Photo by Josh Rangel on Unsplash

What are the astrological ages?

 Approximately every 2160 years, on the first day of spring, the sun rises in a new sign. This is the beginning of a new astrological age. 

The astrological ages or World Ages move backward through the zodiac.  

The Age of Taurus is estimated at 4300-2150 BCE. It included the Bronze Age, the invention of writing, the Near Eastern bull cults, and civilizations like Sumer, Ancient Egypt, and the Indus Valley.

Aries (circa 2150 BCE-1 CE) was the beginning of the Iron Age. It saw the rise and fall of several ancient cultures including the Akkadian Empire, Vedic India, and Ancient Greece.

The Age of Pisces began on or around 1 CE. It encompasses the rise of the Roman Empire and the West, Christianity, the Inquisition, colonialism, and two World Wars. 

While none of these ranges are exact, the Age of Aquarius is expected to begin on or around 2160. It is predicted to be a time of increased communication, innovation, and humanitarianism. 

I studied astrology and became fascinated by the astrological world ages. To me, this aspect of astrology was more interesting than any individual horoscope. 

So when I saw that my Jungian Dream School instructors had made a video on the Age of Aquarius, I was excited. After watching the video I felt called to learn more about Jung and the Astrological Ages.

Jung and the Astrological Ages

In watching the video, I learned that Jung believed that the astrological ages influenced the collective. He saw the passing age of Pisces as a time of dissolution. He believed that the old energies would diminish and that new energies would be activated in the coming Age of Aquarius. 

Jung wrote about the Age of Pisces and the influence of Christianity in Aion, which I am currently reading. To him, the psychological self was a totality that "must by definition include the light and dark aspects." 

Christianity, in the Age of Pisces, didn't allow for that.

In Aion, Jung talks about the issue with seeing Christ as unadulterated light. For Christians, God couldn't be a paradox. He had to be summun bonum (ultimate good). This caused the early Church Fathers to call evil an absence of good (a concept called privatio boni) because there is nothing of God in it.

Deviation from perceived good could not be tolerated in the heyday of the Christian age. Laws rigidly divided acceptable conduct from what couldn’t be tolerated. In some instances that worked. In others it was cruel and unnecessary.

The Dream School video

In the video, my Dream School instructors shared Jung’s believe that bringing the entire self into consciousness is superior to killing the bad and vanquishing it into hell. 

I think that's because vanquishing darkness doesn't actually work.

This was one of the problems I had with Christian morality. Extolling virtue and denying vice works for some people but not all. And I don't think it's the best way to deal with things from a psychological perspective, either. 

Dictating a moral code based on dualistic ideas about right and wrong isn’t necessarily effective. In the video, one of my instructors, Jungian Analyst Joseph Lee suggested that the Aquarian Age might bring about a new ethic based on how the self responds to our actions.

This would call for a morality based on dreams and inner work that connects us with self, instead of blind allegiance to religious law.

Joseph went on to point out that this is an individual approach to ethics. It allows for variation and may require a different kind of tolerance. It asks to accept that not everyone will be on the same page.

The Age of Aquarius is expected to be innovative, communicative, and diverse. I think we are already seeing that. But as my instructors pointed out World Ages don't go quietly--making the current upheaval largely reactive.

What this means to me

Jung witnessed two World Wars in the course of his lifetime. He had personal visions of Europe covered in blood and, ultimately, as a site of great desolation. He felt that the only real chance for humanity was for individuals to do the inner work that releases shadow and connects with the self. 

Whether this will actually happen in the Age of Aquarius is yet to be determined, but it gives me hope.

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I'm going to be learning more about this topic, so if you're interested please check back or sign up for The Mystic Review newsletter @ MysticReview.substack.com!

You can watch the Dream School Age of Aquarius video in this post: MysticReview.com/2026/04/dreams-tarot-and-age-of-aquarius

A Jungian Approach to Reading

Like dreams and synchronicities, tarot has given me some meaningful insights over the years. Due in part to my Jungian Dream School course, my way of reading has evolved. I now approach tarot in much the same way I interpret dreams. 

