I like to think that I’m good at dreaming on command. I also like to think that I can command myself to lucid dream, so that I may perform a particular task. People go, ‘whoa, I can never remember my dreams.’

While I sympathize, I always also instruct: ‘it’s easy,’ I say, ‘just before falling asleep, make sure you repeat to yourself that you want to dream and you want to remember what you dream. If you also want to do something specific in the dream, then decide on a token to take to your dream that will make you realize that you’re now, in fact, lucid dreaming.’

For instance on the latter, you can decide to take a key you possess to your dream’s imagination. If you instruct yourself to see this key while dreaming, if the key does show itself, then you’ll take it as a prompt that you’re in fact dreaming, but that at the same time you can also accomplish the impossible. The shape of this token can vary. For instance, there’s nothing that prevents you from taking one of the live chickens in your yard to your dream. As soon as you see it roaming about in your dream landscape, you will understand that this is your signal to perform whatever you want to perform.

Now, however, although this recipe for dreaming, remembering the dream, and lucid dreaming that includes the performance of an intended action works most of the time, on occasion it doesn’t yield the desired result. Failing at the dreaming job, to call it that, is always frustrating, especially if some processing of the unconscious is consciously aimed at. How do we go about remedying the situation?

For all my agility with dreams, on the night of the Full Moon on this August 30, I failed to recall what I was dreaming, even though I have specifically enlisted the Moon’s own force towards it. I put the fact that I couldn’t remember a thing, let alone perform some cool magic, on account of the Moon being conjunct Saturn, the planet that limits actions and ambitions. But still. I asked the cards about it:

Why could I not ‘dream’ anything?

I put ‘dream’ in inverted commas, simply because I’m aware of the fact that not dreaming anything is not actually possible, as we do it all the time. So what I’m talking about here is more the process of recalling the dream and what happens when that process fails. In a way, when we can’t recall a dream, nothing happens, except for the time when we either talk about the unsuccessful operation, or, like now, write about it. But let’s see what the cards said. I used my newly created Baka Tarot for it, also because in addition to the 22 standard tarot trumps, it features 4 extra cards that I named after the actions in poker: Check, Raise, Call, and Fold.

For my question I got the following cards: The Lovers, The Moon, and The Star. Call was the surprise card from the bottom of the cut deck.

So why didn’t I dream anything, and if I did – as per expectation – why have I failed to recall what I was dreaming? Why didn’t the Moon listen to my petition for a dream?

The first thing that befell me when I looked at these cards was this: I didn’t dream anything because everything was clear already.

I got the Moon card in the picture – in my rendition here the card even features two moons – so the dream happened – in fact I may even have had two dreams. I couldn’t recall anything, though, because the Star makes everything clear. When the Star shines upon the Moon, there goes dreaming. The Star makes a dream redundant.

Looking at the Lovers card and identifying with the larger figure – the figure of the Empress that, in Baka Tarot, makes a visit to the Lovers card – I thought to myself: ‘perhaps I’m done with this shit, witnessing the love of others in a posture that may exudes the vibes of ‘the other woman.’ But what was clear about this image?

Well, let’s just say that since dreams are private, although we share them sometimes, when we recall them through ritual, we don’t go around disclosing either why we need to do that, or what the purpose of being lucid about it is, if lucidity is also part of the dream operation.

So I won’t share here what private business I had. But I will say this: when consulted for a dream, the cards can be ever so blunt. In my case here, I got the green light to try again. ‘Call’ was in the picture, even though not part of the first 3-card string intended to describe the reason for my failure to recall the dream. I took the imperative in the card, ‘Call,’ as a suggestion to call on the scene I had in mind when I decided to dream specifically about it.

As I hardly ever talk on the phone, I didn’t think of this card as carrying any of the significances related to communicating, though if my context was different, and if I were the kind of person who would be accustomed to talking on the phone, I would have considered calling someone as part of my dreaming ritual.

What is of usefulness here is the idea that if I try again, I now have some visuals I can rely on. In my command to myself towards remembering what I’m dreaming, I might use the image of the Lovers card as a setup, as this would anchor the dream. Though, now I have to think about what the trio in this card refers to and what business I might have in brushing my lavish gown against the entanglement of the younger couple.

If I decide, however, that I don’t care about these two, I might then devise my ritual around the significance of the Star and the clarity that this card brings to any muddled waters, or to the individual dreams that dogs have, even when they appear to either share the same moon, or actually each bark or contemplate their own.

When the moon is not listening

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Read Like the Devil

When the moon is not listening

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Vermeer’s pearl

Preaching to the wrong choir

Read Like the Devil