The Astrology of Dreams

by Rod Suskin

Although contemporary astrologers don’t typically consider themselves dream analysts, the fascination for dreams and the need for their interpretation stretches back to the earliest days of astrology. It is sometimes surprising to learn that astrology has a full set of tools ready to deal with dreams and decode their mysteries.

In this article, I will introduce the traditional and modern methods of astrological dream analysis and show you how to easily extend your use of natal charts, transits and horary astrology to master the art of dream interpretation. Although dream symbols can seemingly have a wide array of meanings depending on the beliefs of who is interpreting them, Astrology allows us to use a known, limited set of symbols - the planets, signs and houses - to understand them. No special techniques or points are needed, just a very focussed use of astrological symbolism.

Other methods often don’t take the underlying personality and temperament of the dreamer into account - astrology does.

1. How dreams figure in the natal chart

The natal chart can help us understand how someone’s own particular dream language tends to work. The ninth house is the place of dreams, so the ruler of it and any planets in the house all describe the personal dream style. If someone had strong, positive planets here they’d often have pleasant dreams or dreams which are beneficial to them. Of course, the opposite is true for difficult or troubled planets, the malefic planets and those having a bad dignity day.

Samuel called me because he had been having a number of repetitive and uncomfortable dreams in the last few weeks approaching his birthday. He was finally moved to call on this April day because of the most recent dream, the night before. He said it was pretty representative of all the dreams and wanted to know if I could help him understand what he was supposed to be doing.

The natal chart is not shown here because only two planets are relevant. His ninth house ruler is Mercury. When dreams are trying to communicate, he might have a dreaming pattern to do with Mercurial things: journeys, messages, young people, words and numbers, communication issues.

Mercury is in the fifth house. His dreams may be about children, romance, fun, things he loves and his own creative expression. Mercury is not well dignified and rules a difficult house, giving it a capacity to represent some Mercurial things that can be troubling or detrimental, causing stress or illness and related to thankless tasks. Mercury’s rulership of the sixth also brings to mind dreams of having to do thankless work.

Jupiter is also in his ninth is detrimented, which means that sometimes it’s also capable of representing something that is fruitless. Perhaps as twelfth house ruler he easily dreams about fears, especially related to “self-undoing”, being his own worst enemy. (He will have some good spiritual dreams from Jupiter too … perhaps he doesn’t feel the need for ask for help with interpretation at those times!)

With the detrimented Jupiter and troubled Mercury associated with his dream life, perhaps he only has these types of dreams when things are not running smoothly. When his dreams are similar to this, there’s a message from his unconscious self.

2. The consultation

The consultation chart is a familiar tool to astrologers. We can use the consultation about the dream to reveal the meaning of the situation the client is in right now, bringing all the conditions of their everyday life into play and concentrating it around one person, one natal chart.

Although it may seem appropriate to use the time of the dream for the chart, or even the time the dream was remembered, the first is impossible to know and the second very unlikely. As with all horary astrology, we can expect that the moment you are asked to interpret the dream is significant and appropriately signifies the dream itself.

A chart is drawn as a horary chart for the question “what does my dream mean?” We will use this chart to identify the key significators of the dream and what they mean. First, though, we will examine how dreams are described in the natal chart, since each of us has repetitive patterns and a personal language of symbols we use over and over again in our dreams. Finally, we will interpret the dream, connecting these charts to the transits affecting the natal chart (since dreams are after all very transitory events!)

Step by step dream-chart analysis: Samuel’s dream

The main features of the dreams that culminated the night before were:

• He was a delivery person, or somebody tasked with the delivery of something;
• He had a bicycle and had to get something, perhaps a package or a message, somewhere, but he didn’t know where;
• The person who had tasked him with the delivery was his employer from twenty years earlier, somebody he described as “a very fussy woman, always criticizing” him;
• The bicycle journey was through buildings, rather like going through sheets of water, in rainy and muddy conditions;
• There were lots of slippery alleys and construction sites with buildings being built;
• He eventually “landed up backstage somewhere” knowing that he’d be on stage in a moment, having to perform in front of many people but clueless as to what the play is about;
• He was never able to complete the delivery task.

As we always do with a horary chart, we assign the ruler of the first and the Moon to the querent who had the dream.

Dreams themselves are found in the ninth house, and although the usual practice of assigning the ruler to represent the dream is not wrong, planets in the ninth are usually better significators for the dream. If there isn’t a planet in the ninth, Sahl instructs us to look for a planet in the order of preference tenth, first, seventh, fourth or third house. If there is no planet in one of these houses, the dream has been inaccurately reported or is meaningless.

