Robert Clarke on dreams and the processes of the spirit

As I look through emails from my friend Robert Clarke, who passed over to the other side last month, I find this, which should be of interest. Perhaps it gives a glimpse of the depth of meaning hidden in symbolism of dreams and mythology.

3-5-08, 4:07 p.m.           Burning Bush

Dear Frank

I was looking through my thousands of dreams to add one or two to the chapters on the Gnostics. I then happened to see an item on tv about a scientist who says there is definitely no spirit reality or God. It then occurred to me that my thousands of dreams prove processes of the spirit through the unconscious just as surely as processes of matter can be proven. The extremely meaningful symbolic contents are the evidence. I attach a dream (unedited version, if it sends) that partly concerns the symbolic burning bush in answer to the idiot in your message. Please let me know if the attachment works.

Robert

—–

3-5-08, 4:19 p.m.                      Burning Bush 2

I forgot to paste the dream into the attachment. Er … Who’s an idiot?

I am with my dog in the Greenwood in Scotland where a green stag attacks us. Between us, my dog and I manage to fight the stag off, and I then pull yards and yards of a green elastic-like mucous from out of my chest. Finally, it is all expunged, and I feel very much better, and even laugh heartily. All the vegetation has now become a beautiful, healthy green, and I see a lake that has a burning bush by the side of it. I then join a group of people who are journeying to a Promised Land.

  This is a very significant dream, although all dreams in the processes are significant in their own way. Here, I finally manage to overcome the negative force of green spirit that has been causing so much havoc, causing all of the dark contents to come forth in the processes – this was all begun by the ugly thug-like boy and the green toad, it will be remembered.

Here the stag is obviously associated with these and with the green mucous. The spirit Mercurius sometimes appears as a stag in alchemy, and indeed, the stag also represents soul in general, here obviously the dark side. Mercurius is really the product of the soul depths, or rather is the soul depths, whereas Christ is the product of spirit – Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, and Horus, ‘he who is above’, are based on the same archetypes, the higher and lower forms of the Self. In fact, there is an alchemical engraving of a stag as soul standing face to face with a unicorn as spirit, representing the unification of both.

My dog in the dream represents the higher Self in first form on the spirit side, which is why he helps me fight the Mercurial stag. In fact, since writing the above I have come across some Holy Grail material that has Perceval fighting a stag with the help of a white dog that is accompanying him on his quest, exactly as in my dream. A Star Woman – that is, a woman wearing a red dress covered in stars – ascends from a pool and sets Perceval off to find a stag, and to bring its head to her. To help him in this task, she gives him the white hound as guide and companion.

As to the stag, representing the nature spirit Mercurius, we find that Cernunnus, a type of Mercurius, took the form of a stag in pagan mythology – Merlin is also associated with these. It may seem strange that the stag is also a symbol of Christ, but this signifies that very aspect of the higher Self below in the soul depths; the lower soul of Christ, so to speak. Perceval must cut off the stag’s head, just as the alchemists had to cut off the lion’s paws, and I too have to defeat the stag with the help of my dog, though it is sufficient for me to drive it away.

The Star Woman requires Perceval to nail the stag’s head to a tree, a sort of crucifixion of the lower Self, and this has been interpreted as a complete cutting off of the instinctual depths. However, I must question this, because the crucifixion of Christ does not mean the cutting off from the higher spirit, rather the opposite, in fact. Cernunnus, the stag god, suffers death and resurrection himself, and so is obviously based upon the same archetype as Osiris and Christ, though obviously in more primitive form.  

 The lake and the burning bush then appear together in my dream, and while the lake signifies the feminine depths (as in myths, Biblical texts, and the Arthurian and Grail legends), the burning bush, being a sign of God’s appearance to man, represents the spirit. The lake and the burning bush appearing together here in the dream thus means their unification, and the Promised Land to which the people and myself journey refers to the wholeness and fulfillment in the Higher Self, which can now occur.

This could be called the Paradise of Peace, instances of which we find in myths and sacred texts. Moses first sits by the well at Midian and the seven sisters appear, and then goes up the mountain to experience the burning bush, from the water to the fire, from feminine soul to masculine spirit, and the unification of both. Moses first sees a young ‘angel’ in the bush, and then God speaks from it, signifying first the Self come forth as manifestor of his Father, and then the Father himself, these forming the divine pair we find together right through the Egyptian myths and the Bible. The ‘god with two faces’ in Egypt did not refer to the two sides of the divine Son, the light and dark of the Self, but to the divine Father and Son together.