Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
First let us understand the subjective ideas in this motif as applied to the personal and interior life of the dreamer. The dark man dream tells a woman what predicament she is facing. The dream tells about a cruel attitude toward herself as personified by the thug in the dream. Like Bluebeard's wife, if the woman can consciously gain hold of the “key” question about this matter and answer it honestly, she can be set free. Then the muggers, linkers, and predators of the psyche will exert much less pressure on her. They will fall away to a distant layer of the unconscious. There she can deal with them conscientiously instead of in crisis.
The dark man in women’s dreams appears when an initiation— a psychic change from one level of knowing and behavior to another more mature or more energetic level of knowledge and action—is imminent. This dream occurs to the as-yet-to-be- initiated, as well as to those who are veterans of several rites of passage, for
there
is always more initiation. No matter how old a woman becomes, no matter how many years pass, she has yet more ages, stages, and more “first times” awaiting her. That is what initiation is all about: it creates an archway which one prepares to pass through to a new manner of knowing and being.
Dreams are
portales
, entrances, preparations, and practices for the next step in consciousness, the “next day” in the individuation process. So, a woman might have a dream of the predator when her psychic circumstances are too quiescent or complacent. We could say that this occurs in order to raise a storm in the psyche so that some energetic work can be done. But also a dream like this affirms that the woman’s life needs to change, that the woman dreamer has gotten caught in some hiatus or ennui as regards a difficult choice, that she is reluctant to take the next step, go the next distance, that she is shying away from wresting her own power
away from the predator, that she is not used to being/acting/ striving at full bore, in all-out capacity.
Additionally, dark man dreams are also wake-up calls. They say: Pay attention! Something has gone radically amiss in the outer world, in personal life, or in the outer collective culture. Classical psychological theory tends to, by absolute omission, split the human psyche away from relationship to the land on which humans live, away from knowledge of the cultural etiologies of malaise and unrest, and also to sever psyche from the politics and policies which shape the inner and outer lives of humans—as though that outer world were not just as surreal, not just as symbol-laden, not just as impacting and imposing upon one’s soul-life as the inner din. The land, the culture, and the politics in which one lives contribute every bit as much to the individual’s psychic landscape and are as valuable to consider in these lights as one’s subjective milieu.
When the outer world has intruded on the basic soul-life of one individual or of many, dark man dreams come in legions. It has been fascinating to me to have gathered dreams from women afflicted by something gone wrong in the outer culture, such as those living near the poisonous smelter at York City,
8
Idaho, to dreams dreamt by some extremely conscious women actively involved in social action and environment protection, such as
las guerrillas
compañeras
, warrior sisters in the
Quebrada
outback of Central America,
9
women in the
Cofradios
des Santuarios
10
in the United States, and civil rights proponents in Latino County.
11
They all dream many dark man dreams.
Generally, it would appear that to the naive or noncognizant dreamers, these are meant as wake-up calls:
“
Hola
f
Pay attention, you’re in danger.” And to those women who are quite conscious and involved in social action, the dark man dream seems to be almost a tonic which reminds the woman what she is up against, which encourages her in turn to stay strong, stay vigilant, and continue the work at hand.
So, when women dream of the natural predator, it is not always or solely a message about the interior life. Sometimes it is a message about the threatening aspects of the culture one lives in, whether it be a small but brutal culture at the office, one within their
own family, the lands of their neighborhood, or as wide as their own religious or national culture. As you can see, each group and culture appears to also have its own natural psychic predator, and we see from history that there are eras in cultures during which the predator is identified with and allowed absolute sovereignty until the people who believe otherwise become a tide.
While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. In my heritage, there is a saying
cultura
cura
, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules
, all new life needing to be born
, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are paralyzed with both fear and spiritual famine.
