Last night I dreamt of being in Tennessee again for work. However, midway through the dream work turned into some sort of gothic cathedral. I never went inside, I just inspected some sort of structure that acted as a sort of fence. It was a beautiful thing. Very curvy and excellent symmetry. At one end, there were fallen statues. There was a huge and beautiful angel , and other religious symbols. I couldn't make the other ones out, just the angel and statue of a man which I could only see the back of the head. After this I'm in a car leaving. The roadway is the same in real life and it changes before my eyes. A series of gates that were very ornate and gothic appear out of nowhere and an almost Victorian like cottage that I couldn't shake a weird feeling of.
Back to reality for a moment. I grew up in Oklahoma, and haven't been there in nines years. At the end of this business trip I was trying to arrange a later flight so I could drive to Oklahoma and visit for a few days. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.
Dream: after making it through all the gates, I end up being able to make the travel arrangements to visit Oklahoma before returning to California. All of a sudden, I'm disembarking a cruise ship. I'm then headed to a bus. I board bus after bus after bus. All to different locations, but none to Oklahoma. I don't recall any of the busses actually moving, just being on them for a period before getting off and boarding another. At one point I got on the wrong bus, but realized it immediately. Waiting for me outside was a salesman that I had worked with a couple times. We needed to go back to work for some reason. We get to the gates and there is a push button to open them. He pushes the first one but doesn't wait and forces through it as its opening slowly. I notice the house lighted now by candles and lanterns, and get the same eerie feeling. The second gate opens a little faster and he doesn't rush through it. We get to the third gate and get out of the car. He proceeds to unlock the gate by hand. At this point I notice a door open on the cathedral and a silhouette of a woman walking out. He unlocks the gate a I walk through, it appears this woman is locking up for the night like she's a groundskeeper. The salesman then yells, "never mind David! Not tonight!" And he points at the top of the third gate where there is a black widow spinning a web. I understood this in my dream as an omen of bad luck. I had seen the woman a little closer now, and she looked like a witch. We rushed off leaving the gate opened and unlocked, she could close it we had to get out of there! I felt bad leaving extra work for this old lady, and when I turned to makes sure she noticed she was now a skeleton. All I saw was her skull. She had the same dress on and the same hair but when I looked back I could see her skull. That's how the dream ended. Normally I can make sense of my dreams, but this one has got me stumped.
I can't place it into the timeline of the dream, but there was one part in which I was with a group of people most notably my mother and father in law. We were walking a trail that leads from Texas to Oklahoma. In the dream I had walked it before many times. It was almost like an exodus of sorts. We walked until we reached a cave(almost like a mine) at this point it seemed to turn into a guided tour. I picked up a pair of gloves and checked for spiders, and a bunch of dead spiders fell out. The rest of the walk I was feeling things crawl on me that weren't there, and a search for a shirt clean enough to wear. Don't know what happened to the one I'd had on originally.
And now the interpretation provided to me:
Although it would usually be best to have additional general background information about you as well as recent events just before the dream in order to provide an accurate interpretation, a few ideas can be tried out to see if they might fit your personal situation in some way.
For example, the dream could be commenting on two different types of “work” in your life, one of which may need some more attention beginning at this time to some extent.
On one side, you’re probably at an age where outer work and career are very important as they should be, but perhaps too much of your inner work is being ignored in the rush to establish yourself in the world.
This idea could be symbolized in your dream by work being transformed into a Gothic cathedral, that is, suggesting an inner “opus” or work that would have the goal of developing the whole you and not just the outer you.
Perhaps some quiet intrusive thoughts along the lines of “Is it all worth it?” etc. sometimes come to mind but these may not be explored very much (don’t go into the cathedral).
Maybe some sort of general rational thinking takes over (beautiful symmetrical fence) saying such things as “Things will get better later” etc. and that these vague stirrings etc. are just sort of outworn, superstitious-like ideas (fallen religious statues).
