to express her anger. When, a few days later, she felt this instinctive emotion that she had always repressed rising up in her, she followed the advice of her dream and expressed her anger to her husband.

Then... oh paradox! Her so-called negative emotion triggered a positive emotion in her husband, he hugged her with love. Loren felt liberated, energised, happy.

But what if she had once again repressed her anger?

Let us see now the case of another woman.

Some time ago Anne Marie phoned me very worried. She had just had a very bad dream. Judge for yourself:

She dreamed:

I'm in a living room and I see a dark-haired child who repeats that Léon Ceint - you pronounce the t - that Léon Ceinte has been killed. He was murdered. The child says it with great pain.

Before I tell you the interpretation of her dream, let me introduce you to this charming and delicate young woman.

Anne Marie was expecting a second child. The day before she called me, during the evening, she made her husband François certain remarks which he did not appreciate and he brutally reproached her. He was harsh and hurt Anne Marie.

Since our friend always wants a peaceful life, she consequently tried not to upset her husband, she remained silent, took refuge in the bedroom, hid her tears and wanted to forget this painful moment.

And that night she received a dream that certainly commented on what had happened.

Let's see the different images:

The living room

The living room refers to the space where the family gathers to spend quality time together. The dream thus places its scenario in the setting where, the previous evening, Anne Marie was reproached by her husband.

I see a dark-haired child

A child has a spontaneous way of being. It represents a natural aspect of the dreamer who is growing up and needs to be cared for. The brown hair colour indicates that this child is close to the unconscious: he lives and reacts instinctively, he shows his emotions, his affects, he expresses his feelings.

The child repeats that Léon Ceint - e - has been killed, murdered.

The dream insists heavily on the crime committed.

Who is Léon Ceint-e-?

Anne Marie doesn't know anyone by that name.

Let us pause here to see a very interesting aspect of dreams which was already well known by dream interpreters in Antiquity. Dreams play with syllables, they make puns and plays on words. This is called "the language of birds".

The first name Leon clearly means "Lion", it confers an ability to adopt leonine behaviour.

For Anne Marie, as for many, the lion, the king of animals, impresses with his majesty when he advances, he roars with such power that his frightened adversaries immediately retreat.

Léon Ceint-e

Let's listen to the word "Léon Ceinte", could there be a pun in this name? When she heard this name, the young woman, who was about to give birth, first heard:

"L" = elle = she,

"é" = est = is,

"onCeinte" = enceinte = pregnant.

"L é onceinte" = elle est enceinte = she's pregnant

Thus Léon Ceinte refers to the young pregnant woman who could behave like a lion, a lioness.

But Anne Marie also heard "sainte" in "ceinte", and "sainte" means "saint", "holy".

Ah?...

...Yes! ... Go on! ... Push your analysis to the end, and don't be afraid to make the necessary deductions... :

Leon Saint?

When this young woman starts to shout and roar like a lioness, yes, then she is a saint.

What is a saint?

The French version of Wikipedia states:

"Saints are men or women distinguished for their spiritual elevation and suggested to believers as models of life because of a personality trait or behaviour deemed exemplary."

So, answering, arguing, fighting, shouting would be an exemplary behaviour and the proof of a certain spiritual elevation?

The French dictionary Grand Robert, the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains:

A saint is one "who conforms to the precepts of religious morality or who is inspired by piety".

So what is piety?

Still according to the Grand Robert de la langue française, piety is the quality of someone who shows "a fervent attachment to the service of God and to the practices of religion".

What does it mean? What does "Léon Ceinte" mean?

You've got it.

For the dream, to be able to roar like a lion is not only the characteristic of spiritual elevation, but it is also a pious behaviour that marks a fervent attachment to the service of God and the practices of religion.

I know that many people bristle at this statement, but my job is to translate the dream, not to try to please.

Alas, what does the dream teach us? What does the child repeat with pain?

Léon Ceinte is dead, he was murdered.

Anne Marie collected herself for a moment, went within herseld and said to me:

- So, Christiane, if I understand correctly, when last night I didn't want to 'yell' at my husband because his harsh words had hurt me, I killed the lion in me, the one who lives in a fervent attachment to serving God?

Like the child, Anne Marie and I had a heavy heart.

Anne Marie and I remained silent for a moment. With great astonishment, with immense gratitude, we welcomed the unthinkable advice of the dream, which always comes to guide us through the trials of daily life.

But how can we imagine the advice of dreams?

How can we think that anger and shouting, so decried, so condemned, are services rendered to the divine, are a religious or spiritual practice?

