I've had some very scary nightmares and weird dreams happen to me. I had some dreams where some stuff actually came true; I had dreams where I felt I had dreamt it before. So what are dreams trying to tell us? Beats the hell out of me.
My nightmares were so life-like, after I woke up from them, I had to turn the TV on and couldn't get back to sleep. I had this one dream where I tried to be the hero in a campus store robbery situation. I was in the store and I tried to shoot the robber, but instead I shot a hostage by accident. Then I just ran. That felt so realistic. What does it mean? I don't know.
I also had nightmares about running as fast as I could from killers, and being trapped in a building with zombies or vampires. But I had dreams where I met famous people or just weird shit I can't even explain.
Why do we dream? Well, we got to do something while we sleep. I think our mind takes in what we experienced during that day or the last thing we see, do, or hear before we go to sleep. Or they might give us a foreseeable future to tell us something. Most dreams don't mean a thing or make any sense to us. I always don't remember a lot of them. People find it fun to wake up and immediately write down the dream. I think that can get annoying after awhile.
So I was into Native American culture at the time of my nightmares, and I heard they used something called a dreamcatcher. Dreamcatchers were made so that Native American children can sleep at night. The parents would put them over the children's beds so they had a pleasant night. I found some helpful info at this site "Bearded Wolf: Dreamcatchers" located at http://users.erols.com/brddwolf/dreamcatcher.html. The site describes how to make a dreamcatcher, and explains the legend behind it.
The website said:
Long ago when the world was young, an old man sat on a high mountain and had a vision. In his vision, Iktomi, the great trickster and teacher of wisdom, appeared in the form of a spider. Iktomi spoke to him in a sacred language that only the old man could understand.
As he spoke, Iktomi the spider took the elder's willow hoop which had feathers, horse hairs, beads and offerings on it and began to spin a web. He spoke to the elder about the cycles of life… how we begin our lives as infants and we move on to childhood, and then to adulthood. Finally, we go to old age where we must be taken care of as infants, completing the cycle.
Iktomi said, "In each time of life there are many forces and different directions that can help or interfere with the harmony of nature, and also with the Great Spirit and all of his wonderful teachings." Iktomi gave the web to the Lakota elder and said, "See, the web is a perfect circle but there is a hole in the center of the circle. If you believe in the Great Spirit, the web will catch your good dreams and ideas - - and the bad ones will go through the hole. Use the web to help yourself and your people to reach your goals and make good use of your people's ideas, dreams and visions."
The elder passed on his vision to his people and even today, many of us use the dreamcatcher as the web of our life. It is hung above our beds or in the home to sift dreams and visions. The good of our dreams are captured in the web of life and carried with them...but any bad dreams escape through the center hole.
I found this to be very interesting, and surprisingly, it had worked for me. You can go out and buy a dreamcatcher, but I wanted to be a Native American and make it myself. I used Weeping Willow branches from my yard, because they are really easy to bend to make a circle. Then I got yarn to make the webbing. (I didn't make it too complicated like the picture shows.) Then I got a hawk feather from my older brother's hawk (he was a falconer at the time) and hung the feather off the dreamcatcher. I added little things onto them like beads and other Native American stuff I had. I hung them on the ceiling in my room and didn't have a bad dream for years. People made fun of me for having these ugly things hanging on my ceiling, but hey- I didn't have a bad dream for five years, so there!
Over the years, my dreamcatchers became old and dusty so I took them down from my ceiling because I was having bad allergic attacks. If you buy a dreamcatcher at a store, they come in all shapes and sizes and will probably be a lot more beautiful than the piece of garbage you make. Regardless, I think if people believe that these things can work, then store-bought or home-made, they will.
From issue #18 |
