Interpreting dreams with Tarot cards

Sometimes one gets stuck in trying to understand a dream, and sometimes one like to have something further clarified, and then it’s a good thing to get help by using tarot cards in the interpretation. Not as a replacement but as a supplement. This is the same thing as when picking a card or doing a tarot spread in order to understand things happening in life. When you do, you can also interpret back and forth between the dream and the cards, which really gives a broader scope for understanding. It only takes some ability to interpret symbols and some confidence in intuition. A great example of when it’s a good idea to pick a card, is when one can’t remember more than fragments of the dream, and when there’s no success with re-entering it.

Let’s make an example from an old dream of mine that I picked for the task, where the only information was this:

”I hear bells out in the rain”.

I felt back then there was more to this, but it kept slipping through my fingers, so I let it go. Until now obviously. At first I’ve done the level one interpretation again:

I – the soul

hear – gets information

bells – announcing important events - sometimes spiritual ones as in church bells calling to prayer

outside – being natural

rain – emotions or gifts as from above

So the soul, the watcher in the dream got a message of some kind. Because of the hot and dry weather here in Sweden for a long time and the need for rain, I came to think of an old Jewish saying about prayers bringing down the rain, and if bells calls to prayer - the rain could be the outcome of that prayer. Maybe it has to do then, with water as in the element which could mean for example south, rebirth, childhood, emotions and so on – but since there’s no more information to attach to it, the understanding could easily get lost. So here the tarot cards could be of help.

At first, since I have more than one deck I chose the one that intuitively felt right for this task, which was Thoth’s tarot. Then I focused on the old dream when shuffling the cards and spreading them on the table before me. The cards I picked were:

I(me): XX -The Eon (doom in other decks)

Hear: 5 Wands – Conflict

Bells: 4 Pentacles – Power

Outside: 8 Swords – Interference

Rain: Ace of Wands

So what is the outcome of the clarifying spread?

The soul and watcher was at the time (since something was announced) about to enter a long and hard process, as in the Eon. The announcement had to do with conflicting elements (5 Wands), and therefore also it was stressing the need for higher integrity or protection (4 Pentacles). At the same time the need also was there to put the weight on staying in the service of love (4 Pentacles), and seeing things from a higher perspective (The Eon) and to let things evolve by themselves (8 Swords). Powerful energy was at work (Ace of Wands) and this energy in itself continued the message, since the sound of bells was coming from the rain.

The dream sequence said; pay attention and stay focused. The interpretation of the rain was interesting since it was quite contradictory containing both water and fire. Looking at the receiving meaning of hearing, and the conflicting elements, further understanding was stronger about the fact that it had to do with the elements of water and fire. But in which form? I wasn’t supposed to overthink it according to the 8 of Swords card, just let the process have its way.

On level two – where people, memories and the more direct everyday life details takes part, the dream could have meant something like a long hard process with conflicts, a need for protection without overthinking things, just letting the new strong energies in, whatever it was. But since the short sequence is chosen for this task, I had to go deeper into it. Which also felt quite right, since I remember my frustration over not being able to remember the rest of the dream.

Well, the dream can be said to have had its process since it occurred for about 15 years ago. Was there perhaps some clarifying in other dreams that I had missed? I started to look in my dream archive, searching for dreams containing the word “bells”. What I found was two interesting dreams. The first one about women in the eon of Aries, with voices sounding like delicate bells, going up in the sky with a plane, but being captured by men and brought down again. They weren’t allowed to sing when held prisoners, but in the dream I had an understanding that said literally:

“From now on everything is new .. and it's about bathing in water, and rise to a degree, being raised to the level where you can sing.”

In the second dream containing bells, I had a conversation with a spirit feeling like having carbonic acid and light in my body, at the same time as I heard the sound of brittle bells. When putting this together, the initial short dream sequence was part of a bigger picture of dreams on level three, which of course is quite inspiring. So what to do to gain further understanding? I chose to pick another card, which turned out to be: 6 wands – Victory.

Victory for sure made me think about being raised to a higher level and allowed to sing, being released from captivity. The feminine disappeared when the eon of Aries arrived, so there was no question about the message had to do with the feminine return of energies, but I didn’t feel satisfied with the conclusion so I took the word victory through my dream archive, to see if I could catch something, and here is what I found:

“I hear the name Victoria, and I realize that it’s me in the incarnation before the one in France. Victoria is now a soul part that raises and falls, up and down in a new kind of certainty. She turns into a huge bald headed eagle named Victory-A, who communicates with me without words.