Why this intruder which, in women’s dreams, most often takes the shape of an intruisive male, seeks to attack the instinctual psyche and its wildish knowing powers in particular, no one can say for certain. We say it is the nature of the thing. Yet we find this destructive process exacerbated when the culture surrounding a woman touts, nourishes, and protects destructive attitudes toward the deep instinctual and soulful nature. Thusly, these destructive cultural values—to which the predator avidly agrees—grow stronger within the collective psyche of all its members. When a society exhorts its people to be distrustful of and to shun the deep instinctual life, then an auto- predatory element in each individual psyche is strengthened and accelerated.
Yet even in an oppressive culture, in whichever women the Wild Woman still lives and thrives or even glimmers, there will be “key” questions asked, not only die ones we find useful for insight into ourselves but also ones about our culture. “What stands behind these proscriptions I see in the outer world? What goodness or usefulness of the individual, of the culture, of die earth, of human nature has been killed, or lies dying here?” As these issues are examined, the woman is enabled to act according to her own abilities, according to her own talents. To take the world into one’s
arms and to act toward it in a soul-filled and soul-strengthening manner is a powerful act of wildish spirit.
It is for this reason that the wildish nature in women must be preserved—and even, in some instances, guarded with extreme vigilance—so that it is not suddenly abducted and garrotted. It is important to feed this instinctive nature, to shelter it, to give it increase, for even in the most restrictive conditions of culture, family, or psyche, there is far less paralysis in women who have remained connected to the deep and wild instinctual nature. Though there be injury if a woman is captured and/or tricked into remaining naive and compliant, there is still left adequate energy to overcome the captor, to evade it, to outrun it, and eventually to sunder and render it for their own constructive use.
There is one other specific instance in which women are highly likely to experience dark man dreams and that is when one’s internal creative fire is smoking and banking all by itself, when there is little fuel left in the comer, or when the white ashes grow deeper every day yet the cookpot remains empty. These syndromes can occur even when we are veterans at our art, as well as when we first seriously begin to apply our gifts outwardly. They occur when there is a predatory intrusion into the psyche, and as a result we find every reason to do anything and everything except sit there, or stand there, or travel there in order to execute whatever it is that we hold dear.
In these cases, the dark man dream, even though accompanied by heart-jumping fear, is not an ominous dream. It is a very positive one about a proper and timely need to awaken to a destructive movement within one’s own psyche, to that which is stealing one’s fire, intruding on one’s vim, robbing one of the place, the space, the time, the territory to create.
Often the creative life is slowed or stopped because something in the psyche has a very low opinion of us, and we are down there groveling at its feet instead of bopping it over the head and running for freedom. In many cases what is required to aright the situation is that we take ourselves, our ideas, our art, far more seriously than we have before. Due to wide breaks in matrilineal (and patrilineal) succor over many generations, this business of valuing one’s creative life—that is, valuing the utterly original, beauteous, and artful ideas and works which issue from the wildish soul—has become a perennial issue for women.
In my consulting room I have watched as certain poets toss their pages of work onto the sofa as though their poetry were refuse rather than treasure. I have seen artists bring their paintings to session, banging them against the door frame on their way in. I have seen the green gleam in women’s eyes as they try to disguise their anger that others seem able to create and that they themselves, for some reason, cannot.
I have heard all the excuses that any woman might knit up: I’m not talented. I’m not important. I’m not educated. I have no ideas.
I don’t know how. I don't know what. I don’t know when. And the most scurrilous of all: I don’t have time. I always want to shake them upside down until they repent and promise to never tell falsehoods again. But I don't have to shake them up, for the dark man in dreams will do that, and if not he, then another dream actor will.
The dark man dream is a scary dream, and scary dreams are most often very good for creativity; they show the artist what will happen to them if they allow themselves to be fried up into talented derelicts. This dark man dream is often enough to scare a woman back into creating again. At the very least, she can create work which elucidates the dark man in her own dreams.
The threat of the dark man serves as a warning to all of us—if you don’t pay attention to the treasures, they will be stolen from you. In this manner, when a woman has one or a series of these dreams, it infers that a huge gate is opening to the initiatory grounds where her revaluing of her gifts can occur. There, whatever has been incrementally destroying her or robbing her can be recognized, apprehended, and dealt with.
