Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: An Old Folly  (Read 3417 times)

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
An Old Folly
« on: March 04, 2018, 11:55:16 AM »
Ann

I was in a large, old house. It was pleasant, and interesting, being like an old “folly”. It had passages leading off all over the place that one could explore. I was being led up the stairs by a very wilful child. It wanted to explore the house, and was dragging me with it. As we went up the stairs, a man came out of a door and walked down past us. He looked at me as if to say, “Don’t go up”; or, “if you go up, be prepared.” He looked like a caretaker, but was very indistinct and shadowy.

The child led me on up however into what was like a loft where I had never been before. it was attached to, yet somehow distinct from the rest of the house. Also it was very light and filled with ancient books and objects. I looked at them and felt that there was something oriental and mysterious about them. Somehow they seemed like a treasure, all dusty, but full of wisdom about life.

Then the child went to a door that was split in two halves, a higher and lower. It could not get through the lower, but went out the top half.’

Tony Crisp

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3419
    • View Profile
    • Dreamhawk.com
Re: An Old Folly
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2018, 12:00:32 PM »
The person who told me the dream is a young married woman in her twenties. whom I will call Ann. Ann was a student teacher until events led to marriage. An early child took her from college to the new discipline of parenthood and homemaking. This she enjoyed a great deal, but she also missed her other, college life, with its promise of a career.

In the dream, Ann sees herself in an ‘old folly’. Could this be the ‘folly’ of her sudden marriage due to pregnancy, and the inner struggle it led to? However, the old house is not oppressive, it has many passages and rooms possible of exploration, which in itself is an excellent description pictorially of Ann herself. At college Ann found her interests running here and there, exploring this, tasting that, building odd bits of information in any old way as her interest led her. So behind the image of the house we find a shrewd summing up of Ann.

Coming to the next part of the dream, we see that Ann is being led, or pulled along by a ‘wilful child’. When we first spoke of this dream, neither Ann nor I could understand even a part of it. As we talked, however, first of all the house, then the meaning of the child ‘ became clear. Just prior the dream, Ann had become deeply immersed in an evening class dealing with the works of T. S. Eliot.

The study had taken such a hold on her, that for some weeks she could think of nothing else but exploring the meaning of his poetry. She had literally been dragged along by her interest, and through it had discovered a new world of understanding about life and one’s relationship to it. At the time she had rather wondered where it was all leading to, but the dream clearly and distinctly outlines its possibilities. Her interest in Eliot is shown as a child, youthful urges that had previously not satisfied themselves in her other interests. These urges show her a part of herself (the house) she had never seen before.

The books and objects clearly depict the mystery about life and religion she found in her understanding of Eliot. While the man is seen as the more down to earth part of her, worrying lest she is swept away by her interest in ‘higher’ things. But it was only in this way that the child, her impetuous desire to explore and so ‘discover’ herself, found release. It could not get out of a lower door through interests in household pursuits, only through the higher door of self understanding.

Of course, when it is all written down, with all the meanings neatly explained, it looks so easy. It becomes obvious in the wider knowledge of Ann, and her inner feelings, what the dream is all about. In fact, it would now be difficult not to understand the dream. Yet it took Ann and I a good hour of conversation to unravel it. Of such are the mysteries of dreams made.

Tony