This includes: 

1. Focusing on my inner states (fears, attitudes, creative expression etc.). 
2. Considering my personal associations with the cards first. I ask myself, what does this image (and its individual elements) mean to me?
3. Then moving on to wider symbolism (reading a lot of mythology helps with this).
4. Noting patterns in the reading like repeated numbers, what cards fall near each other, etc.
5. Journaling on my readings. This is time intensive and it's not something I can squeeze in often, which is fine. (Frequent, quick readings aren't especially insightful, in my experience, and have a tendency to devolve into fortune telling.)

A Jungian Framework 

The more I learn about Jung, the more I think that a Jungian framework can be applied to tarot.

1. At its heart, a reading is a kind of synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. (Possibly because we choose the right cards subconsciously.)
2. Archetypal energies may be at work. (Archetypes are energetic structures in the collective unconscious.) 
3. Personal and archetypal symbols in the cards trigger meaningful associations that can be amplified (extrapolated).
4. The primary purpose of tarot is to help us on our journey to individuation (a Jungian term for authenticity and wholeness). 
5. Personal associations, traditional symbols and mythic themes are more  important than assigned meanings.

My Next Steps

I used to read professionally and might try it again at some point using a Jungian approach. I don't feel ready yet but am active learning about Jungian tarot reading.

I'm currently taking a course in Jungian Tarot and am in the process of reading Tarot and Psychology by  Arthur Rosengarten. Tarot and the Archetypal Journey by Sallie Nichols and Mary Greer is on my TBR list (and my kindle) and Robert Wang's Jungian Tarot book and deck has been ordered.

I'm not sure how useful Wang's book will be because he isn't actually a Jungian but I'm sure I'll get something from it. The tarot course and Art Rosengarten's book are great however and I have high hopes for Tarot and the Archetypal Journey.

As always, I will keep you posted.

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About the reading above. This is a spread from Art Rosengarten's book plus a few extra cards (more on the spread here: Using Tarot for Creative Insight). The deck is the Albano-Waite which is now tied with the University Press, for my favorite deck. The oracle card is from the Isis Oracle by Alana Fairchild. I'm not going to go in to my impressions of the reading, but I will point out that things like the Lover's and the Devil being in proximity (a pattern) and the light shining on the Temple of Lapis Lazuli card (synchronicity with a personal dream symbol) were part of the reading for me.

You can learn more about Jungian Dream School at ThisJungianLife.com

Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

It is often difficult to see how a single dream compensates the consciousness of an individual. If there is a dream series available, the meaning of the compensation often becomes more evident. — Murray Stein, Four Pillars of Jungian Analysis

I had the first dream in what I’ve been calling the Dream Gate series last year and the most recent a few weeks ago.

The dreams so far are as follows:

1. The Dream Gate: Technically two dreams divided by short period of wakefulness but effectively a single dream.

2. The Dream Wall: The longest dream in the series which made the theme of the series (the interpretation of dreams and my Jungian studies) clear to me.

3. The Dream Vault: The most recent dream which can be found below.

In this post I’ll share some of what I’ve learned about how a dream series works, the Dream Vault dream, Jung’s theory of dream compensation and how all of this comes together for me.

About Dream Series

One of the primary functions of dreams, per Jungian thought, is to compensate for (or correct) the many erroneous attitudes of our waking life. This is Jung’s theory of compensation in a nutshell. (For more on this topic, please see my post On the Nature of Dreams.)

While there’s a lot you can say about the dream series idea, the really fascinating thing to me is how a series can help us better understand compensation—and where our waking attitudes may be out of balance. For me, this is a relatively new way of looking at dreams.

Before I was introduced to Jung, I liked to imagine that dreams, were meant to encourage me. Dream series, in particular, seemed to be showing how I was progressing in life. According to the theory of compensation, however, our dreams usually aren’t telling us what we’re doing well. They’re telling us what we can do better.