Astonishing!

Is Zeus not the master of lightning? Is God's wrath not "quickly kindled" (Psalm 2, verse 12)? This is what turns us upside down today! But there is a truth here that people knew in the past: the right to get angry in order to defend oneself was a sacred right, a moment when the black divinity in oneself came to express itself.

This dream places us in the midst of alchemy.

Yes, that's right:

Since we live too much in the light of the conscious mind, of rational thoughts, which claim to be superior, then, in an opposite and complementary way, it is at the obscure and misunderstood physical level, it is in this animal body within us that we meet the divine.

This instinctive, animal divinity manifests itself to Anne Marie, as it does to many, in the form of the roaring lion, whose power makes his opponents recoil.

Is it any wonder that 4500 years ago the Nubians in southern Egypt worshipped the lion-headed god Apedemak, the god of war, victory and fertility?

The Egyptians also worshipped the goddess Sekhmet "the mighty", a woman with the head of a lioness, nicknamed "the wrath of Ra", the sun god; she is also the one who governs the domain of female cycles, of fertility.

Strange concordances of these images with "Leon Ceinte". As Jung showed, these similarities prove that there exist in the unconscious, through time, constant images common to humanity. He called these images "archetypal" and thus demonstrated the existence of the collective unconscious, of infinite dimension compared to the personal unconscious.

With this great image of the lion and the lioness, the dream today has come to remind the young pregnant mother of the crime she has committed by refusing to let this god within her express itself, this same fundamental, archetypal power that would have given her the strength

SAVING THE EARTH AND THE ART OF RAINMAKING

2021-01-09T15:18:00+01:00

Dear blog friends,

For several weeks now I have taken you on a study of three dreams whose subject turned out to be one of the major topical subjects: ecology. Indeed, these three dreams correspond exactly to the definition of ecology, which seeks to "create a better balance between man and his natural environment as well as the protection of the latter". (1)

In these three dreams, if they were understood correctly, the unconscious would show that there is a link between the love life of young women and the quality of life on the earth around them.

These three dreams then led us each time to ask ourselves the questions:

Could there be a connection between the outer world and the inner world?

Could the quality of our earthly environment outside be related to the quality of our inner, instinctive life, which the alchemists called “our inner earth”, whose other name is the unconscious?

Could our outer Earth be ill because our inner earth is mistreated?

Would it be then that by taking care of one's inner Earth, one's instinctive and spiritual Nature, one would also take care of Nature, the concrete and material Earth outside?

This question may have seemed bizarre, unrealistic, unbearable, even foolish or ridiculous to you.

And yet, other people, far more eminent than me, have already asked this question and given the answer more than a hundred years ago.

Who then?

Well, to tell you, I am going to take you today to other latitudes, and I am going to tell you an absolutely true story. I will take you to China and you will discover the absolutely unbelievable story of the rainmaker.

But first I have to introduce you to Richard Wilhelm, a friend of Jung's.

Richard Wilhelm is a German Lutheran missionary who went to China at the end of the 19th century to evangelise.

Like the Jesuits in the 17th century, he noted the deep spirituality that animated the Chinese. His aim was not to found a new church in China, but to be a witness to the love of Christ. He declared that this was how the Universal Spiritual Church would spread, without political conflict, and that the Chinese civilisation was, in his opinion, an authentic form of this Church.

The German pastor then founded a school to develop cultural dialogue between China and the Christian West.

The school quickly became very well known among the German and Chinese authorities.

The school was located in the city of Tsing Tao, Qingdao in Chinese, a port in northern China, where the Germans had built an important naval base as a settlement base.

The city had received the political status of a German colonial concession.

This means that the Chinese government granted the Germans the right to participate in the management of the city, to sit on the city council and to supervise it. This status also protected the city and guaranteed its inhabitants immunity in the case of conflict.

Besides this school, let us also note, for the anecdote, that the Germans in 1903 opened a brewery in Tsing Tao for their needs; Tsing Tao beer became the most famous Chinese beer.

But the work of the German pastor did not stop with the creation of his school. Life led him to an exceptional activity which, over the course of time, has had an immense international influence, an influence which continues to grow even today.

Here is how:

In 1912 revolts multiplied in China and led to the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. The senior officials of the fallen regime were exposed to the greatest danger and sought refuge in foreign concessions, such as the German Tsing Tao concession where Richard Wilhelm resided.

Wilhelm's reputation attracted many dignitaries: the Minister of Education and his deputy minister took refuge in the German concession.

