cat dreamer

Cat goddess.  I dreamt of her last night.

Origami Bastet by Joseph Wu Origami

And snakes.  Two twining brightly multi-coloured snakes.  The cat-goddess and the snakes seemed to happily coexist.

Ancients believed that dreams are premonitions predicting the future:

• The first known book on dream interpretation, now called the 'Chester Beatty papyrus' (dating from the 12th dynasty), came from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and is preserved in the British Museum.
• In Homer's Illiad, Agamemnon is visited by a messenger of the god Zeus to prescribe his future actions.
• From India, a document called the Atharvaveda (dated to the 2nd C BCE) contains a chapter on dream omens.
• A Babylonian dream guide was discovered in ruins of the city of Ninevah among tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal (685-627BC).

The moment light peeped through the cracks between my eyelids, my inner Jungan dream analyst sprung into action.

According to Jung, cat represents instinctual energy that's been tamed and is relatively close to consciousness; feminine power/energy; the feminine archetype.

In ancient Egypt the feline-headed goddess Bastet, was considered a personification of the soul of Isis. Isis being the goddess of protection and sensual pleasure.

Ancient Egyptians praised cats for their ability to kill snakes, even cobras.

Bastet's twin, or her mirror, goddess Sekhmet, wears a cobra crown.

Given that in ancient Greece the serpent was seen as a healer - Asclepius carried two intertwined on his wand (a symbol today associated with medicine and/or healing) - it makes more sense that it was actually Sehmet I dreamt of.  The lion-headed war mother-goddess, who is also the goddess of the sun, healing and healers, is cat elevated to its most powerful expression of feminine energy.

Australian Aboriginal rock painting of the "Rainbow Serpent" by Mark O'Neil (GNU).

The original custodians of this burned land of Oz I call home, consider the Rainbow Serpent as a benevolent protector of its people.  It is closely linked to water, land, social relationships, life and fertility.  Again, things feminine.

The message of the dream?  Although I set out on the info gathering, analytical path, my conclusion is purely from instinct:

Healing of the world lies in full acceptance of the feminine power.

‎"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives."

 [William C. Dement, professor of psychiatry (b. 1928)]