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Thus snakes are the messengers who bring the dreams from the ‘gods’. The staff, or the trunk of the world tree, is the channel of communication between worlds. The underworld is the world of understanding. The earth, or above ground, is our consciousness. Dreams connect the two worlds. That they also connect to heaven represents our aspirations, our ‘dreams’. When one learns to interpret dreams one quickly learns that they do bring information to the dreamer and as in Epidaurus, that information can be used to ‘heal’ and it can be used to expand consciousness meaning that this knowledge brings self-awareness and insight to the dreamer.
That some religious authorities such as Christianity, treat snakes as ‘baddies’ can also easily be explained. For when you understand how to interpret dreams and reap the ensuing benefits, then there is no need to rely on a religious authority to guide you through life, for learning to use dreams leads to independence and self-sufficiency. In addition, and most importantly, dreams deal only in truth. They do not peddle in lies. The insights gained trough interpreting dreams are truths which “lie too deep for taint”, as Wilfred Owen expressed it. Not surprisingly, many authorities regard insight acquired through dreams as somewhat of a threat to their power and I suggest that is why we have we have allowed ourselves to ignore or forget the truths contained in mythology. I would also go so far as to say that since we stopped ‘believing’ in mythology and instead began to treat myths as just a collection if interesting and colourful stories with as much relevance to our understanding of the world as fairy tales, then that was the point at which we started on a slippery downhill slope. In other words, an understanding of dreams is essential to our well-being.
In order to get anywhere with the research into snakes, it was necessary to work through a jungle of lies and deceit built up over the centuries by all those con men, frauds and charlatans. It would be no exaggeration to describe the process of research as akin to cleaning up one of those nightmare houses one sees on television programmes such as “How Clean Is Your House” where the rooms are stuffed full of built up rubbish and filth because their owners have neither cleaned nor tidied the house for years.
It is appropriate at this point to discuss the dream I had when writing up this research.
DREAM:
I am in the house of a colleague from work whom I shall call Mary. It does not look like her real house. In the dream I am aware that Mary’s mother is dying although the mother is not present in the dream. I am also aware that I have left my own home.
I am in the living room which is large and box-shaped. All four walls have large windows their entire length. Within this large living room are a couple of very small rooms also with large windows along their walls. All the rooms are jam packed with beds and people. The room and the people are dirty and untidy and many people are smoking. I find a bed in a corner of the main room where I intend to sleep the night. The whole place is so dirty that I can’t even get clean when I visit the bathroom. At one point I remember visiting one of the smaller rooms also. The atmosphere is extremely unpleasant and I feel very dirty.
Just before waking up, one final, fleeting image I see is of a transformed living room. The place is clean and tidy, the beds are made, there are no people and with fewer beds, the room has suddenly become very spacious.
INTERPRETATION:
This dream came the same night as I had written a first draft of the results of my research on mythology and snakes. On starting, I had felt very enthusiastic about doing a little more reading on mythology and then writing up the research. This is the clue to interpreting the dream for Mary, my colleague, is someone who I also characterise as being extremely enthusiastic. Once the connection has been made, there are other aspects of Mary that have relevance here. Mary wears the veneer of being a ‘nicey-nice’ person, which is very much the ethic these days when dealing with adults and children, although her real character is very much more matter of fact and practical. In conversations with Mary I have discovered that she feels isolated at work because others do not share her ‘matter of fact’ opinions. This feeling of isolation is one reason why Mary does not stand up against authority, even when authority is obviously wrong.
Mary’s character identifies one of my own problems in that the work I am doing here is going against authority that I was brought up to trust and to believe: so much so that I still feel uncomfortable with what I am saying here.
In the dream I am in a living room: this represents earning one’s living. The beds represent dreams or, rather, mythology, for that was the subject being researched. The reason mythology and dreams are represented by beds is that mythology uses the language of dreams, that is, metaphor. There is no order in the room, it is stinky and untidy and people are smoking. The world of mythology is like this. It is a filthy living room because people use mythology to make a living, therefore it is tainted with money. The smokey atmosphere represents the difficulty one has of seeing through the fuggy atmosphere or, to put it another way, of seeing through the smoke screens created by people who use mythology in this way.
At one point I find myself in a small room off the main living room. But which is just a smaller version of the living room This is a niche and represents the article I read on article in which the author compares the use of the Wand of Hermes and the Staff of Asklepios. By comparing the wand with the staff the author is creating a difference where there is none (the small room is just the same as the main living room in the dream). In modern parlance what this is saying is that the author has merely identified a ‘niche in the market’ but the niche is artificial and only created as a means of making money.
The living room is box shaped because logic and reason are used when writing about myths. This type of thinking is ‘transparent’, is easy to see into and very visible, hence the windows in living room. However, the kind of experience and understanding that dreams access comes from deeper down and use intuitive sense, therefore we can’t give logic and reason to explain them. None of this experience and understanding was evident in any of the articles or books used in the research.
The dream therefore makes it graphically clear exactly the current state of affairs with respect to the entire canon of mythology and the reasons for this state of affairs. The rest of the contents of our libraries is no different. Chaos rules.
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