Not as flattering, obviously, but a lot more actionable.

Unless we’re stuck, the guidance we get from our dreams changes over time—and this is true even within the boundaries of a given dream series. While each dream in a series is a variation on a theme, the specific message will, and should, change from dream to dream. In my experience, these messages usually point to something I need to address.

When I first started working with the Dream Gate series, I was looking at the individual dreams as indicators of personal spiritual progress. Now I see them in a more actionable (and down-to-earth) way.

The Dream Vault Dream

What follows is the most recent dream in the Dream Gate series. This dream was short but powerful. Audio is rare in my dreams but there was sound in this one.

I’m walking through a long underground chamber or passageway As I walk, heavy battleship gray iron doors crash open one after another to let me pass. The mechanism is automatic and the doors are are loud when they open and I know that they are signaled somehow by me. They remind me of doors on a vault. My impression is that the passage is rectangular or square (not arched) with heavy girders overhead. The space has an industrial feel. It isn’t bright but I think lights come on as the doors open for me. I am moving fast and feel a strong sense of purpose. There is an energy to the dream and a feeling of determination or even command.

This is the only dream in the series that occurred underground. It is similar to dream one because the dream doesn’t reveal what’s on the other side of the door (or doors). It is similar to dream two because I am being proactive, In all three dreams, vital information is withheld.

The Series as a Whole

In this present study of alchemy I have taken a particular example of symbol-formation, extending in all over some seventeen centuries, and have subjected it to intensive examination, linking it at the same time with an actual series of dreams recorded by a modern European not under my direct supervision and having no knowledge of what the symbols appearing in the dreams might mean. — Carl Jung Psychology and Alchemy CW Vol. 12

I like what Jung says about tracing particular symbols through a series of dreams. I haven’t read Psychology and Alchemy so I can’t speak to how he did that. But I think it’s okay to make connections between symbols that aren’t absolutely identical.

Dreams are fluid, in my experience, and symbolic elements are rarely fixed. In the Dream Gate series, the first (the Dream Gate dream) had a wall and door/gate. The second dream (the Dream Wall) had only a wall. The last (the Dream Vault dream) had a series of doors. To me, these elements are all closely related.

The common symbolism revolved around boundaries, passageways and a strong sense of the unknown. While these elements presented in different ways, I believe they’re connected.

Dream One (the Dream Gate)

I didn’t know what was on the other side of the door in dream one but the volkknot symbol over the old arched doorframe supplied context. I knew the dream was talking about what I used to call “the other side” but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make that kind of connection or enter into that reality again or how I could reconcile it with Catholicism. Sometime later, a synchronicity provided additional insight.

To me now, the land of the dead and the other side and the collective unconscious and its archetypes are one in the same. And I am not afraid of it.

Back then, however, I was wary.

Dream Two (the Dream Wall)

In dream two, I crossed a wall to speak with the Interpreter of Dreams. This gave me the general theme of the dream. To me, the old man (the Interpreter of Dreams) and the scroll he was holding represented dream interpretation and Jungian psychology—both of which I was then actively studying.

I still had reservations, however, about what I was learning. Not long after the Dream Wall dream a second synchronicity helped lay those reservations to rest.

I liked the imagery in the Dream Wall dream and was happy to have found my way to the wise old man.

This, I thought in the aftermath of the dream, shows progress—but I hadn’t read Jung’s thoughts on compensation then. If I had I would have realized that while I had overcome my prejudice I still had a LOT to learn.

I realize this now. The Interpreter of Dreams did not show me his mysterious scroll or provide an interpretation of the dream I’d brought him. I was in the right place, but I wasn’t getting it.

And, in some ways, this is still true.

Dream Three (the Dream Vault)

The Dream Vault dream is a great example of Jung’s theory of compensation at work.

