Horror dream with Tarot immagery...

This dream I had was particularly disturbing and left me with a lot of conflicting emotions. I was hoping someone could offer interpretations of what it meant.

I dreamed that I witnessed the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones as if it was real. (I haven't seen or read it, but I've heard what happens in the story-- Rob Stark and his pregnant wife and all their soldiers and followers are brutally killed. Rob's mother, Catelyn Stark is brutally tortured and mutilated and thrown in a river.)

The scene shifted and I watched Arya Stark (age12-ish-- Rob's sister & Catelyn's daughter) and her baby dire wolf get buried in an avalanche of snow. I knew they were still alive. They were going to be kept in stasis for several hundred years, protected from what would happen next. The brutal murderers from the Red Wedding kept looking for “the baby,” who I understood to be Arya, but couldn't find her. So instead, in their rage, they took over everything and tore up the physical land.

Her mother, Catelyn, was tortured, mutilated, and her remains hung on a tree. After the murderers all left, I approached the tree. The three witches guarded her body. They were short and decrepit, with wispy white hair and no eyes in their sockets. They laughed at my trauma, horror, and fear. In order to not turn and run in fear, I kept thinking to myself, “At least Arya is alive. At least she’s still alive. She doesn’t have to hurt like this. She’ll never see what happened to her mother. They’ll never find her. She’ll never know this horror. She’ll grow up happy. She’ll be okay.” As I was so distracted, trying to control myself, I suddenly realized the witches were reaching for my hands to take something from me. In my hands, I held six gold coins. They wanted them. I suddenly felt if I gave them the coins, I would be endorsing what they did to Catelyn Stark. (I wasn’t sure they did it, actually, but they certainly didn’t seem upset by it. Maybe they controlled the men who did it somehow.) In fact, I feared they wanted to do the same thing to me. They were trying to take the coins while my guard was down, to steal my soul (or possibly Arya’s as well— because I knew even in the dream that both Arya and Catelyn were representing different parts of me). I recoiled and clutched the coins tightly to my chest. "No! I need these! They're all I have!" I cried. The three witches laughed at me. I feared they were accusing me for everything that had happened-- as if I had caused it. They seemed to be taunting me for something I didn't know.

Then I woke up. I lay in bed, terrified that if I fell asleep again, the witches would steal my soul. It took me at least an hour to calm down enough to go back to sleep.

If it's of any relevance, the Red Wedding scene in the dream happened in summer. The avalance of snow was in a different place at the same time. Arya was very far removed from the scene. Then the scene with the witches happened in a flat, barren plain. The tree was withered. The full moon gave off the only light and made everything very eerie.

--And before you go and make this about pregnancy-- It's not. There is zero chance of me being pregnant. I also have zero interest in having children ever. Also, despite the moon imagery, it has nothing to do with my period. I wasn't menstruating when I had the dream. The dream is about MY mind and emotions. That much I'm certain of.

other things:
What I was struck with was how much Tarot imagery was in the dream: hanging from a tree= “hanged man”, six coins= six of pentacles, the literal moon & it's associated crone women=The Moon...

-There's the child, mother, old woman thing happening... except for some reason there's 3 old women who were much scarier than the usual old woman symbol is supposed to be...

- dogs in my dreams usually indicate some kind of instincts (the dire wolf companion)

-I was not sure if the witch women were trying to help me or hurt me

-The most relevant context of this dream is I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and am actively recovering from trauma inflicted on me by my parents. I'm now away from them, but I still have nightmares about them practically every night.

-my own mother was never literally injured or tortured in any way.

-I've been feeling extremely energy-drained these last months and having an especially hard time sorting out my own emotions.

It sounds like you've pretty well got it figured out - you were thinking about something really gory and bloody and dreamed about it - that's just day residue showing up, and you're probably right that it activated your PTSD or relates to it. I wouldn't be able to get any more specific than that. But it sounds like you've got a good handle on how to read dream imagery and understand how it relates to your psychology. The thing I wonder about though is tarot card symbolism. Are you trying to interpret all your dreams using strictly tarot symbolism? That would probably be a mistake, unless you tend to always think in tarot terms. I don't think a moon would relate to pregnancy unless you really deeply believe it does and have always thought that way. I think most likely if tarot imagery makes it into your dreams, it's the same as any other kind of day residue, it's just there because you've been thinking about it, like all the Game of Thrones stuff. I wouldn't put any stock in it meaning what it's supposed to mean for tarot card reading. Again, unless you have known tarot cards for most of your life and usually interpret things that way. Our dreams show us things in symbolism that is most meaningful to us.

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Originally Posted by Darkmatters

It sounds like you've pretty well got it figured out - you were thinking about something really gory and bloody and dreamed about it - that's just day residue showing up, and you're probably right that it activated your PTSD or relates to it. I wouldn't be able to get any more specific than that. But it sounds like you've got a good handle on how to read dream imagery and understand how it relates to your psychology. The thing I wonder about though is tarot card symbolism. Are you trying to interpret all your dreams using strictly tarot symbolism? That would probably be a mistake, unless you tend to always think in tarot terms. I don't think a moon would relate to pregnancy unless you really deeply believe it does and have always thought that way. I think most likely if tarot imagery makes it into your dreams, it's the same as any other kind of day residue, it's just there because you've been thinking about it, like all the Game of Thrones stuff. I wouldn't put any stock in it meaning what it's supposed to mean for tarot card reading. Again, unless you have known tarot cards for most of your life and usually interpret things that way. Our dreams show us things in symbolism that is most meaningful to us.

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My trauma isn't from anything gory, though. It's from emotional abuse. But I guess the physical gore in the dream is a symbol for psychological damage...

And the tarot imagery just showed up in the same manner that the game of thrones stuff did-- because that's what I was interested in at the time.

I guess my reason for asking for other interpretations was that I'm really good at picking out specific symbols and how they relate to me-- but really bad at tying them together into a cohesive "this is why I'm feeling this way," "This is what my subconscious is telling me I need right now," "This is what I should do about it..." I mean, I guess that a trauma therapist would be able to help me more, but I can't afford therapy, so I do what I can with journaling, introspection, dream interpretation, and reading books on trauma, etc.