Once you have decided which planet is the significator of the dream, you can delineate the following information:

• The houses it rules show what in the native’s life has caused the dream, for example if it is a fearful dream, what is causing the fear;
• The planets it aspects show which areas in the life are affected by the dream, and how. This will help you give sound advice based on the dream;
• If the south node is in the ninth house or conjunct the main significator of the dream it will have the characteristics of a disturbing dream or nightmare - fear, danger, unpleasantness, being chased, feeling threatened or something similar.
• You can also delineate the ruler of the ninth this way for more information or try it in those cases where the significator doesn’t seem to be appropriate.
• Each planet by its nature shows the type of dream and some of its details. It may seem a waste of time to look for the description of the dream in the chart when the querent has already told you the dream, but this can be an important confirmation of the chart as well as give clearer details then the querent might - perhaps even helping jog their memory.

These are some traditional meanings from Sahl and Lilly, to which I have added some ideas for the modern planets:

• Moon: sea, ships, navigation, water, flooding, old women
• Mercury: Paintings, books, temples, journeys, learning, children, financial accounts
• Venus: sexual dreams, women, beautiful things, pleasant experiences, a pleasurable dream
• Sun: powerful people, wealth, status, flying dreams (lucid dreams?)
• Mars: violence, conflict, men, weapons, dangerous animals, fire, dogs
• Jupiter: money, acknowledgement and recognition, important people, pleasant experiences, spiritual matters (I would add long journeys overseas, studies)
• Saturn: responsibilities, earth and digging, buried things (like treasure), dark places, things causing fear and horror
• North Node: valuable and delightful things, fragrance, nature
• South Node: darkness, whispering and murmuring, being chased, can’t escape, people trying to kill you, death

Suggestions for the modern planets:

• Uranus: fires, explosions, sudden things, new and unknown things, unexpected
• Neptune: vagueness, confusion, water, visions
• Pluto: endings, destruction, mysterious figures, fearful things, sense of danger

There is a lot of room for elaboration, but it is important to stick to the basic meaning of each planet so as not to become as open-ended and overly connected as the dream itself, which won’t benefit the client. There is also a lot of opportunity for the astrologer to learn the symbolic meanings of planets directly, as it were, by hearing about the dream and seeing which planet represents what you hear.

The sign of the significator is very revealing, especially by its element. Sahl in his “On Questions” (Dykes translation)1 uses them to give details about nightmares in particular, which I’ve made a little more modern:

• Air: high places, cliffs, falling from a height, being thrown into the air by a wind;
• Earth: being surrounded, falling into a dark place or being in a dark or narrow place and finding the way out;
• Fire: fire, someone being killed, heat, fog, gloom and darkness;
• Water: drowning, submersion, overflowing, flooding, sea, danger.

In other dreams the elements can also show up as direct representations of the dream, usually as the context for the significator planet. If you are using a planet in the ninth, rather look where the ruler of the ninth is to see the context in the native’s life.

Look at the planets aspecting the rulers of the first and the ninth. It’s easy to get convoluted and confused with aspects, so the most important thing to understand is that:

Aspects from Venus, Jupiter and the luminaries assist the querent. In a dream of danger, they will provide rescue in a way related to the houses this benefic planet rules.

Aspects from Mars, Saturn and the outer planets cause problems or pursue the querent, in a manner related to the houses this malefic rules. (I use very small orbs for aspects from the outer planets as they shed no light and are frequently quite subtle by aspect.)

You can get a lot of detail about the dream from this, not only to match the description of the dream as given to you by the client, but also to interpret clearly what each of these dream factors mean. Because you are able to see just what assists and where the obstacles lie, you can give advice about where in life the querent should devote their attention to deal with the message of the dream.

There is one last useful piece of information the Moon can offer: when it is in a fixed sign, the dream affects the client’s life significantly; in a cardinal sign it produces something a little later on, and in a mutable sign the dream has little real significance.

Analyzing Samuel's dream

In the chart of Samuel’s dream, timed for when I understood the question during the phone call, Virgo is on the Ascendant, so Mercury is the planet signifying Samuel and the dream is the planet in the ninth house, the Moon. These are very appropriate symbols and show how radical the chart is. Mercury is the messenger and certainly a perfect symbol for the querent on a bicycle. The Moon is the dream, which we would expect to be a dream of water and flooding and even old women.

In a dream horary it is often best to start reading the significator for the dream itself before you ascertain its relationship to the dreamer’s life right now. So, we start with the Moon, the planet in the ninth. The planet of water, an earth sign, Taurus - all the water, mud and buildings in his dream are present, even the ‘dark and narrow places’ of the earth signs. The excessive nature of the water in the dream is shown by the exalted Moon in the late degrees of Taurus, that zone scattered with many difficult stars. Also, in the ninth is the south node, which indicates that the dream was a nightmare about running, being chased, not understanding.

The symbols are not taken literally. While the Moon may accurately show a dream about drowning, the meaning will be found in the chart, not in the ideas of water or drowning. This means the astrologer needn’t improvise or have specialized knowledge about dreams or psychology, the chart is the only tool required.

Whatever the significator rules shows the source of the fear. The Moon rules the eleventh house, the house of groups and friends as well as rewards and money from work (second from the tenth).