The person striding through the underground vault in this dream isn’t me. The heavy iron doors of the underworld don’t crash open at my command. There is no actual power or mastery. This is not where I’m at or even where I’m ending up.

Because that isn’t how compensation works.

Dreams aren’t a pat on the back. They're a challenge.

And I understand why I’m being challenged. I have NOT been focused. I have NOT been studying. I have NOT been working with my dreams. And I need to do better. Not crashing through the gates of the underworld better, necessarily, just an hour or two here and there.

Because knowledge IS power and if you want it you have to work for it.

Next Steps

There have been a lot of kind of cool symbols in the Dream Gate series so far. Medieval gates, dark symbols, mysterious scrolls, walls—both broken and intact, underground passageways, wise old men, a journey through a winter wood looking for answers.

I know that each of these symbols are important or they wouldn’t be in the dreams. I know I need to make time to reflect and look individual elements up in my symbol books and journal about Persephone and the Descent of Inanna.

I love doing that and I love that Carl Jung thought myth and symbol were necessary tools in the toolbox of dream interpretation. But I don't actually spend a lot of time filling that toolbox—or havent been—and I haven't been spending a lot of time with my dreams or engaging in active imagination or reading Jung either.

Which makes me think about my prorities and the general structure of my day-to-day life. And it occurs to me that the scrolls that need to be read and the doors that need to be opened aren't actually in the dream. They're here.

• If you want to know more about the other dreams in the series, please click on the appropriate links: 1. The Dream Gate 2.The Dream Wall 
• I wrote a post on Jung’s theory of compensation in dreams which you can read here.

Photo by Elina Sitnikova on Unsplash

Dream School Update

I started Jungian Dream School last fall in response to a wonderful synchronicity involving Jungian analyst Murray Stein and the This Jungian Life podcast. 

As you may already know, dreams have been an area of interest to me ever since I had the dream I call the Spirit Dream in 2007 which changed, or possibly saved, my life.

I’ve recently written my Spirit Dream / autism memoir up to the point where what I learned in those first weeks of Dream School becomes relevant. So I went back to module one and worked through it again.

In doing this I reread On the Nature of Dreams more carefully than I had done the first time around. And there was so much there, I wanted to share a bit of what I learned. I hope I will do it justice and not get too much wrong!

How Dreams Bring Balance

In On the Nature of Dreams Jung points out our dreams are rarely in accord with the sensibilities of our conscious mind. To Jung, this means that the unconscious (which he calls "the matrix of dreams") must have an independent function. In other words, the unconscious functions separately from our conscious self (which contains the ego). 

In creating dreams, the unconscious may strongly oppose our waking paradigm. This is intentional.

The gap between our everyday attitude and the dream may be slight or great (or very occasionally absent). This relates to Jung's concept of compensation. According to Jung, the dream deviation is an attempt to correct (or compensate for) the errors of our conscious self.

According to Jung there are three compensatory possibilities:

1. If the conscious attitude is one-sided the dream takes the opposite position.
2. If the conscious is more in the middle, the dream may deviate a little from our waking attitude.
3. If the conscious attitude is correct the dream will coincide (though not mirror, because the conscious always maintains what Jung calls its autonomy).

The purpose of compensation is to restore wholeness or balance. This correction usually has something to do with what is going on with us at that particular point in time. Some dreams, particularly long series of dreams, are more far-reaching (this is addressed in Psychology and Alchemy which I will have not read).

It's important to note, that compensation is not black and white. Dreams have their own kind of logic. Their relationship to our waking life is nuanced, complex and expansive. Understanding a dream is always a process.

Who Can Interpret Dreams

According Jung you don't have to be an psychologist (or any sort of professional) to interpret dream. Which isn't to say that anyone and everyone can do Jungian dream interpretation. The characteristics required to "diagnose dream compensation" according to Jung are: intelligence, some knowledge of psychology and life experience.

But these alone are not enough.