When a woman works to espy the predator of her own psyche, and if she will acknowledge its presence and do necessary battle with it, the predator will move to a much more isolated and unobtrusive point in the psyche. But if the predator is ignored, it becomes increasingly and deeply hateful and jealous, with a desire to silence the woman forever.
At a very mundane level, it is important for a woman having dark man and Bluebeardian sorts of dreams to cleanse her life of as much negativity as she can. Sometimes it is necessary to limit
or thin out certain relationships, for if a woman is outwardly surrounded by persons who are antagonistic to or careless about her deep life, her interior predator is fed by this and develops extra muscle within her psyche, and more aggression toward her.
Women are often highly ambivalent about aggression toward the intruder, for they think it is a “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” situation. If she doesn’t break away, the dark man becomes her keeper and she his slave. If she does break away, he pursues her relentlessly, as though he owns her. Women fear that he will hunt them down in order to bring them back into submission, and this fear is reflected in the contents of their dreams.
And so it is common for women to kill off their entirely original, creative, soulful, and wildish natures in response to threats from the predator. That is why the women lie as skeletons and cadavers in Bluebeard’s cellar. They learnt of the trap, but too late. Consciousness is the way out of the box, the way out of the torture. It is the path away from the dark man. And women are entitled to fight tooth and nail to have it and keep it.
In the Bluebeard story we see how a woman who falls under the spell of the predator rouses herself and escapes him, wiser for the next time. The story is about the transformation of four shadowy introjects which are in particular contention for women: have no integrity of vision, have no deep insight, have no original voice, have no decisive action. In order to banish the predator, we must unlock or pry ourselves and other matters open to see what is inside. We must use our abilities to stand what we see. We must speak our truth in a clear voice. And we must be able to use our wits to do what needs be about what we see.
When a woman’s instinctual nature is strong, she intuitively recognizes the innate predator by scent, sight, and hearing ... anticipates its presence, hears it approaching, and takes steps to turn it away. In the instinct-injured woman, the predator is upon her before she registers its presence, for her listening, her knowing, and her apprehension are impaired—mainly by introjects which exhort her to be nice, to behave, and especially to be blind to being misused.
Psychically, it is difficult at first glance to tell the difference between the uninitiated, who are as yet young and therefore naive,
and women who are injured in instinct. Neither knows much about the dark predator, and both are therefore still credulous. But fortunately for us, when the predatory element of a woman's psyche is on the move, it leaves behind unmistakable tracks in her dreams. These tracks eventually lead to its discovery, capture, and containment.
The cure for both the naive woman and the instinct-injured woman is the same: Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth. They have been covered over, perhaps by years and years of ashes and excrement. This is not the end of the world, for these can be washed away. With some chipping and scraping and practice, your perceptive powers can be brought back to their pristine state again.
By retrieving these powers from the shadows of our psyches, we shall not be simple victims of internal or external circumstances. No matter how culture, personality, psyche, or other might demand women be dressed and behaved, no matter how others may wish to keep all females in a gaggle with ten dozing
dueñas,
chaperones, nearby, no matter what pressures attempt to compress a woman's soulful life, they cannot change the fact that a woman is what she is, and that this is dictated by the wild unconscious, and that it is very, very good.
It is crucial for us to remember that when we have dark man dreams there is always an opposing, that is, a balancing power, poised and waiting to help us. When we initiate wildish energy in order to balance the predator, guess who immediately shows up? Wild Woman comes diving over whatever fences, walls, or obstructions the predator has erected. She is not an icon, to be hung on the wall like
a
retablo
, religious painting. She is a living being who comes to us anywhere, under any conditions. She and the predator have known each other a long, long time. She tracks him through dreams, through stories, through tales, and through women’s entire lives. Wherever he is, she is, for she is the one who balances his predations.
Wild Woman teaches women when not to act “nice" about protecting their soulful lives. The wildish nature knows that being