An exceptional cooperation took place between the Deputy Minister of Education and Richard Wilhelm.

The Deputy Minister of Education, Lao Naï Suan, was a wise man, an authentic scholar, whose wife was a direct descendant of Confucius. He saw in Richard Wilhelm the one to whom he could entrust the treasures of Chinese civilization in turmoil.

These treasures came in two forms:

The philosophy of Confucius

The wise man therefore entrusted Richard Wilhelm with the task of preserving the work and philosophy of Confucius. Thus, thanks to the cooperation of these two eminent men, a library was created, dedicated to the work and philosophy of Confucius.

The I Ching

Above all, the Chinese sage entrusted the German pastor with the treasure of Chinese civilisation, the oracular book that is more than four thousand years old: the I Ching.

For two years he worked with Wilhelm to translate the I Ching into German. The venerable Chinese master of thought thus initiated Wilhelm into the secret teaching of the "Book of Changes" and entrusted him with the task of passing it on to Westerners so that the book could come alive again and spread in a new land.

With the teaching completed and the work finished, Wilhelm, who had retired, was recalled to Germany while Master Lao Naï Souan passed away.

In 1920 Wilhelm entrusted his translation of the I Ching to his friend Carl Gustav Jung. Jung made this masterpiece known to the West.

And Jung, speaking of this book, later wrote:

"I am taking this risk because I am now in my eighth decade and I am no longer impressed by the changing opinions of men: the thoughts of the old masters are more valuable to me than the philosophical prejudices of the Western mind."

It would take another half-century for a great inspired scholar, Etienne Perrot, to translate the I Ching into French in 1970.

Since then, many more translations have been published.

But let us return to this remarkable man, Richard Wilhelm. In Jung's eulogy of his friend, he said that he had received more from him than from anyone else. Would anyone dare to accuse Jung or Richard Wilhelm of talking nonsense?

Well, well, well!

It was Richard Wilhelm who told Jung the absolutely unbelievable story of the rainmaker! He was an objective witness of these facts. And it was precisely Jung who made this event known to the West.

So now here is the story of the rainmaker.

"The province where Richard Wilhelm was staying was affected by severe drought. For months not a single drop of water fell and the situation became catastrophic.

The Catholics held processions, the Protestants sent up prayers, and the Chinese burned incense sticks and fired guns to scare off the demons of the drought. Finally, the Chinese decided to go to a neighbouring province to look for an old man, who was said to be a "rainmaker".

When the old man arrived with the delegates in the parched province, he asked for a small house to be provided for him. He shut himself up there for three days.

On the fourth day, clouds gathered at a time of the year when no snow was to be expected and ... there was a heavy snowfall, unusually heavy.

There were so many rumours about this extraordinary rainmaker that Wilhelm wanted to find out for sure and went to see the rainmaker. He asked him how he had done it.

As a true European, Wilhelm told him:

"They call you the rainmaker, can you tell me how you made snow? "

The Chinese replied :

"- I didn't make the snow, I'm not responsible for it."

"- But what did you do during the three days?"

"- Oh, that, I can explain to you. It is simple. I come from a country where things are as they should be. Here things are not in order; they are not as they should be according to the Heavenly Order, so the whole country is outside the Tao. (When I arrived in this country here, I was no longer in Tao (2)) nor was I in the natural order of things, because I was in a country that was not in order, so all I had to do was wait three days, until I found myself in Tao, and then, naturally, the Tao made the snow." "

What is the Tao? How can we talk about it in a few words? I am not a specialist, so you will forgive me for my inadequacies.

Tao is the divine principle at the origin of all things, it is the way, the path. To be in Tao is to be in harmony with the divine principle, with nature.

In the Taoist conception, there is a continuity between nature and man, between the world of spirit, of life, of the psyche (3) and that of matter, in which spirit and life manifest themselves and take concrete form.

MERRY CHRISTMAS WISHES

2020-12-24T11:07:00+01:00

Dear blog friends,

Time goes by, time goes by, we have so much to do, but we won't let another day slip by without telling you how much we think of you, especially in these hours when tradition and sincerity invite us to exchange warm and heartfelt words.

With all our heart we wish you a

Merry Christmas time

where we celebrate a winter night, a night when an obscure woman gave birth to a divine child, the saviour.

May in these troubled times the peace of God reign in your hearts, a peace that is said to surpass all understanding.

With our faithful friendship to all of you, dear blog friends

Christiane and Marianne

Translated by Marianne