Philosophical Midwifery and Dreams
I am in a room where a woman is in labor. She is about my age with blonde hair. The room is the apartment of the man who is midwifing the child or, more specifically, children as we find out that it is triplets right before birth. The man is the professor type, very intelligent, very calm but also lively, likable, trustworthy. I stay for the whole time, it takes some hours. There are some weird visuals that I don't quite know how to explain, like protruding biological parts. There's no drama, I see no blood. Maybe she experienced some pain but it wasn't so terrible. I turned around for just a moment and then the triplets were out. When the 3 boys came out each had a light blue circle or triangle painted around one eye, I think the right. They came out like that. A light blue circle with a darker blue outline.
Part 1
I shared this dream with a friend who pointed me in the direction of Plato’s Theaetetus where Socrates describes himself as a Philosophical Midwife.
In the Theaetetus Socrates explains that his role is not to teach others what he knows but rather play the role of the Philosophical Midwife wherein he helps induce the labor of bringing one’s own ideas into being. He, like the midwife, also acts as a matchmaker in that his experience has lent him the knack for being able to sense when two ideas may come together well to birth one that is greater than the sum of them. And after the child (or idea) is birthed, he may help to “run around the hearth with him to see whether he is worth rearing.”
Socrates gets this idea from his mother who is a midwife and compares the pains of childbirth to the psychological pains of labour induced when one is giving birth to a new idea.
“You forget, my friend, that I neither know, or profess to know, anything of these matters; you are the person who is in labour, I am the midwife; and this is why I soothe you, and offer you one good thing after another, that you may taste them. And I hope that I may at last help to bring your own opinion into the light of day…. I only know enough to extract them from the wisdom of another, and to receive them in a spirit of fairness.”
This is a perfect way to describe the essence of the relationship between the dreamer and the dream guide. The dream guide is not here to tell the dreamer what his/her dream means, nor are they there to interpret the dream for them. Instead, the dream guide acts as a Philosophical Midwife in helping the dreamer birth their own ideas from their own inner knowing and wisdom about what the dream means to them and why it has come up right now.
“Can a man know and also not know that which he knows?”
S: When you are imprisoned in a well and the self-assured adversary closes one of your eyes with his hand, and asks whether you can see his cloak with the eye which he has closed, how will you answer?
T: I should answer, “Not with that eye but with the other”
S: Then you see and do not see the same thing at the same time.
This passage sparked my interest due to the imagery of one eye as it relates to the original dream where the triplets born each have one eye painted blue, but the overall concept relates to dreams on a larger scale.
“If it turns out that this dream could help the gentleman, then you would agree the dream is for his benefit. Therefore whatever is fashioning the dream considers us personally, crafts a message out of our own past for our benefit, it opens up the past, it prepares us for our present, it can anticipate the future- it’s pretty wise isn’t it. And the more you go into these the more you’re going to then add different keywords to what it is that fashions the dream. Let me give it to you simply. If we can show again and again that these dreams relate to something you’re going through right now, the day before, a couple days to come, then there’s something in us that’s aware of all of this, it’s aware of our whole past better than we are- it awakened all kinds of memories, did it not? There is what we are consciously- or the image we have of ourselves. But there’s something in us that’s quite awake. Right now there’s something awake in all of us. And if you get in a bind or have difficulty today, or there’s something important that you overlooked that you should have picked up, you might have a good dream tonight ‘cause that’s what dreams do. They pick up things you’ve overlooked- things that are significant that you’ve ignored. If that’s the case that means that right now there is something that is more aware than we are. When we identify with our subjective feelings we forget that there’s something that’s awake which is quite wise and quite knowing that always works for our benefit, right now. So of course the problem is, which one do you want to identify with? And apart from which one do you want to identify with- by repeatedly playing this game, you’ll see which one you do identify with. And that makes a big difference. You’re no longer that narrow thing that stumbles along but you can enjoy your stumbling and learn from it. So what does it?... I call it the Dream Master.” - Pierre Grimes
Source: Philosophical Midwifery and Dreams
The end of Theaetetus sparked my interest as it related to my last post about Hermetic Principles and Dreams. Socrates concludes that -
“The wise man is he who makes evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him...the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of evil, both in appearance and in reality.”
This is the essential principle of Hermeticism and Alchemy - that the nature of the world is such that all dual and opposing forces are in reality the same thing with varied degrees of frequency. There lies potential in all things to manipulate and change its perceived nature. That is not an idea but a physical Law of the Universe. We can know things that we perceive and we can be wise of how they really are and use our power of attention to change them. Dreams are a window into this world as it concerns us personally.
Part 2 : Dream Party x Star Party
DP x SP pulls Astrological Charts for the moments of dreams to see how personal mythology relates to universal mythology.
We begin in the Astrological chart of dreams by looking at the 9th House where dreams come from. The 9th house of this dream is in the constellation Ardra, the teardrop, the storm, the star of suffering. Across the sky, “aspecting” or “looking at” this dream is Jupiter. This all fits in very nicely as Jupiter rules midwifery and childbirth and is of the professorial type, exactly like the male midwife in the original dream.
In Vedic mythology Ardra is where man’s consciousness is birthed and therefore where he suffers “the pangs of labour, my dear Theaetetus; (when) you have something within you which you are bringing to the birth.” The triplets in the dream fit into the theme of creation as 0 (nothing) 1 (something) 2 (chaos) 3 (union). The triplet’s painted right eyes also lend themselves well to Ardra's wild nature and to her identity as the sky, birth and suffering. In Ancient Egypt the right eye is associated with Ra the sky god who is portrayed as a falcon. In some accounts, humans were created from Ra’s tears (hint: Ardra teardrop). The eye of Ra is also his mother Hathor (his feminine counterpart) who protects him from his enemies (think, blue “evil eye” emblems still used today to ward off enemies). “In Egypt she was one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings particularly by women desiring children.”
Listen:
audio by the Slow Owls Mens Association
In regards to the Seven Great Hermetic Principles and the role of wisdom according to Socrates, the particular alchemical act portrayed by the constellation of Ardra is taking the suffering of man and “turning the tears upside down” into laughter- or, changing the calibration of suffering into it’s higher calibration of joy. We can start by using wisdom to change our attitudes and attentions until we have literally transformed ourselves through raising the frequencies of our suffering to their dual natured state of being, that of joy. These are good things to do now ‘cause you can’t sleep when you’re dead.