(1/6/2023)
I am at an outdoor area. There are many women there. A woman I seem to know whose name starts with “M” calls me over to a large tree. It has a huge trunk. She is showing me some ants. The ants live in the tree. She has been interacting with the ants as some kind of unconscious ritual. She is being healed by them but does not know it. I look at the hole in the tree. Large black oval cylinders come up and down out of the hole. I look at them and they have rows and rows of tightly packed black ant eggs. They are being pushed up and down into the hole. There are honey gold beads in the hole as well and the black ants are working very hard. The woman goes over and sticks both hands palms down into the hole. I realize she has been doing this for some time and it is somehow healing her. We are all there to hear a ministry of some sort by a famous woman. As I look up dozens of women are there. The woman working with the ants continues on. I go to the door of the hall and someone says the woman speaker cannot come so they sent a man to speak. He arrives. He is older and thin and has a royal blue cloak on. His energy is not great. He goes and sits like a king at the front of the hall or room. He is flanked by women. I stand at the door and then go back out to the woman and the ants. I tell her she needs to talk to my friend Rachel because she has been through the ant healing and knows the results. Then all of a sudden the ground opens and the whole area underground is exposed and there is a bridge of ants to the underworld and world and the woman is down there. The bridge disappears and the ants have her and are working in the room. The room underground is deep but we can all see in. There is now a beautiful gold and reddish glow and I look across the hole and I see where they are taking her. It is a beautiful throne. It is covered in gold and is glowing. They take her to it and she sits in it. I leave and go into the hall to tell the man there is something much more important going on outside. He does not believe me and tells me that old hole is where the incinerator was years ago and we are just seeing that. I know better and I run back outside and the women are all standing around and a huge blue box is where the hole was now and it is the incinerator. I am so sad that this has happened. I should never have told him about the ant queen as he has covered it all up with the old incinerator. I am so upset. How can this be?
Literal
I have been witnessing my dear friend who is healing from cancer that is visiting her. She has just completed her course of treatment and has walked the ant bridge to the underworld where she can now sit on the golden throne. Yet, upon finishing her treatment she must return to work to support her family. She must find a way to remain queenly in the masculine work a day world.
Additionally, each day we are confronted with the patriarchy sitting on its throne. There are many thrones these days. How do we observe? How do we stay in the eye of the storm so we can see clearly and not rush in to explain or change or announce that there are more importan things in the world than power and omnipotence?
Psychological
I feel the community of women who live in me gathering to honor the healing that has taken place for the feminine. Ants are matriarchal. This dream is matriarchal to me. I honor the feminine aspects of healing in the ants and in myself. Psyche wants me to see directly into the underworld realm and how beautiful it can be. The famous woman cannot come so they send a man in royal blue instead. He is flanked by a different kind of feminine. Women in service to the “all knowing” masculine or good daughters of the patriarchy. In this case it is a masculine who would take away the ritual and the healing of the ant queen in one sentence. He incinerates the ritual, the community, and the queen for the sake of his own power, his own need to be seen and heard in the hall. Perhaps, the dream is giving a more than obvious warning. Something along the lines of the old saying “neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” This is what came to mind upon waking. Be careful who you share the gold with, do not cast your pearls before those who would incinerate them.
Archetypal
“In the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros…tiny ants embody the methodical, discriminating work that helps Psyche, or soul, to sort the seeds of her relationship to the divine principle of Love.” (von Franz, 116ff) “The anthill leading into the earth mythically associates the ant with the ambivalent magic of pysche’s instinctual, subterranean forces that wreak chaos as well as support order” (Taschen, 2010)…In the Navajo hero-quest, it is the ant that helpfully gathers up the fragments of the hero’s shattered body suggesting psyche’s capacity to bit by bit bring dissociated substance into cohesion.” (Wyman, 1965). Ants first appeared on the earth between 140 to 168 million years ago. Humans appeared between five million and seven million years ago. Through cooperation ants have continued to survive and thrive and arrived much sooner than humans. Their wisdom regarding healing in the dream can be trusted given their experience. They have ancient knowing and wisdom about the underworld they live in. The eggs are black and gold. The queen chamber is adorned with gold. “Nothing could be more dangerous and delicate than an anthill. It is the earth’s ear…It is the threshold of the world below the earth” (Calasso, 1998). It is sacred space and in the dream the ants create the bridge for the healed human to be her own queen.
The urge of the heroic feminine has its shadow in this dream. The immature urge to show the secret of what is important and sacred in the underworld to the false god in the Royal Blue cloak who incinerates the beauty of the underworld and the queen with it. Why would she believe he would listen to her? Why would she think that he would leave his kingly station to see what is more important outside. His power to eliminate beauty with his words is apparent. The all mighty, all knowing king and his consorts. The patriarchy and his good daughters will have nothing of the natural world and its healing capacities. Rather he would incinerate it. We see this everyday in our modern world. Incineration of the sacred and of what would make Soul in the world.
This dream warns me to be careful. Stay with the underworld beauty and the feminine Matriarchal community that holds it. It seems to be no coincidence that this dream arrived on January 6, 2023.