Jung is adamant in saying that an understanding of mythology, folklore, indigenous cultures and comparative religion is also required.

I loved hearing that. While I have learned through Dream School that we must always consider our personal association first when approaching a dream, I find mythological themes to be very important in dreams. Right or wrong, whenever it is there I apply it.

On the Nature of Dreams also contains a warning for people who decide that the dream "knows best” or readily believe that dreams predict the future. According to Jung, those who take this approach may find that their dreams become trivial over time. This is because these individuals are over rating the subconscious function and under valuing the conscious.

The conscious, per Jung, must fulfil its own appointed duties. It has developed for a reason and has an important role in our lives. The dream, according to On the Nature of Dreams, may fill in the blanks, correct our attitude or move us forward after our best attempts have failed. This is not to say that they never provide real life guidance, only that most of what they have to tell us relates to our internal states.

Dreams tend to be mythic, symbolic and poetic. Because of this they offer much more than ordinary, everyday advice. While some dreams are precognitive (as Jung was well aware) most are not, and it’s important to properly understand the dreams role in our life.

Dream interpretation can be challenging. While a lot has been written on it by Jung and his contemporaries very little of that is what I would consider an easy read. The book Dream Wise written by three of my Dream School instructors makes Jung's ideas accessible—as do the writings of Jungian analysist Murray Stein. 

Stein’s short book Four Pillars of Jungian Analysis talks about dream interpretation in concise and understandable way. 

Big Dreams

Big dreams are different than other dreams because they contain symbolic images found in the collective unconscious of the human race. These images are reflections of invisible energetic forms Jung calls archetypes.

Archetypes have existed at all times in human history and in all places. To Jung, this proves that there is both a personal unconscious and a collective or universal unconscious accessible to all. Archetypal images include thing like dragons, initiations, fairy tale elements or alchemical substances. For me personally, they tend to present as specific deities, symbols and themes.

Big dreams come from the collective unconscious at critical stages of our lives. They may hard to interpret, Jung says, because of the lack of personal meaning. Often, we need to go back to the mythology in order to understand them.

This is why a knowledge of myth and folklore is so important. If we don't know these stories we may fail to recognize important elements and messages in our dreams.

We can identify big dreams by their mythic themes and "poetic force and beauty." Often these dreams haunt us, becoming the "richest jewel in the treasure-house of psychic experience." (CGJ) This, in my experience, could not be more accurate.

The Stages of Dreams

A key point in On the Nature of Dreams is a the idea examining a dream through its structure.

Jung provides four stages that describe the structure of most dreams.

1. Exposition: The statement of place, introduction of key dream characters and the initial situation of the dreamer.
2. Development: The plot of the dream as it becomes more complicated and tension develops.
3. Culmination or Peripeteia (a Greek word for an unexpected reversal or point where the situation changes dramatically): The point where something decisive happens or something changes completely.
4. Result or Solution: While not every dream will have a fourth stage Jung looks at this last stage in relation to the solution sought by the dreamer.

I like to look at the structure of the dream and question each stage keeping in mind that every aspect of a dream is there for reason. 

There is a lot to be learned from the structure of the dream. The setting, key characters, action and turning point are all important. When I look at my own dreams, I always consider the result or solution. Sometimes this fourth stage is little more than an idea or impression which may be easy to overlook—but it is still important.

Context and Associations

It is also crucially important to do what Jung calls "taking up the context" by exploring personal associations for each dream element.

Because dreams are closely tied to our lived experience, it's also helpful to think about our current situation as we try to understand how our unconscious might be trying to restore balance in the here and now.

Most dreams are not big dreams. But every dream we have is important in terms of our day to day life. Many apparently "lesser" dreams can be mapped as part of a dream series that may be factor into our individuation process (a Jungian term that describes the process of becoming the person we are meant be).

Dreams offer an immediate and crucial course correction as we journey from day to day. They do not (in the vast majority of cases) tell us what to do. Instead they help us orient ourselves to a life that aligns with our greater purpose.

