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Symbols and Icons

This is a new, experimental list--not of dreams with symbolism (every dream in the world'd be here!)... I mean something more blatant: icons such as the yin-yang, the cross, the mandala, the swastika; or the stylized cartoon atom, or crescent moon, or star. Images like the mushroom cloud, objects like wedding rings, phrases like the cosmic egg. These symbols carry not just meaning, like Chinese characters (though some of the more primal, pictorial ones ARE iconic the way I mean), but carry emotional and even spiritual impact. Archetypes of ideas and things rather than of human roles, but archetypes with icons, logos, clear brand names.

RELATED TOPICS: visual and verbal dream puns - spells - language - dream math and logic - genital symbolism (Freudian phallic symbols, but also clitoral and vaginal symbolism) - Freud - Jung - Jungian shadows - cups and vessels - blades - crystals - mirrors and reflections - See also the full INDEX OF SUBJECTS.

The World Dream Bank has 2100 dreams and dream images plus 500 other pages on dreamwork and shamanism, creativity, genius, art, surrealism and fantasy. Unless otherwise noted, all material copyright Chris Wayan, 2001-2010.

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BELL CURVE IN THE DARK: by Wayan; 1982/8/17, a dream fable.
A human pinball game played in the dark, with bells for stoppers, sorting people into a Gaussian bell-curve...
THE BOOK: by SAO (Shawn Allen O'Neal); October 1989, a mandala-like dream-icon
The crystalline figure on the cover of the book in my dream seemed to hold as many answers as its title...
BORN IN A CAVE: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2007/4/20 to 2007/8/9, a painted series of rite-of-passage dreams.
I keep dreaming of awkward but successful transitions into new life, and paint them all in one landscape...
BUCKLEY'S BLOATED BOMB: by Wayan; 1983/11/20, a political nightmare.
I meet William F. Buckley and his beloved pet pig. Only the hog's a live H-Bomb, and the leash is a trigger...
CAUTION: REPULSIVE GUY, REPULSIVE PET, REPULSIVE ISSUE
CELEBRATE BOTH: by Henry Sultan, 2005/6/26, a painting that blends two dreams
At a snake-weaving party I flirt with my anima, who tells me how the cake fell off the roof. I think “At last we’re really connecting!”...
CLIMB DOWN THE PINNACLES: by Jenny Badger Sultan, l995/12/24, a surreal dream and painting
Decision by decision, we made our way down immense rock crags. Below, I had to put out a deadly fire, a fire as solid as wood or stone, with a white staff. What am I really trying to calm?
COSMIC EGG AND ENERGY BIRD: by Wayan; 1971/12/4, an early mystical dream.
A mystical vision of the Cosmic Egg gets messy when it hatches and the Bird escapes...
A DIFFICULT PATH: by Anna Kingsford; 1877/11/3, an advisory dream.
I lead my daughter up a thorny path, but she’s getting badly scratched. Shall I leave her in that fishing village? She wants to...
DREAMKU, SEPTEMBER 2006: by Roswila; thirty dream-haiku with various dates from 1960-2006
One dream-poem in haiku style each day for a month! Ghosts, snow, penguins, yoga babies, elves who leave their tree...
EXPLORATION OF TAROT IMAGES IN A DREAM: by Roswila, 1998; an analytical numerate dream
Tarot cards fuse and meanings layer, to warn me I've similarly (con)fused real and trance-induced memories during therapy...
CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES
FALL INTO FEAR: by Brenda Ferrimani; 2001/9/12, a 9/11 nightmare transformed by lucidity
I’m falling into endless darkness. I feel like screaming, but then I remind myself I’m dreaming. “What is for me here?” I demand. “SHOW ME!” I begin rising toward the stars. Huge metal discs with alien writing rise with me...
FREEDOM THROUGH BOXES: by Wayan; an experiment in art & pain, Jan 2005
I've always loved curves, color, dreams, sex, texture... and planning, too.
So one day I drew 100 black boxes in ink--no color, no curves, no erasure! And then I began to seek...
GOD'S THREE DIALS: by Wayan; 1992/11/20, a heavenly dream.
God built 3 dials to check: body, soul, and time. But the Holy Spirit's lazy, only checks one! It's up to us...
THE GOD-STAFF: by Wayan; 1995/4/9, a warm-globe dream.
In our steamy future, after the cities drown, I'm hiking through Rainbow Tunnel, when I meet a holy man...
A GOLDEN KEY IN A CHEAP LIGHT: by Wayan; 200K, 1996/7/9, a subtle dream lesson
I was so lonely the potheads on Haight looked good. I dreamed I had the Golden Key, but under a cheap sodium streetlamp, ALL my keys looked gold! Then I met true gold: a woman meditating until she shone...
CAUTION: NUDITY, HAIGHT ST DECADENCE AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
