Procession
In dreams witnessing or being part of a procession often depicts ones life and it experiences passing before you, and it often involves feelings about death.
A procession can be about many things, a celebration of a famous or loved person’s visit; a royal or state celebrity visiting; a lot of decorated floats as part of a towns annual event; a march of war veterans; a show of power as when a country displays its weaponry; the end of a war celebration; a statement of opposition such as the black people’s march or as a statement of opposition or protest; an expression of a peoples creativity and nature as in Mardi Gras, Rio Carnival and of course the showing of beauty and the gay community.
So in considering your dream you need to decide what sort of parade it is. Is it a protest or claiming territory march; a parade of beauty; a political procession, or a famous person and her followers. Also what is happening in the dream. To help with this see Plot/theme of the Dream – Role in the dream – The Bare Bones
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(The picture is of a beautiful woman in the Notting Hill Carnival in London each year).
Example: Then I was in a building overlooking streets packed with people. It was a festival and procession in this strange alien world, in which everything had a rather dark, dilapidated look. I had a camera that took a three-dimensional moving picture that was displayed in a still form. Like a print you could hold in your hand that moved, or even responded to you. Again a magic of this world.
On a raised mobile platform a goddess stood as she was carried in a procession which flowed past. I loved her and flew to her, skimming above the heads of the people. She had agreed to let me photograph her. I talked to her. She told me that the only love I could receive from her was that which I gave to a human woman. Inasmuch as I gave love to a human female, she would love me. She was all women.
Example: I am standing alone in a wood. It is very wet under foot. Suddenly I hear the tramp of many feet. I walk to the edge of the wood and watch a procession of hooded men in long black cloaks walk past. They are carrying a coffin. I join the procession which walks several hundred yards up to the top of a hill. There a grave has been prepared. When the coffin is lowered into the grave, I turn to the man nearest me and ask who is being buried. He turns and shows a featureless face. He then mentions my name. At this point I always wake.
Example: I was in a procession for some important occasion or other and my job was to be at the front and behind me was the big important car with whoever the bigwigs were in it. I had an elaborate costume on and someone asked me about it and I explained, ‘You know how in the early days of the motor car someone had to walk in front with a flag? Well I’m the flag!’ and I opened out the costume which sort of draped from my shoulder to reveal the flag and then I and everyone else could see it was the royal standard!
Example: I was on a wide, sandy open plain. There was a high rock coming up out of the desert on my left hand side. I was in a long queue of people who seemed to be either very old or very young. We were all wearing long robes, and all weeping bitterly. We moved forward slowly towards an opening in the ground where steps going downwards could be seen, and gradually the people in front of us made their way downwards. There was no panic, just an orderly procession and the sound of weeping. I woke up before I reached the steps, and I was crying bitterly. Mrs. W.
Example: I was present at a funeral, and moved about in the house among the mourners without being in the least degree able to realise the death of my friend as a case for mourning. I saw the coffin placed in the hearse, and in due course I was marshalled to a place in the funeral procession, which proved to be not in the mourning-coach, but in my own carriage. By my side, in the shadow, sat a gentleman, who, after being silent for a short time, said to me in a well-known voice, “I agree with you that death ought not to be regarded as a subject for mourning, and that the trappings of woe are out of place on an occasion like this.” I looked up to see who it was who had thus divined my own thoughts, and saw, without the least feeling of surprise or fear, that the speaker was no other than the friend whose body was then in the hearse on the way to the grave. It seemed to me to be quite natural that he should thus divine my thought, and that we should be together, he talking and I listening, as if death had not parted us. It also seemed quite natural that a moment or two later he should vanish away as he did, and I be left alone as I was, with a strong conviction that I ought to be able to come and go, divine and speak as he had done.
Example: I was present at a funeral, and moved about in the house among the mourners without being in the least degree able to realise the death of my friend as a case for mourning. I saw the coffin placed in the hearse, and in due course I was marshalled to a place in the funeral procession, which proved to be not in the mourning-coach, but in my own carriage. By my side, in the shadow, sat a gentleman, who, after being silent for a short time, said to me in a well-known voice, “I agree with you that death ought not to be regarded as a subject for mourning, and that the trappings of woe are out of place on an occasion like this.” I looked up to see who it was who had thus divined my own thoughts, and saw, without the least feeling of surprise or fear, that the speaker was no other than the friend whose body was then in the hearse on the way to the grave. It seemed to me to be quite natural that he should thus divine my thought, and that we should be together, he talking and I listening, as if death had not parted us. It also seemed quite natural that a moment or two later he should vanish away as he did, and I be left alone as I was, with a strong conviction that I ought to be able to come and go, divine and speak as he had done. He was aware of a faint glow of light in their eyes, however, which suggested a potential for greater animation and vitality.
Useful questions or hints:
Was I in the procession or an onlooker?
What did I observe was happening in the crowd?
Did I have any emotions or feelings?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Processing Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming
Comments
I am new to your site and excitedly exploring as it’s the most comprehensive coverage of thoughtful dream exploration I’ve found, thank you! I especially appreciate combination of analyzing symbols from multiple perspectives/contexts and articles for hands-on tools in self-exploration. I just had a 2-part dream last night involving processions, ancient stones, goddess, and river among other images.