I'll be writing more about what I'm learning about dreams and Jung in future posts!

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I've had a few dreams I consider big and one that figures prominently in my memoir and in my life as a whole. You can read it here: The Spirit Dream. You can read about my Murray Stein experience in my A Creation in Time post. You can learn more about Jungian Dream School via the This Jungian Life website. 

About the Video

Photo by Ali Alauda on Unsplash

The Podcast

I discovered a wonderful new podcast this week. It's called This Jungian Life and it's hosted by three real-life Jungian analysts. Each episode presents a topic, and ends with the analysis of a listener's dream. I have really enjoyed the dream segments and like doing my own analysis to compare to that of the hosts. I also like the topical portion of the show. A lot.

The hosts are articulate and knowledgeable and so unexpectedly funny I found myself laughing out loud as I listened. More importantly, I feel I've already learned things from them. 

I have heard several episodes (including two on the shadow which were excellent) already but the episode I want to talk about in this post is called Unlock the Power of Symbols (video follows). The guest in this episode was Murray Stein, author of Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction (affiliate link) and I was so impressed with him that I bought his book the second the show was over.

When I was in my New Age phase I talked about synchronicities a lot even though I didn't really understand them and to be honest I'm not sure I understand them now. But when Stein quoted Jung as saying that a synchronicity is an act of creation in time I felt like I was being shown another, more theoretical perspective.

And an example followed.

The Spirit Dream

So there I was, doing the dishes and listening to the podcast and wishing I could ask Murray Stein to help me make sense of the Spirit Dream. I was thinking that I wouldn't even have to get him to take on the whole dream. I would just ask him to help me figure who the lady in blue was and why she seemed so important—and what was up with the whole color thing (read The Spirit Dream in full if you'd like more context). 

I have often thought that the spectrums of blues I was shown in the dream  exceeded anything I've ever seen witg ordinary waking vision. Sometimes I have wondered if there isn't something reminiscent of an NDE in that, but I've never been sure about any of it.

The interplay of red and blue in the Spirit Dream seemed significant to me from the start and I have always supposed that color was the key to the dream. 

Murray Stein

I was thinking about these things and how nice it would be if Murray Stein could tell me about my dream. I wouldn’t even ask him about the whole dream, I decided. I would only ask him to explain what blue meant in the context of the dream and why it felt so important. 

And just at that exact moment he said:

So there are archetypes and there are archetypal images... [and] Jung makes a very important distinction (you can read about this in a paper he wrote called the Nature of the Psyche in Volume 8 and I use that a lot in my book Jung's Map of the Soul).

He [Jung] lays out a spectrum [and] says the psyche is like a spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared.

On the infrared side it disappears through a psychoid membrane into the body, into physiological processes and there's an interplay between body and psyche—the psychosomatic interplay. The psyche can affect the body. The body can affect the psyche through that psychoid membrane.

He says on the other end of the spectrum there's the ultraviolet end of the spectrum that's blue—the psyche disappears again through a psychoid barrier or membrane into he says "what I can only call Spirit,.." and that's where the archetype exists.

And the archetype emits... [and] influences the psyche. The archetype influences the psyche by giving it images so when you have powerful images coming into your dreams, for instance, we call them archetypal images [or] Big Dreams that are related to mythology and fairy tales and all that.

The archetype... beyond the psyche in the... spiritual world is emitting some energy and it's coming into the psyche and then it takes the form of a couple of things: It can be an image or it can be a big idea [that] can be an inspiration, you know, suddenly [the] aha light goes on [and] you understand something.

So... the psyche disappearing into the spirit world on the one hand... [and] the psyche disappear[ing]     into the material world on the other hand... Now there's where Jung tried to tie that together—the material world and the spirit world—in his theory of synchronicity: Something happens in the material world and in the psychic world at the same time. It has meaning. 

It delivers meaning.

Afterward

The Video

My Takeaway