Dreaming of Tarot

The Dream 

I go to a lake and see a white swan. I like it so much that I pick it up and take it home. It is hauntingly beautiful, with bright, white feathers. At one point it looks at me, turning its neck in an odd, angular but graceful, way and I see its eyes are not really like animal eyes. Instead they seem human and are unusually beautiful and expressive. 

I decide to keep the swan in my room because I know my family won't approve that I've brought it into the house. I let it sleep next to me in bed and it is warm and I take comfort in knowing it is there. At one point in the dream I am telling someone about the swan and how it was not like other swans, that even its feathers were soft like fur, etc. and how wonderful it was.

Later in the dream, I'm sitting in my room on my bed with the swan and I notice it is surrounded by tarot cards. It picks up the cards one by one in its beak and lay them out for a reading. In the dream, I am fascinated instead of surprised. I see some pentacles and the death card. My dog, Luna, is in the room (in real life and also in the dream). In the dream she starts growling and barking at the swan.

My Perspective

While I do believe that certain dreams can be prophetic, to me, the most common purpose of  dreams is to help us better understand ourselves and situations we may be facing. I think that dreams can be spiritual or "psychic" but not prophetic.

In the case of the swan dream, signs that this might be a spiritual dream included the tarot card piece coupled with the unusual beauty of the swan. I tend to look outside my own personal experience for dreams like this especially when I don't have any real experience with a particular element. 

In this case, I don't have any particular experience with swans aside from really liking a bas-relief I saw once of Leda with the swan and couldn't find again. While I love Keats, his Leda and the Swan never really spoke to me.

My favorite book on symbols did have something interesting to say, however:

Combining the two elements of air and water, the swan is the bird of life: the dawn of day... It also symbolizes solitude and retreat and is the bird of the poet; its dying song is the poet's song... ~ An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Copper

I do have a lot of experience with tarot and used to read professionally. I have been thinking about using tarot again for personal insight and reflection. I have been worried about getting pulled back into predictive reading, however, which I would like to avoid.

My dog Luna is my best friend in the world and I feel she was being protective in this dream. I don't think that necessarily means there is anything dangerous about the swan or tarot, however, because Luna is a barker and too protective of me at times. She also extremely aware of my moods. So I take her behavior as being more about inner conflict than an actual threat.

I actually think that this dream is more about writing than it is about tarot, because that has also been something very much on mind as I get older. I love blogging but I really would like to finish and publish a book. Possible my swan song.

The fact that Keats wrote a poem on this topic, isn't irrelevant, in my opinion. I don't love that particular poem and I don't love a lot of my own work either. Book Cooper and my own associations (Keats) suggest a connection to poetry or possibly poetic writing.

In it's highest application, I think of tarot as a tool for person insight. So I'll consider what insight might be relevant to my writing. According to J.C. Cooper, tarot may represent esoteric insight. That's interesting to me because I've been conflicted over just how much metaphysical content I should include in a current project.