The Moon also appears to show a woman in the dream, but the chart gets clearer. The ruler of the ninth is Venus, prominent in this chart because she is placed only four degrees from that all-important angle the tenth house.

Venus so close to the Midheaven must be taken as an angular planet and in Gemini seems perfectly appropriate for somebody described by Mercurial words like “fussy” and “critical”. She is also ruler of the second house, money. Because of this, it is beginning to seem likely that the eleventh house is also referring to money (from work). Saturn is right on that second house cusp, suggesting some limitations on money, although highly dignified which leaves me confident that Samuel is actually making money, perhaps just not enough.

The criticism of the dream employer may relate to money. Still, with Mercury actually being Samuel’s significator, and ruling him through Virgo, I can see that the particular qualities which he is seeing in the dream in the figure of his old employer probably have a lot to do with how he sees himself right now. I realized he must be criticizing himself about something, possibly to do with work.

Mercury, signifying Samuel, is in a partile conjunction with Uranus in the seventh house of marriage. It’s also the ruler of the tenth house, once again showing the concern with work, but it is the fact that it’s in the seventh that brings the breakthrough we are looking for. Samuel has not spoken about his marriage, but clearly this really seems to be where his concerns also lie. The conjunction with Uranus and square with Pluto reveals a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about marriage, let alone the literal symbol of feeling that you’re supposed to know the words when you don’t even know what script this is and what you’re doing there.

Now it all starts coming together: he dreams of a critical woman tasking him with delivering something - perhaps bringing home the money. The figure of a woman most likely represents his wife, whom he doesn’t dream of because he doesn’t appear to want to look at the situation in the context of what obviously really does concern him, his marriage. There are unspoken fears or fears he doesn’t know how to put into words, in his marriage.

After half an hour, I was able to call Samuel back. I asked him about money from work, and whether he feels he is not earning enough. He agreed with me immediately. I asked him whether this was an issue at home, whether he was criticized for it. He replied that in fact his wife made considerably more money than he did, and money wasn’t an issue at all in the relationship. You’ll note that Mercury’s ruler is Mars, who also rules the eighth of the spouse’s money, and that house also contains Jupiter, the ruler of the seventh (wife) and a great symbol for wealth.

Finally we have enough information to understand the dream. Samuel fears that he is not making enough money in his wife’s eyes, and that his wife is thinking critically of him because of it. He knows that this is an irrational fear, since they have a close relationship and enough money, but he is unconsciously anxious about it and it is showing in the dreams.

When I explained that way Samuel experienced the jolt of realization astrology frequently brings. I was able to reassure him that given the dignity of that Saturn it was not through his own failings that his income was limited, the limitations were for a good reason. It allowed him to work at home and take care of the family while contributing to the family income as a whole. Perhaps he could reveal his fears to his wife since he knows anyway, they are irrational, and that would help him not take them seriously enough to dream about.

Conclusion

Astrology is at its best when it speaks in its own language rather than through the many frameworks regularly applied to it, such as psychology. In the case of dreams, which themselves can get projected through a variety of possible lenses, astrology provides the perfect opportunity to offer a clear and consistent approach to understanding dreams using a symbolism that is at once unique to the individual as well as universal. It can incorporate the personality and circumstances of the individual as well as offer ways of expressing and resolving matters raised by dreams and thus is the perfect vehicle for not only interpretation of dreams but ultimately of healing the disturbance that the dream reveals.

Endnote:
1 Benjamin Dykes (translator), Works of Sahl and Masha’allah, Cazimi Press 2008.

Image sources:
Dreamcatcher: Image by Orange Fox from Pixabay
Bicycle: Image by Dan Fador from Pixabay
Rainbow mountains: Image by Simon Matzinger from Pixabay
Money: Image by NikolayFrolochkin from Pixabay
Chart provided by the author

Published in: ivcconference.com/constellation-news/, 2018.

Author:
Rod Suskin is well known as an astrologer and sangoma in Cape Town and has been in practice in both fields for over 30 years. He has a special interest in traditional medicine both in the African and European contexts. His astrology is grounded firmly in the tradition and ancient principles but contextualized in the modern world with the modern practice of astrology. He teaches astrology in a three-year Diploma course at the online Rod Suskin School of Astrology. Rod is the author of a number of astrological books including Cycles of Life and Synastry. He also contributes regularly to a variety of publications in South Africa and was commissioned to write about the national astrological chart for the official parliamentary newspaper. He has also created and published a meditation CD and a range of astrology software. Rod had astrology slots on national TV for 9 years and on Cape Talk radio on for 17 years. He currently has his own show on CTV which attracts a viewership of over 30,000 per week. He has recently completed an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales where he specialised in the relationship between cosmology and healing practices.
Rod can be reached via his website www.rodsuskin.com and at rod@rodsuskin.com

© 2018 - Rod Suskin - Constellation News

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