We’re in a shallow pool of seawater, a rock pool in the calm shallows. People play on the beach and playground near us. We have a flimsy “shark head” costume on over our head, resting on the shoulders. We wander to and fro in the water, not really seeing out that well, wearing our shark head mask above the water level. It’s painfully obvious we’re not a shark, but people on the beach are wary. We continue moving about as the shark in a bored, distracted way for a bit, then the dream ends.
Today we are exploring masks and costumes in dreams. This example contains a mask that’s larger than just the face, so it’s kind of also a costume.
Let’s explore this deep topic from a few angles.
Firstly, masks are quite common in cultures worldwide, whether for dress-up parties or ceremonial purposes, and most of us at some point have worn masks and costumes.
Whether it’s a costume making you an animal or a pop culture character, or a ‘costume’ you put on for cultural or ritual reasons, it shifts you from being yourself into something else. Even the officewear outfit is a costume most of us wouldn’t willingly wear unless it was culturally enforced.
So we become someone else – a work persona, a character, a spirit, a ritual power, or an animal. Usually this transformation serves to lend us the energy of that which we dress up as, and done willingly and with intention, will increase the power we do gain from the costume.
We can also look at how masks don’t fit. In the case of the dream and the poorly convincing flimsy shark mask, we are neither ourselves or the shark, we are hampered by it, and shuffling back and forwards in the pool – behaviours we wouldn’t do as sharks or as ourselves. In the case of office wear, if we are not someone who aligns with that mandated costume, it can leave us feeling less ourselves and a poor imitation of the professional persona the outfit aims for.
There’s another angle we could explore.
- Are you convinced by the mask / costume in the dream?
- Are other people convinced by it?
- If it convinced others but not you, what does that say about the costume or situation (or your behaviour in it)?
- If it convinced you but not others, where might you be under an illusion, or where are others ‘seeing through’ you?
The power of ‘good’ masks and costumes is that they convince you and allow you to bring forth energy you’d never usually be able to bring forth, through the power of the mask or costume. They also convince the audience, especially in ceremonial work, and allow them to have an experience with the greater representation, not simply you-wearing-a-costume.
When this dream symbol came to me, I knew I had to include something from this article by Wallace Shawn, which explores costumes and our belief in them.
We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there’s a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he’s playing himself in his daily life, he’s playing a part, he’s performing, just as he’s performing when he plays a part on stage. He knows that when he’s on stage performing, he’s in a sense deceiving his friends in the audience less than he does in daily life, not more, because on stage he’s disclosing the parts of himself that in daily life he struggles to hide. He knows, in fact, that the role of himself is actually a rather small part, and that when he plays that part he must make an enormous effort to conceal the whole universe of possibilities that exists inside him.
[…]
In various religions, priests put on their clothes quite solemnly, according to a ritual. Policemen, soldiers, janitors, and hotel maids get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work, go to their locker rooms, remove their clothes, and get dressed again in their respective uniforms. The actor goes to the theater, goes to his dressing room, and puts on his costume. And as he does so, he remembers the character he’s going to play—how the character feels, how the character speaks. The actor, in costume, looks in the mirror, and it all comes back to him.
– Wallace Shawn (Why I call myself a Socialist)
We could look further into masks and costumes in dreams and ask what is happening in your life around the time you dream of them.
What identities are you growing out of, or no longer feel right? What feels flimsy or has become obvious to you, which before you would have accepted as an integral part of yourself?
Alternatively, what identity might you be trying on, and how does it make you feel? Does it enliven you and bring you energy and joy? Or does it leave you listless and bored, like our shark outfit in the pool did?
Where you are trying on a new identity, it can be helpful to road test it somewhere safe. Dreams give you a chance to road test identities and acts, especially if you remember that this is something you can in fact do in dreams. It’s a safe space to try things out and test behaviours, roles and other aspects of yourself.
Masks and costumes can also be used to create non-identity, such as in the military, or in pandemic situations with full-white suits and face covers. The identity in these situations is secondary to the purpose, and any one of the people in that outfit would do the job the same (theoretically).
Costumes and masks can also be psychological armour. Through appearances, you can enforce distance or space, and have an illusion of safety – or create an effect in those around you, such as fear or avoidance. Doing this can have the effect of bringing emotional distance between you and others at the same time – whether that’s your intended outcome or otherwise.
There are many other ways of exploring masks and costumes, especially in cultural contexts, which I haven’t entered into here. Depending on your culture or traditions, you’ll often have many more, specific associations and meanings for masks and costumes which go well beyond this territory. If you do and wish to share, I’d love to hear – feel free to comment below.