There’s a concept in Jung’s work that, every time I encounter it, stops me in my tracks, because it flips on its head the idea that consciousness is the star of the show with the unconscious merely a sidekick.
Here’s Jung in Psychology and Religion: East and West:
I never can, if I can help it, interpret one dream by itself. As a rule a dream belongs in a series. Since there is a continuity of consciousness despite the fact that it is regularly interrupted by sleep, there is probably also a continuity of unconscious processes—perhaps even more than with the events of consciousness.
para. 53
🌙 How seldom do we think of our dream life in particular, and the unconscious psyche in general, as a continuous experience? Ordinarily it’s the narrative of waking events that’s deemed our “real life,” with bizarre or nonsensical dreams serving as the occasional interruption.
Like with any story, the one doing the telling can dramatically change the tale, so what might our life look like from the perspective of the unconscious?
Dreams are our primary glimpse into this hidden POV, so I feel a little pang of sadness every time someone tells me, “Meh, dreams don’t mean anything.”
But who says waking life means something—and if it does, what is that meaning? 🤔
As far as I can tell, life means what we make of it*, otherwise two people in the same situation would always extract identical meanings. Yet how often do we have misunderstandings because our meanings are anything but identical?
(*I see this meaning-making as a joint effort between the conscious + unconscious selves.)
⌛ Your friend is routinely late when you make plans, and you ascribe the meaning, “This friendship isn’t a priority for her,” whereas your friend is grappling with the self-made meaning, “I can’t do anything right.”
Who’s correct—neither? Both?
I don’t think there is one correct interpretation of your friend’s lateness, but let’s say the two of you were to sit down and share your honest experience of the situation. When you’re done, you’d have a fuller picture than either of you possessed when operating in isolation.
In the same way, by cozying up to your unconscious, you gain a much richer perspective on your own life. By definition, the unconscious is able to supply insights that your ego does not have. I mean, how useful is that? It’s like getting the super-secret Harriet the Spy handbook to your own inner workings. 🔍
This pursuit is the cornerstone of my magical practice, a practice that, some years ago, gave rise to what I call Jungian Magic. I use dreams and divination, journaling and astral travel, spellwork and ritual to bring my conscious and unconscious selves into relationship.
When I was a baby witch…
…I attempted to use magic to override patterns within my psyche: casting money spells to plaster over deep-seated fears of success, wearing amulets to ward off “bad energy” instead of (also) setting boundaries, etc.
But I’ve come to view magical technologies as inroads to a more holistic relationship with myself and the world around me, tools to glimpse reality from more than one POV.
Rarely do we make good decisions when entrenched in narrow either/or thinking, but this is the ego’s specialty, parsing things out into This versus That, which is why we also need the expansive, nonlinear input of the unconscious. 🔮
Together, they make a formidable team, but either on their own? Well, that’s a recipe for what Jung called one-sidedness. When we cut off, say, the insights of the unconscious realm, the ego goes into hyperdrive, increasingly intent on controlling everything and far less resilient when things don’t go according to plan.
If we were to somehow eradicate the ego, though, we’d be oar-less in the ocean of life, unable to make decisions, much less carry them out.
We need both.
⛱️ Let’s rewind to last summer, when I began writing a series of lessons that became a six-month Jungian Magic primer called Enchantment Lab.
Everything we’ve just talked about, bringing the conscious + unconscious selves into greater cooperation—that’s what the Lab is all about.
I’m super proud of these lessons. They’re a walk-through of the most effective techniques I have found for gaining a richer, more nuanced picture of the unfolding story that is your life, thereby making wiser decisions.
Inside the Lab, I outline how to work with your dreams to access actionable, waking life insights (even if you’ve struggled to make heads or tails of these nighttime escapades).
I detail how to interpret tarot cards, and how to use both tarot and a pendulum to deepen your dream interpretations.
I break down the mechanics of spellcasting from a psychological perspective, showing you how to access a source of magical energy that is personal to you (and therefore way more effective than any ol’ energy that’s flying around) and direct that energy at genuinely satisfying outcomes.
I also explore how your unique psychological patterns can create magic-zapping energy drains—some teeny tiny, others rivaling Niagara Falls—and how to start plugging those leaks.
Right now Enchantment Lab is only available inside my membership community, The Portal, but I’m in the midst of creating a standalone version, which I hope to have available in the next couple of weeks.
One Portal member said the Lab was like “jumper cables for my lagging magical practice. I feel like a brand new witch again!”
I’m really excited to make Enchantment Lab available to everyone, so stay tuned for details.
If you want to get ahead of the game, you might start journaling some of your dreams now (even dream fragments are useful) so you have plenty of material to work with. 🤓
Happy Full Moon!
