What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about?

We all talk about our feminine and masculine sides without really knowing what we talk about.

I read Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucian literature, Jung, Fromm, and other psychoanalysts, adding to my intuitive understanding, but I still didn’t grasp it fully.

Many interesting, partly frustrating, experiences gave finally a long searched result. I will not describe precisely what Animus and Anima are, as it is explained better by others, but I will show where they fit into the seven layer model of man, and how they fit into the Steiner and Aristotle model.

I will take it a little further by explaining a few but basic rules around Dream Interpretation and the Roles of the participating figures.

Jung and the Aristotelian model of the Soul

The model of Steiner/Aristotle split in three groups, the Body, the Soul, and the Spirit. Each part can again be split in three, the body as Physical, Ether, and Sentient body, and the soul as Sentient, Intellectual, and Consciousness soul, and the Spirit as Spirit self, Life spirit, and Spirit body. The model is described in The Essential Nature of Man.

Age contains the periods where each body and relating chakra is developed. (7) signifies change of teeth and (14) start of puberty. The Crown with 49 is by grace not through work. Following the Hebrew’s a person was first adult at 50.

	The Bodies of Man	Steiner Aristotle	Age From – To Chakra	Feminine associations	Usage In Dreams
					Man	Woman
1	Physical body Malkuth	Physical Body	0 – (7) Root
2	Etheric body Yesod	Ether or Life body Threptikon	(7) – (14) Generative	Lilith	Anima	Animus
		Sentient body Aesthetikon	(14) – 21 Solar Plexus
3	Astral body Hod Kama
		Sentient soul Orektikon	21 – 28 Heart	Maria Magdalene
					Lower I The Persona
4	Ego Netzach Nous Monad	Intellectual soul or Heart and Mind soul Kinetikon	28 – 35 Throat	Maria, Cleophas wife
		Consciousness soul Dianoetikon	35 – 42 Brow	Virgin Sophia	Higher I The Divine Child
5	Manas Tiphareth Transformed astral body	Spirit self	42 – 49 Crown		The Teacher The Wise Man or Woman
6	Buddhi Chesed Transformed etheric body	Life spirit	49 – 56	The World Mother
7	Atma Geburah Transformed physical body	Spirit body	56 – 63

In Dream Interpretation

The three Soul components:

• Sentient soul represents Anima for men and Animus for woman,
• Intellectual soul represents the Lower ‘I’/Persona/Ego, and
• Consciousness soul represents the Higher ‘I’.

Anima/Animus

Anima/Animus represents the base unconscious Feelings and the Ether body, and are represented by female actors in mens dreams and male actors in womens dreams. It can be your husband/wife, friends, colleagues, classmates, old girlfriends/boyfriends, or an unknown person.

As it concerns feelings, you seldom speak with your Anima/Animus, it’s mostly some kind of action, Love or some affection, or the opposite to that, showing the state between your feminine and masculine side.

Animus/Anima can in real seldom situations represent your physical body, if there is something which should be taken care of. And remember, it’s the opposite of your own gender.

Ego, Persona or Lower ‘I’

The Ego, the Lower ‘I’ represents Thinking, and is represented by the dreamer in the dream. One of the goals is to unify the Lower ‘I’ with the corresponding Anima/Animus, that is Feeling and Thinking. The relation is connected with the Chymical Wedding.

Shadows or False Ego’s

There can also be other actors (Shadows), playing the role of False Ego‘s . Typically friends, classmates, colleagues, or less common, typically in groups, unknown players. These persons sometimes characterize traits which tells what the dream is about, but in all circumstances it’s easier for the “dreaming facility” to use an existing person than to create a new personality.

The Shadow’s I see as debris flowing around in the unconscious mind blocking the Chakras. They are the background for the plot of the dreams.

The False Ego’s are the persona’s we set up when relating to other people to hide us behind, protect our selves, or to impress other persons. Their role in the dreams are to show that they are there and to remove them you have to recognize them. There can of course be persons in the dream which is only extras just to give the background, but then they will be out of focus, they will be difficult to remember.

Higher ‘I’, The Divine Child

The Higher ‘I’ represents the Willing, and is usually represented by a child, or teenager in the dream. Whatever happens to the child is a result of your life. The more the child prosper the better. The goal is to become the Divine Child.

