I am a dreamer, literally. All my Piscean life I dream great epoch dreams of adventure and exploration, full-color, full-detail, full-emotion, sometimes lucid and prophetic. Way back on this day in 2014, I had a very different kind of dream. It was so disturbing that I spent that morning writing this piece, which I found today in my FaceBook memories…an excellent form of personal divination.
Imbolc 2014 was the first year I dedicated to the Goddess Aphrodite and the Great Work of understanding Perfect Divine Love. Beginning with the break-up of an engagement, my life was then torn to shreds as She demonstrated in excruciating detail all the ways in which Perfect Love was lacking. This dream forced me to remember and explore the emotions of terrible heartbreak.
This dream still clings in my memory like the greasy stink of burning pitch, heavy and acrid. On this sixth anniversary of that dream, and six years into my work with Aphrodite, I revisit the same lessons. I’m at a different octave for this lap of the magick-go-round. It still sucks just as hard, but for different reasons…
Dreams Not to be Forgotten
Originally Posted on May 23, 2014
The dream began as I am bursting with love and happiness, full of giddy excitement on my wedding day. Dressed in white and delicate laces, hair twisted gracefully with tiny white flowers, and cascading in wispy curls to the shoulders. I felt like a full-body smile, as though the flesh was simply not strong enough to contain all the feels and I might burst into a cascade of rainbows at any moment. I had all the emotions of the bride that cannot wait to get to the altar and claim her prize.
I am about to marry a “dream man,” a dashing, symbolic man that my subconscious supplied. For a shining few moments, in the dappled sunshine of a forest wedding, I was the happiest woman on earth and I felt beautiful. There are flowers in full bloom, in perfect weather, with gaily dressed friends and family gathered around, ribbons and twinkling and all the trappings of my “perfect” wedding day. I was playing the role of a stereotypical maiden, full of hope and life.
I explained to giggling, congratulatory women around me that this marriage was a dream come true; that I could hardly believe that *this* wonderful man was choosing *me* to spend his life with; I was so honored to become his wife. Just to look at this person was to swoon with bliss…let’s just say that when my subconscious creates a fantasy groom, it does a stellar job.
The moment of triumph; we are at the altar. We stand hand in hand, and the officiant asks if there is anyone there who objects to our union. Like the stab of a knife, a woman I don’t know breaks desperately into the scene, throws herself before us. She proclaims her undying devotion for my groom, and asks him to marry her instead because “he was the one that got away and she’s always regretted losing him.”
Without pause, he rushes to her, accepting her proposal in passionate embrace. Then turns to me and says he’s sorry but he just has to marry her instead because he’s always secretly loved her more than life itself. However, he wants me to stay and be their bridesmaid for the ceremony. You know…quietly take the consolation prize, and just step off to the side. Be a dear, and don’t bother me further…just shove over…
The scene shifts, and all of a sudden I am wearing a hideous moss-green bridesmaid’s dress with 1980’s Aquanet helmet hairdo. Captive, I am forced to stand witness as MY LOVER marries this other woman. At my altar stone, at my wedding, in front of my friends and family, and I stand there dying. Frozen solid in pain and horror, the maiden light within me turns to a crone’s darkness. Chilled despair and rage liquefies inside me, weeping my essence down into the earth. I bleed out until my body is a husk in moss green satin. The roses in my hands dry and crumble into dust.
The dream shifts such that I’m now viewing the joy of their wedding unfold through the husk of this dead body. I am now one of the hollow, moss-covered tree stumps standing on the distant sidelines of that forest clearing. I shrivel until I am a small, invisible consciousness peeking out from the waste, a ghost in the shadows.
That is when I was once again aware of my bed, and the cat beside me, and the dawning light through my bedroom window. But in that dreamy middle-realm before fully waking, the deep mourning and humiliation wrecked me. All the loss of my love and pride crashed down. The crush was paralyzing as I wept into the pillow, trying not to wake my sleeping children. The jealousy, the want, the horror of rejection and embarrassment. I wanted the emotional pain to stop….just to die completely from the incarnate torture chamber.
Gods, I remember that feeling. There was a distant time during my divorce that this is how I woke up every morning. This state of abject self-loathing, shunted to the side like last week’s garbage; this was my life. I barely survived my divorce. I’m a stress-starver; I lose my appetite when I’m upset and simply cannot eat. I almost willed myself to non-existence by physically wasting away. But that was many pounds regained, and a very long time ago.
Healing the Witch’s Broken Heart
I know it was a dream, but I’m a witch, and the dream times are the message board, the chat-room of the Gods and guides who work with me. The subconscious knows, and through dreams, my conscious mind is given marching orders for what it needs to do. For me, there are rarely *just* dreams. This dream in 2014 was the shadow of the past, casting long and piercing claws into then. Six years later, and today it emerges again in a different way, to be reexamined within the pains of now.
There is no denying that I still have healing work to do on my tender Piscean heart. There are scars thickened by each of the subsequent relationships I’ve enjoyed, but then lost in the 10 years since then. Sometimes I think I’ve laid these fears of betrayal, disregard and abandonment to rest, but then they rise from the grave like zombies to eat my brains. This round, I’m forced to reconcile betrayals caused by those I considered my most beloved family, my dearest witching friends and my spiritual partner…
The divine works through me in such a way that I follow these bread crumbs through the dark forest of consciousness. This particular crumb is rotten every time. By following it, I once more feel lost in the woods, just a moss-covered husk of a long-dead tree, now covered in thorny brambles of my own arrangement – a defense mechanism behind which to hide from the chance of further woundings.
When a pattern like this repeats, it is a divine message that there is yet something that I must evolve and adapt about my own self, in my perspective, my actions, or my choices. I know that thorny, bitter isolation won’t actually help me, but these days that path of avoidance is too easy. Good thing I just found a new therapist, because Whooboy! …imma need the professional help! There is much work to be done, and I’m doing it; witching process never ends.
~Heron
For Witchcraft spell ideas for healing the heart after heartbreak, check out these links:
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