Black Elk and the Big Dream
Author: Christopher Chayban
A big dream is one that you don’t forget. In many ways, they come to us because we have forgotten. I like how Black Elk pays heed to this by saying “You can see that it is not the grass and the water that have forgotten.” (Black Elk ch.2).
A big dream is charged with emotional numinosity, a feeling of the sacred and come down on us in an overwhelming way. The flood of meaning that is present in the big dream can stimulate change not in only for one person, but also for a culture or a nation, and bring healing effects. It can expand imaginative understanding and increase religious sensitivity (Bulkeley pg.273).
Anyone can experience a big dream, it is not reserved for the chosen or the elect few. In fact, the true leaders are not the one’s with military prowess, but the ones who are capable of self-reflection and are able to relieve the dead weight of society that has accumulated (CW 10 pg.154) over time. The big dream often has implications of the future, and this dead weight that has already been culminating is invisible and embryonic. So, Jung says, “Few noticed the grain of mustard-seed that was destined to grow into a great tree.” (CW 10 pg.142). Because every individual problem is connected to the problem of the age (CW 10 pg.152), this great tree has grown and caused a rift in culture is the result of man’s seed of suppressed creativity and meaning, stifled by culture’s rules and demands. It pushes its way up to the surface in order to regenerate civilization (CW 10 pg.143). Visions and big dreams, if shared, like the one of Black Elk, can be the germ of light that brings healing effects that regenerate the community, by way of its inner opposite, (CW 10 pg.143) compensating culture.
So how do big dreams relate to archetypes and the collective unconscious? Jung says if it is a big dream, it will often have a mythological motif, that can be found in the local or the global, cross culturally (CW 10 pg.152). Take the visions for example, from Black Elk. They hit almost every archetypal structure that we know of, in the study of Depth psychology. In chapter three, the archetypes and mythological motifs are abundant. The most prominent related to the collective unconscious {the repository of our psychic history), is when the bay horse speaks to him and says “Behold them! Their history you shall know.” (Black Elk ch.3)
There are many other prominent motifs. The archetype of the number four, which is related to the Jungian Self, shows up with animals marching four by four, the four virgins and a reference to the four quarters, which is the four cardinal points in Astrology. Astrological motifs subtlety creep up with again with the number twelve, in which relates to the Zodiac and the concept of time. The libido is imaged in the form of horses, in which the opposites are present, a set of twelve black horses, and a set of twelve white ones as well. This zodiac motif is cut in half with the “six powers of the world” or the “six grandfathers,” who you might say form a kind of star of David, uniting above with the below. The great hoop, which is the magic circle or the archetype of the Mandala, where the holy tree resides also shows up. There is the sacred stick, the archetype of the phallus, in which the germ of unity and creativity is set to fertilize the meaning of the vision, when it is stuck in the center, resembling a Shiva lingam, the union of masculine and feminine. And lastly, there is references to black, white, rainbow, red and yellow, which correspond to alchemical motifs.
These components, when broken out appear flat when one writes about them. That is because they also need to be experienced. If we reflect on big dreams and how they relate to the archetypes and the collective unconscious, then perhaps we can become true leaders that lift the burden off society’s back, through the potential meaning that they may bring for our time.
Resources:
Bulkeley, K. (2008). Dreaming in the worlds religions: A comparative history. New York: New York University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1970). The meaning of psychology for modern man (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 10, 2nd ed., pp. 134-156). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1934)
(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.welcomehome.org/
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