Bridge of Dreams
Intersection 7: Empowered Living

Dreamspeak

by Evergreen … 1/6/98

We live in a vast ocean of consciousness and every now and then, we catch a fish. Who are we? We are both the ocean and the fish, both predator and prey.

Okay, to be less esoteric, all fortune-telling is based on the underlying premise -- increasingly being demonstrated in modern science -- that everything is connected to everything else. "As above, so below; as below, so above" was engraved on the ancient Sophaclean temple portal, and the poet William Blake wrote:

To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

All attempts to read signs -- to see in one circumstance the indication of something else at another time or place -- probably began when some bright caveman walked out of his cave, saw black clouds in the sky, and said, "Ugh, me no go hunting today" because he knew it was probably going to rain.

The connection between black clouds and rain was probably pretty clear to our bright caveman, but the accuracy of his predictions must have seemed like sheer magic to his less enlightened peers, who made him their Shaman. All magic and science is based on attempts to predict the course of events; the difference is simply a quantitative distinction in how much we presumably know about the intervening events. We call meteorology science because we know a great many facts about air currents, temperatures, chaos theory, etc. etc. We call something like reading the Dreamspeak cards magic because we can't imagine any set of facts that might connect, say, the flipping of a reversed cat (one of the Dreamspeak images) with the sharp rise in the token price of a certain head some weeks later. Meteorology and all of what we call fortune telling are about equally accurate, and success in either venture depends heavily on the skill of the one doing the reading.

Would you like to learn to read the Dreamspeak cards to gain a better understanding of your current and future life in Kymer? Begin by going to the Dreamspeak Manual and printing out the meanings that Oracle Uni has attached to the different cards. There is nothing more mysterious in the connection between the cards and their images -- just pictures that more or less reflect some general idea -- than there would be if we took two stones and decided, "the black stone will mean YES and the white stone will mean NO." In other words, the cards themselves have no intrinsic power; we are the source of their meanings, and we begin with the general ideas that Uni has attached to these cards.

Then take out your Dreamspeak deck (you can buy one for 200T in the first locale of V-Mart). Flip through the cards slowly, one at a time, taking the time to consider each image carefully as you read Uni's attached meaning. For example take the owl, the first card described on Uni's list. The wise old owl is a pretty standard image of wisdom or intelligence in our western culture, isn't it? If the owl is upright, Uni says it means "wisdom, intelligence, maturity" -- no surprises there! Yet some Native American tribes attach a very different meaning to the image of owl. Perhaps you yourself have had some personal experience with either an actual owl or with the image, and that's great! Weave your own experiences and feelings about owl into the initial meaning Uni has provided to develop your own unique sense of what this image implies for you in your readings. What we're trying to build here is a bridge between your mind and some stuff out there in the world; the cards are just a connecting link for you to use, like using rocks to step across a stream.

The reversed (upside-down) owl means, of course, the opposite of whatever concepts you have attached to the rightside-up owl. Uni suggests, "ignorance, comic silliness, immaturity." What's the opposite of all the ideas you attached to the owl image? For example, some people might think of the owl as being somewhat pompous, like a professor, in which case for them the reversed owl might also carry the feelings of modesty or innocence along with the basic ignorance.

The important point is that you should not try to memorize Uni's list of suggested meanings, but rather use them as jumping off points for developing your own set of general concepts and feelings to attach to each image. If you try to use some direct x=y system, your readings will never make much sense. You have to work with global concepts and feelings to develop fluid meanings that can be molded around a wide variety of circumstances according to the specific question.

And the question, of course, is the other critical part of the process. The cards, even with your own set of carefully meditated meanings attached, are simply a set of clues or answers -- and answers don't make any sense at all unless they are attached to questions. If I just tell you "9," you can have no idea what I'm talking about. That answer only makes sense in the context of something like: What is 4 + 5? Or what is the square of 3? Or how many dolls do you own?

So if you just flip the image of a reversed owl into a mental vacuum, what you get is "ignorance, comic silliness, immaturity" -- which doesn't mean much of anything at all in your life (except maybe that you're being silly) since you haven't attached this answer to any question. But if you're wondering about whether or not to sell a particular rare head and then flip the reversed owl, the answer is pretty clearly "NO, it would be foolish to do so at this time."

Some people call this process intuition, but that's just a word that means we can't quite explain all the steps in the process. There are steps, though, and you can learn them for yourself as you grapple with learning to read the Dreamspeak cards. Sure, it's fun to try to predict something like, say, who will be in the February class of Acolyte appointees or how long your current amorous relationship will last. But far more significant is the broader task of learning to read sign -- of using your own mind in combination with the Dreamspeak cards or the tarot or runes or simply a handful of buttons -- to reach out and learn more about what's going on in the world than simply what you can see in front of your nose.

Reading the Dreamspeak cards extends our capabilities, just as virtual reality itself extends the range of our potential. To know more, see more, do more, be more… that's what it's all about, isn't it?