I am suddenly standing in a room with a lots of shining orbs around me when a hollow orb, more like a torus, comes and starts to communicate with me. Someone warns me to communicate with this form, but I say I am certain this is the right moment for this to happen.

I am walking through a vast dark winter garden, continuing to a house in the centre of a town, where I unlock a big wrought iron gate before I open a big double door. I walk into what is my forgotten home. I make sure no one else can enter the place and walk towards a huge audio equipment. I see an old cassette tape and something is written on it, a message of some kind. The tape starts playing before even being put in the tape recorder, and I walk out from the room to a balcony where I stand looking down at the water in a dam.”

Victory then. I found the tape standing high above listening to what was on it looking down at the water.. symbolically raised to the level where I could sing. But what was the message written on the cassette? What was it playing? Oh dear, now I felt I was really tangled into this quest. I went through the archive again, searching for dreams where a cassette tape occurred, and I found some quite interesting ones, especially one in which a cassette played a beautiful song sang by a women with a voice both high and low. But also all cassette dreams had something in common; the coming of something new, or more like something old coming back, being reborn or rebuilt. A shining construction or a shining woman, taking form, and tones going up and down.

Then I started to think about the current night’s dream about a woman with light blond long hair, dressed in red, who was standing close to me, with her back against north east, gazing at a point behind me. I recognized her face a lot, but couldn’t remember her name until sitting here writing. Suddenly her name came to me, and I googled her, and this is what I found out:

She’s a Swedish singer who changed her name after going through a long hard process because of a brain tumour. When she came back she was actually kind of reborn, and from not being able to sing at all - she made a brand new album. She sang again. When searching for some of her songs (since I’ not familiar with her music) the first song I found amusingly enough was: “let your spirit fly”.

So what is the message? What did the bells in the rain say?

When it comes to illness as in not curable – hear this: nothing is ever not curable. And when it comes to bringing down the rain, prayers as in true intention, knowing the result will come, is the answer. Healing is always possible. We shall never think that something is not able to fix or that there are lethal deceases that can’t be cured. We are made of pure energy. Alive, shining and radiating energy. Energy that’s in every aspect ready to be changed in every direction. From low to high, from stressed to calm, from sick to healthy.. Do you hear the bells in the rain? Things are already fixed if you believe them to be fixed. When you KNOW deep inside you.

And what about the new structure that was rebuilt, the woman? Look at the world of today. In a symbolic sense, the world is a dry place, it really needs rain. To be honest it needs prayers with intention, healing with love and the true knowing in our hearts, that everything will be okay again. The woman and shining structure is the feminine energies taking form here on earth. The caring nurturing energies that we all need. The balance bowl which has been light weighted for quite a long time.

To finish this sequence I also have to mention the myth of Persephone. She went as an innocent girl, named Kore, who disappeared down to the realm of death, and when she came up again she was reborn – with a new name – dressed in red. The red colour is crucial, because it means sacrificing something on the way up from death back to life. Persephone sacrificed her innocent way of looking at life, her eyes were opened.

In order to thread in to the new era that is upon us, we all will have to sacrifice some part of us. We will have to get rid of the – not innocent, but rather ignorant – part of ourselves, that goes along through looking the other way with how the world looks today. Starvation, cruelty against animals, violence, warmongering, pesticides in food, artificial food, deaths of bees and so on.. We have to make a change. Not with violence but with wisdom.

People who have been through severe trauma, is changed to their roots. The woman in my dream, the singer, she looked past me towards west. West also symbolizes death, and she had looked death in the eyes, and when she came back her message was: Let your spirit fly!

So, let your spirit fly. See things from a higher place. Let the rain cleanse and clarify. Get your voice back and Sing! Express your truth. Do it from your hearts, with love and with knowledge about how reality looks, with intention to change it. Because everything changes from inside, from your very core. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible.

This is Victory. And the long hard eon with its conflicting energies will be over soon. Don’t overthink things, act from your hearts. Let the strong new born energy enter your lives.