1. I find 2 stones/pieces in soft dirt on an embankment just other side of a chainlink fence marking the property boundary of a historical site?/state park?: some official property of significance that people visit. The fence is not particularly imposing: though high, the gates are always open for visitors of workers to continually come and go, it serves mainly to just define the property as historically designated or as owned and maintained. Each stone had what looked like a red wax seal on it. One was white and found first and easily, protruding up out of the soft dirt. The other dark gray or black and dusty from the dirt it was in, I found after looking around a bit more. The white one had more lined simple designs on it as well, maybe map-like? The seals and designs were all in red. General sense that these markings were of Chinese origin. Feel the need to pretend or hide or argue for my keeping them to a male friend/acquaintance working on the ‘inside’ of the site: ‘was found Outside the fence’ is my argument to him and myself that I am not wrong to keep them though I even think that argument is a little thin as the discovery really shows that the fence should have been extended to cover the area where I found the stones. Next I am going with a rough and ready procession going out of the site, it is a coordinated effort for practical purposes moving a lot of large items/equipment to be set up on the external grounds for an event, possibly. A functional caravan, some flatbed trucks for the heavier equipment and lots of people–workers/volunteer–riding on top or walking alongside. There’s a lot of white vs color: men wearing white tshirts, equipment is metal with white enameled coating, etc. Dust gets kicked up a lot. Somewhere in this part my attention is on a mug of mine I’m carrying, noticing the deep cracks, showing to a female acquaintance and her confirming sympathetically that it was broken—taking a piece out in examining it—and would not hold liquid again. I was disappointed but not deeply upset. In waking life, it is a stoneware mug, glazed white, given to me by my mother when I went to college; has a biblical proverb on it “Be Joyful”—which I like but it also notes the biblical verse reference which for a long while made me uncomfortable as I never really saw myself as a religious person particularly, rather a spiritual person and felt that when people had items that explicitly referenced the Bible it was more of an advertisement of their faith and wanting to signify to others their ‘goodness’ or ‘righteousness’ overstating their Christian-ness—I tend to think, ‘isn’t the content of the message enough? What does it matter where it came from?’
2. Am traveling with 2 female friends in India. At one point swimming in a small river alongside floats in another procession: a religious festival where they had floats in the river representing goddesses and holy symbols. The one I remember most clearly was of a reclining goddess, maybe Hindu. Was a little apprehensive that i would encounter a snake or other dangerous native river animals that I wasn’t familiar with and so didn’t know how to practice safety around. But no incident. It may have been late daytime or night(?) seems there was an element of torches/fire illuminating the floats. Later it definitely is night, the festival continues in an old city, we end up on the roof of a building talking about how different our bodies are from the locals in size—they are all very petite and small-framed. At various times we see projections of video/animation with music illustrating the goddesses or tenets being celebrated—I note that they use a lot of the color orange.
I see from other comments you are focused these days on updating your dictionary and setting aside responding in-depth to posted dreams, so I post this one knowing I might not get your response. Thanks for your work!
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
R – Maybe you are confusing the rules that apply to your outer life with what you dream; because all that you dream of is yours – the two stones. But even so, you feel you have to justify your ownership. But such marked stones is primarily about uncovering or discovering your buried past, things you may have long put behind you or tried to forget. Sometimes this links with your far distant ancestors or aspects of your present personality you carry from the far past. But even so it is about finding or becoming aware of aspects of you from the past.
In a sense you were and archaeologist which links to the process of gradually bringing your past experience to consciousness. Literally it shows you digging into what are usually your unconscious layers of yourself to unearth personal meaning and perhaps deal with past problems that were buried.
So be proud of your ownership of what is the first stage of wider awareness. See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/extending-your-awareness/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/
But realise that dream images are like icons on a computer screen – you have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. To make them into the wonderful gateways they are you may have to learn certain skills. Perhaps this will help http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
The caravan of people show you getting more fully involves with discovering the depths of you. The mug is a kink with your mother through associations – Many people do not realise that they have an inner mother equally as powerful as an external mother. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with your mother, and they are a major influence in your early life, and in a few cases the child never becomes independent from its mother at any age. This is true even if your mother was never there for you – you still have all the memories of her not being there for you filed under ‘Mother’. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Such an inner mother can appear in dreams because you are still deeply influenced by what you hold within you. The inner mother can also signify what has been received via genes passed on or ancestral influences.
You have inherited from your mother an interest about the inner life, but you feel uneasy about the religious aspect of it. Perhaps you are one of the people of a new generation who carefully examine in a new way, the whole mass of human experience and culture of past and present. We are weighing it, testing it, evaluating it, and filing it. We are not taking on trust any past claims. Out of this evaluation will, or is arising slowly a new view of human existence. It is a view built not on ideals or hopes or dreams, but of a frank acceptance of what we are. Out of this will grow the desire to remodel our society upon the real needs of human existence. Out of it is arising a shift in relationships, work, schooling, family life, everything.
But be careful of how you weigh what was given you, for the mug seems to be an object that wears well, and represents the quality of receptiveness.
Swimming in a river is also extremely important, especially with Hindu goddesses and in India. Each of us are immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. And as you passed through these changes you died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through middle and old age and then through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future. And this force of growth and change. And is fought like hell by many as we are afraid of such changes, especially getting old and facing death.
The Indian background is a doorway to the very huge part of you in which i8s held enormous wisdom and inspiration. See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/using-your-intuition-1/
The snakes are there to find in the river of life, but do not be afraid of them.
Thanks so much for your reply, Mr. Crisp–I wasn’t expecting such detail given your current work focus. I appreciate your insights very much and your pointing me in some helpful directions to explore this dream further. I always seem to be on the edge of some kind of self-discovery in dreams. I’ll keep at it!