KING KONG CRAB: by Wayan; 2008/9/20, a dream poem; Dreamverse #29
One wizardry-classmate summons strange beings; another's learned how not to. Some things should be avoided at rush hour...
LEONINE TRINITY: by Wayan; 1991/2000. Digital "woodcut" of recurring dream figures.
A goddess in a dream once told me to seek 3 and only 3 qualities in a mate...
CAUTION: NUDITY
LIFECYCLE: by Wayan; 1980s. Pencil sketch of daydream
The life-loop. A woman bears a child who grows up to become herself, who bears a child who...
CAUTION: SKETCHY NUDITY
THE MAGIC WORDS: by Wayan; 1974/5/29, an early dream on word-magic.
Humanity in the future desperately needs the magic words from the past to free them. But... "pickle?"
MANDALA DURING A TIME OF WAR AND DISINTEGRATION: by Jenny Badger Sultan; Jan-Feb 2003, painting of a dream-series
My dreams were troubled by war. So I painted them in concentric rings--lotus, fire, children, animals, and nightmares...
MANDALA OF THE EIGHT DREAMERS: by Jenny Badger Sultan; 2007/9/16, painting of a group's dreams
Our dream-group's dreams had a lot of imagery in common: circles, groups, meditation. I fused them into this piece...
THE MERMAID TOW: by Wayan; 1994/2/17, a rescue-fantasy dream.
I rescue some drowning kids by turning into a mermaid, but towing one girl has an unexpected effect...
MY CUBIST CONSCIENCE: by Wayan; 1983. Sketch of a cubist dream.
I dreamed I was trapped in the maze of my pacifist vegetarian feminist anarchist eco-conscience...
NOCTURNAL HAIRCUTS: by two of Pliny the Younger's servant boys; 96 AD. Subliminal? Oracular? Prank? All three?
Two boys dream robed figures climb in the window to cut their hair--and find, awake, someone has. While Pliny learns...
OCTOPIA: by Wayan; 1996/3/21, a spiritual dream on play.
I'm a stratospheric bat who catches a flying swastika. Is it creeping fascism, a Hindu blessing, or...?
ORB: by Walter de la Mare; before 1939; a feverdream image
I held the strangest and most entrancing object I have ever seen: the very citadel of life itself!...
OUR LADY OF THE YOYO: by Wayan; 400 x 670, 1983, digital over acrylic over crayon.
Our Lady of the Yoyo plays with our yin-yang world, trying to keep the spin going on each bounce...
PAW AT THE BALL: by Wayan; 58K total, 1980s, two waking Goddess images.
A grassy hill in a picture suddenly looked like Big Hair, so I tried to grow a body that fit that 'do...
THE PHOENIX: by A.C. Benson; 1894. A dream-poem.
I don't understand this poem's symbolism or even its style. It came to me whole, in a dream...
PRAYER: by Marie-Claude Girondé, early 2009, a dream painting.
"Our resurrection is not entirely in the future; it's also in us, it begins, it's already begun..."
SAINT BRIDGET: by Jenny Badger Sultan; between 1963-68, a dream on adversity's uses.
In a Scythian church, a painting says "Little St Bridget was bound so hard that when they released her she flew"...
THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY: by Wayan; 1989/7/8, a psychic nightmare.
My sisters get bored with the game of power, so I watch TV instead. But it melts, and a huge terrifying figure rises...
SHIELDS FROM THE GODDESS: by Wayan; 38K total, 1996/8/3, a dream that's a slap in the face.
A Goddess-worshiping general gets a visit from her twin daughters who bring a puzzling message...
SILKY'S WEDDING: by Wayan; 1988/1/6, a dreamtale.
Silky, my often-animal anima, leads me into a strange pagan church where we get married at last...
SWAN: by Wayan; 225K (5 images), 1995/4/8, a stubborn dreamtale.
I wake amnesic in a cabin in Alaska, in a dress printed with self-putdowns. I track down who cursed me...
SWORD IN MY BACK: by Franz Kafka; 1915/1/19, a surreal but un-Kafkaesque dream.
I slept late and felt a bit stiff, but until my friends pulled it out of my neck I had no idea...
TAROT: THE YIN-YANG EARTH (the Wheel of Fortune): by Wayan; Tarot card, 3x5", summer 1979.
Earth is always shown from the side, never its axis. But from the pole, it's a vast wheel: the real Wheel of...
TITANIA: by Wayan; 1983/1/7 and subsequent nights; an epic dream of love
Clarence the sappy angel from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, and Milton's Lucifer, noblest Devil of them all, land on Earth, offering treaties. Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're perfect, and the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures like me, and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full range of feelings. Too bad one is the feeling she's fake...
THE WELL OF WOMEN'S WISDOM: by Wayan; 1991/3/25, a dream on gradualism.
I find the well of women's wisdom. Lucky I had a sex change! A girl sneers "this wisdom's narrow." Is it?


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