The Wise Teacher

One more role is the Teacher, which I presumes represents the Spirit self, and in dreams usually shown as your Father, Mother, a Teacher, or Chief from your real life, who you have some respect for. They can in the dream be connected with the next floor upstairs. Can be both sexes, but I think it’s mostly of the opposite gender.

Dream Symbols

Three other symbols which are paramount in dreams are your House, various Schools, and Transport Vehicles:

In dreams the House usually represents your physical and psychical state of development. Is it clean, is it in chaos, are you building on your second or third floor, is it finished?

The schools tells a little about how it is going, are you in a kindergarten, school, High School, or the University? Are there room for you, have you forgotten your books, and so forth.

In dreams transport vehicles tells about how your journey is progressing. If you are riding a bicycle you are not doing especially well. Your car can go out of gasoline, you may have lost your ticket for the bus,  come late for the train, or you got a first class ticket for the airplane.

Numbers

It is extremely seldom that numbers in dreams are remembered, as they normally have no meaning. It’s like reading a book in a dream, where the reading is remembered not the text. If you remember a number it’s important to write it down quickly. What the number signifies depends on the context, it could be the number of days, time of day, number of hours, a specific date, and so forth.

Names

It’s also seldom to hear Noun’s in dreams, so when your hear one, try to find out what it stands for. Some of these names can be quite humorous, but still contain vital information.

Anonymous dream persons

Actual people from the real world will be played by anonymous players, you have to use the context to decipher the real world implication.

Here and Now

Most dreams are rather concrete, and they accentuate specific problems from the day before, and these problems are typically waves of underlying currents, life themes, which should be handled.

What makes dreams difficult to understand are that we live in the middle of our problems, that we cant overview our own situation; but our dreams can, and if we learn to interpret our dreams it will help us to understand our own situation.

Dream Interpretation and Chakras

From time to time there may be dreams telling about your progress or in which areas you have problems; here some symbols and colors related to the Chakras.

The Figure are the symbol of the Chakra, hold the cursor above the symbol, a short text maybe with a word in UPPERCASE, tells what which part to look for, as an example is Muladhara’s symbol a Square. Clicking on a symbol opens a Vortex of Light description of the Chakra. The Crown chakra has no dream symbol as I am aware of.

Chakra	Color	Animal	Figure	Comments
Sahasrara Crown	Purple			Moon ?
Ajna Third Eye Pineal	Indigo			Clairvoyance, psychic abilities, imagination, dreaming, Mercury.
Vishuddha Throat	Blue	White elephant		Pressure when you are not communicating your emotions properly, Venus.
Ahanhata Heart	Green	Birds, animals with antlers		Lack of compassion, Sun.
Manipura Navel Solar Plexus	Yellow	Sacrificial animal		Personal Power, anger or a sense of victimization, Mars.
Svadhistana SacralHara	Orange	Water animals		Emotional problems or sexual guilt, Jupiter.
Muladhara Root	Red	Elephant, horse, and other big and heavy animals		Earth, survival, grounding, stillness, Saturn.

Examples

The Tin Drum

A friend of mine had a dream where she was going in front of a group of girls in a concentration camp playing on a tin drum.

The group of girls were her false ego’s, she put up whenever she met any of her friends, family, and so forth. She was trapped like in a concentration camp by that behavior. She understood the dream herself.

To met a person again.

I walked on the platform going to get a train. I met a young girl, but walked on. I then sat down between two girls, where one of them was the same I passed earlier, but older.

Or

I were in a discotheque and met a girl, I then continued walking around before i ran into her again.

Both dreams was preparing the same meeting with an old acquaintance, and contained in the small group of dreams about the future.

A real short dream

Saw a Trampoline.

The person had the previous day done a lot of work without coming anywhere; if the dream theme is recurring a change in the theme of life is needed.

Literature

Dreams

Myths-Dreams-Symbols

based on Eric Ackroyd1 & 2 and Edward C. Whitmont.

The Individuation Process: The Shadow, Anima/Animus, Mana personalities, the higher Self.

Site directory.

Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding

Af Herman Riffel

Many believers read the scriptural accounts of dreams and never think it could happen to them. Today, though, many are realizing that God has never ceased using dreams and visions to guide, instruct, and warn. This book will give you a biblical understanding of dreams that you never had before!

A Step-By-Step Approach

I find that a very useful guideline for dream interpretation, especially at first, is to take everything in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer.

For example, if the dream involves the person travelling in a car with their uncle, then the car represents some aspect of the person’s life, and the uncle also represents a part of the person. This isn’t the only way to interpret dreams, but it’s a very good starting point, I think.

Here’s the step-by-step approach that I use.
I hope that by going through the example and then trying the exercise you’ll start to get a feel for what’s involved in trying to interpret a dream, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.

This Step by Step Approach contains a description of Dream Interpretation which is quite usable with my terminology. It also contains descriptions of how to combine the I Ching with Dream Interpretation.

Dream Encyclopedia

Example: The House in Your Dream
…..
Each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering the house in your dream you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way. And to help with this let us look at and question some of the possibilities your dream house might hold.

…..

Contains many interesting and usable entries about the Archetypes used in dreams.

Dream Dictionary

Example with House:

Seeing a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. Dreaming that you are cleaning your house means your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. Seeing an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings. Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. Dreaming that your house is broken into, suggests that you are feeling violated. It may refer to a particular relationship or current situation in your life. Alternatively, it indicates that some unconscious material is attempting to make itself known. There are some aspects of yourself that you have denied. Dreaming of a haunted house means unfinished emotional business, related to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. Dreaming that a house disappeared, indicates that you are not feeling grounded. You feel uprooted by a particular circumstance or relationship in your life.

This entry looks quite ok, I havent checked other entries.

Dreams and Dreaming

Dreams as not really nonsensical, but a lot of them are crypted somehow. Major psychologists have studied how dreams work and why they appear, and whether they occur according to patterns, and which patterns. Carl Jung, Medard Boss, Calvin Hall, Montague Ullman and others have decreed that dreams do carry meanings, but you need to understand how dreaming functions. Dreams functions on their own terms. Through the basics of dream interpretations to get a hold on many of them.

Some dreams reflect mind content that pertains to tasks and problems and other issues the mind gets deeply involved in. And parts of the jumbled “video clips” within may just present “left-overs” from days before. Dream interpretations need to be tentative, perhaps open-ended too. Consider the deep feelings and messages involved in the recurrent and most impressive dreams you have had.

Decode and interpret the flows of various icons, images, scenes, actors, happenings, concomitant feelings so as to arrive at tentative or putative postulates about what impressive dreams could mean. In such work there is help in mulling over single, outstanding ideas or episodes inside the stream or flow of a single dream. Take notes of them and learn to draw special illustrations that serve you in a log book. all of it could help, but it may be time-consuming work that had better be done for the whole life. In short, you have to learn to assess well.

Carl Gustav Jung on Dreams

Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly.

More on Carl Jung’s Archetypes.

Jungian dream interpretation: a handbook of theory and practice

Comprehensive guide to an understanding of dreams in light of the basic principles of analytical psychology. Particular attention to common motifs, the role of complexes, and the goal and purpose of dreams.

Catching the Thread:

Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology

By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Irina Tweedie

Aristotle

In  Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements J.L.Benson references Steiner on Aristotle’s description of the soul of man:

Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul.

J.L.Benson writes in Greek Color Theorie and the Four Elements :

To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe’s scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle’s threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous .

Rudolf Steiner

On dreams:

One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism. In your case — according to your capacities — it’ll also be good if you compare the dreams that you become aware of with the experiences of the next day. For your dreams may soon take on a portentous character. If this happens we’ll say some more about how this thing can be made productive for your spiritual life. Please give these indications a try and tell me how things are going in about eight days.

The Essential Nature of Man from Theosophy.

Chakras

Vortex of Light

This site offers an abbreviated introduction to the Chakra System, applications for meditation and healing using this system, and its relationship to other healing systems.

Chrystal Links

Visual appealing page on the Chakras.

Kheper.net

Contains information on a deeper Esoteric level

Myths-Dreams-Symbols