The statue of the man could symbolize this “more complete you” about whose potential you are mostly unaware (can’t see the face of the statue).
The various Gothic gates might represent the need to “slow down” in leaving thoughts about your “opus”, and the eerie Victorian cottage may suggest the idea of the “witch” who appears later in the dream.
Trying to travel back “home” (to Oklahoma) likely symbolizes “home” in the sense of “who you really are” in the totality of your personality which has to be developed over your lifetime.
This theme appears constantly in mythology and other folk tales, attesting to its deep meaning.
One example is Homer’s “Odyssey” in which Odysseus has to go through many symbolic trials and tribulations in order to “become who he really is” and reach his home in Ithaca.
The dream could then be showing what might be getting in the way of your progress toward “home”.
For instance, a ship can symbolize the personal methods that a person has methodically developed and honed in order to move through the sometimes emotionally demanding “waters” of everyday life.
But a large commercial cruise ship suggests a more broadly collective outlook and methodology, perhaps tinged with “pleasure” and “relaxation” as opposed to the sometimes more harrowing exploits required of us like those which Odysseus had to go through in becoming a more individual personality.
Similarly, buses can be taken by everyone and they have limited, controlled “destinations” because we can only “get on or off” as opposed to directing where they go.
Maybe a kind of semi-conscious frustration arises because you never really reach an inner feeling of being “home” (go from bus to bus), so to silence this, an aspect of you (the salesman) causes you to redouble your efforts in your job (salesman takes you back to work).
This part of you “drives you along” (the salesman drives the car), that is, you may not be fully in control of an aspect of your energy, e.g. maybe shown in excessive time and attention spent on your work.
The general “nuisance” of getting through the three gates back to work could again be a warning from the dream to “slow down” and consider how you’re making certain decisions and commitments regarding your job.
A hint appears once more that “all may not be well” in other parts of your life (the eerie cottage).
The appearance of the woman and the seeing of the black widow spider at the same time probably are meant to link the two images closely together in meaning.
Generally speaking, a spider in a dream often points to an important message being sent from the unconscious mind of the dreamer.
In a nutshell, since the salesman is terrified of the spider in your dream, this points to the fact that part of you may be tending to normally keep out of your conscious mind certain unpleasant insights about yourself (e.g. as partly symbolized in wanting a “clean” shirt later in the dream).
We all lean toward doing this, but in the end, it’s best for us to accept and integrate into our everyday consciousness these often upsetting realizations about how we are acting etc.
If we don’t do this, then in a worst case scenario the “black widow spider”, the dead spiders later in the dream or the unseen creepy-crawlies could eventually appear in a practical way as sudden unexplained outbursts of anger, or in feeling down too much of the time, or else in physical symptoms such as headaches etc. etc.
A very general example about what a person might be doing that makes a spider appear on the scene in their dreams would be expressing indirectly without really knowing it certain negative emotions like envy, jealousy, anger, guilt or anxiety etc., creating a kind of “sticky web” of communication which “catches” the person and makes it hard to escape from this net of deceit and intrigue.
The person might, for instance, not openly express their resentment for always being put down by someone else or in being made to work excessive overtime etc., but not saying anything leads to be being “trapped in a web of deceit” and not being enough of an individual person overall.
If the person can learn to express such unpleasant and disruptive feelings in a strong coherent way, then the positive side of the spider can appear.
For example, the person can begin to feel more like a spider sitting at the “calm centre” of the web and gain a feeling of some control over her or his fate since spiders are also connected with “spinning out the destiny” of people.
Also, the creativity associated with the spider and the making of an intricate web can also appear and give the person a sense of wanting to be busy and active as opposed to “trapped” in a web of “death”.
In this way of looking at your dream, the witch would symbolize the same thing as the spider, that is, the danger of a kind of inner “death” through unpleasant symptoms which could tend to disrupt day to day life too much.
However as mentioned, without knowing anything about you, this approach to your dream may not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.
Athanor
Dream Seeker
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