Today, an interesting symbol that can span in size from small in your hand, to large buildings or worlds you walk through. We are exploring geometry in dreams.
Geometric shapes, patterns, objects, buildings, or geometry in the world as you explore it – a flower, a plant, a stone, a shell on the beach… this is the domain we are in today. Temples are built on geometric balance and understanding; labyrinths make use of geometric paths; a stone path contains crystalline geometry we can’t see.
So we are surrounded by geometry, as background to our dreams, and sometimes it comes to the foreground in objects or spaces we interact with. Let’s explore a geometric symbol in dreams and then see what we might make of it.
We enter an outdoor garden space. The path of smooth stones makes a nice noise underfoot, and these stones cover a circular area. We walk to the centre, and look out, seeing several white stone paths leading in different directions. One of them has brambles across it, and another leads across the lawn to a garden folly – a circular, temple-like building. We walk towards it, noticing only that it has columns, and has steps. We enter, and people we know are there, with a cocktail-party-like ambience. A woman in a long white dress approaches, with braided hair and gold jewellery. She gives us a golden coloured star, it feels like brass but shines like gold. We clasp it firmly, and remember the feel of its points on our palm as we wake.
Here we have a dream that shared a few geometries, both subtle and foregrounded. Some of the key geometries were: the circle, the garden folly, and the star.
Entering the dream on the white, circular pathway feels like a fresh, open, whole space. Circles are about completion, perfection, infinity, everything contained within them. There’s something restful about them in a garden. Arriving in a space like this feels like the beginning of a meditation rather than the beginning of a quest – or an arrival to a place of all possibilities, rather than a challenge. And they’re also the central hub of a wheel, where spokes come off. This one did have some spokes off it – paths to different destinations. Two were highlighted, and we chose the easier, more appealing one.
This path led us towards a garden folly – a structure made often for visual enjoyment at a distance, in a large garden. This one appeared to be round, and columned. Again the circle echoes, and a light colour, maybe not white, but a light grey perhaps. The 2D circle has become 3D. We enter it, through the columns, and are within what is now a cylinder. The cylinder in the centre can also be thought of as the middle of a torus, so it’s a central, axis, power place. It is a place for ceremonial things to happen.
And what ends up happening next is indeed a ceremonial gift. We are given a star, a geometric shape consisting of two triangles – a fire triangle (up) and a water triangle (down) overlaid on each other. This presentation of the fire triangle and water triangle is a very transmutational symbol. It is rich in further meaning as well. We might consider what this shape means to us personally, and also what it represents as sacred geometry, culture and physics.
To put it all together, we are being shown a progression from a 2D circle – central, infinite – down a spoke (path) to a 3D circle (cylinder, torus) – centrality of power – and here we are given a symbol that is about transmutation and transformation. It’s a powerful dream, and would be worth considering what was happening in your waking life at this time, and if you were asking a particular question of your life, because in the dream, we were handed keys to change a situation completely, to transform it or transmute it, taking all that is in it and bringing forth something completely different.
Circles, or mandalas, when they appear in dreams, can have rich significance and effect on your waking life. To listen to a knowledgeable conversation about mandalas, and how they have appeared and been therapeutical and radically life-changing for some, I would recommend listening to the Mandala episode of This Jungian Life.