Dream about stones with runes on them.

Hello, if anyone could help me interpret this, I'd be really, really grateful. I'm usually quite good at solving my dreams, but this is a puzzle to me.
(By the way, I'm new to the forums. I'm glad I found this place! I love to bore my friends with my dreams, so I'm glad to have a place to talk about them here!)

Anyway, here it is:

I'm with a boy (who I have never met before in real life, only online - and he's a pagan I feel strongly connected to him because he's a spiritually wise person the same age as me) He's around my age, 17, and I'm not quite sure where we are, it may have been similar to a cave, but the location wasn't important I don't think. The boy was giving me these stones. They were rounded and smooth and they fit perfectly in the centre of my palm. They were a grey, teal colour and on the centre of them, they each had a little symbol and each symbol was unique to the stone. They looked like they were painted on with white paint and a fine brush, but I don't think they were. The boy passes me a stone, and tells me to test each one he gives me and feel which one has the most energy and is most 'peaceful' to touch. I try a few of them, but I don't get any special feelings from them. That is until he passes me a stone with the symbol of a woman - who looks like a goddess. I suddenly feel a great energy go up my arm, and I know I've found the right one. I look to him thinking it can't be happening, but he tells me not to think about it too much, and just accept it and let it be.
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That was the end of the dream.
Can anyone give me any insight to what it might mean?

Hi Clytemnestra,

Although your dream looks basically simple and straight forward on the surface, it is actually a very important one which you should probably carefully preserve because it’s one that you would likely gain something from revisiting every once in a while.

It likely has appeared at this time mostly because you are approaching your eighteenth birthday which is often seen as an important transitional time in general where a person begins to move into adult life.

Such as dream is called by one school of psychology “archetypal” since it appears from the deepest layers of the psyche at important transitional periods in a person’s life or when central events such as birth, marriage and death etc. etc. occur.

At such times, it’s as if an inner wisdom tries to communicate what is best for the dreamer overall in her or his unique circumstances.

But instead of going into a lot of detail, I think it’s best to follow the advice of the boy in the dream, that is, “not to think about it too much, and just accept it and let it be”.

Therefore, without a lot of background explanation, the following ideas might seem to be very arbitrary and not very convincing overall, but I think you’ll find that over time, they will gradually tend to ring true.

For example, the cave where you find yourself would usually symbolize a deep, unusual, rarely visited part of your psyche.

There you find stones with magical symbols on them. Such stones would tend to symbolize an individual’s most central identity, so it looks like the theme of the dream is the importance of carefully sorting through various alternatives to find out what your true identity is as you move into adult life where you will probably be faced with a bewildering number of possible choices as presented by society as a whole.

Especially since the idea of “sorting” and “choosing” appears, the boy as a dream image would lean toward symbolizing your ability to focus, think, reflect and make your own decisions based on facts rather than perhaps routinely accepting general opinions in your milieu and the broad western society that you are a part of.

The teal colour, which is defined as “blue/green” adds to this idea of thinking since blue is often related to thought and reflection. Green often symbolizes the five senses and three-dimensional reality.

Taken together, it’s possible that since it’s the boy who presents the stones to you (that is, a sort of “inner opposite” to the way you normally orientate yourself), you might not normally use thinking about sensations in order to make your decisions, perhaps preferring instead a more intuitive and values-orientated approach.

In this take on his image, the boy would symbolize a potential “helpmate” who will be there for you if thinking and sensation are gradually developed at least to a reasonable level in the years to come.

The image of the centre (centre of palm, images on centre of stones) also relates to the basic identity and wholeness of a person.

The dream is likely pointing out the important truth that an ongoing feeling of “energy” as well as overall “peace” and ultimate contentment can come only from finding the true central part of your personhood (the goddess) and bringing it out as much as possible by gradual persistent work as the years go by, that is, by continually working at the unique mix of abilities, talents, etc. etc. which make up your overall personality.

It looks like basic contentment will mainly come from being true to your essential feminine nature (the goddess and the strongly “feminine” approach of “don’t think about it, accept it, let it be”) whereas the more “masculine” side of thinking can only assist this process in an important but secondary way.

Being true to your feminine centre is hard to do in a basically masculine, patriarchal society. You might like analyst Marion Woodman’s approach to this dilemma which can be sampled in a book of interviews with her called “Conscious Femininity”, and you could visit www.mwoodman.org to see if something clicks with you about her ideas overall.

In order to continue to explore your dreams in a reliable way, you would probably find useful Robert Johnson’s “Inner Work”. Since the image of a goddess showed up in your dream, Jean Shinoda Bolen’s “Goddesses in Everywoman” might be fun to read.

If you go to www.innercitybooks.net and browse by books on Dream Interpretation, some other valuable books on the subject can be found. Many of those mentioned there can also be found on www.amazon.uk.co if it’s more convenient to order from that site if you would like to try some of them out, and the books mentioned above can also be found on the latter site.

Anyway, I hope that these ideas will help to make some sense of your important dream.

Athanor - Thank you for helping me with my dream, I deeply appreciate it. I sensed it's importance the moment I woke, yet I didn't have much of a clue what it meant. You described everything very accurately - to a scary degree infact!

Quote:

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It likely has appeared at this time mostly because you are approaching your eighteenth birthday which is often seen as an important transitional time in general where a person begins to move into adult life.

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Not only is it my 18th birthday this year, I've just finished college these past few days and I'm moving onto another course. Maybe this contributes to transitional time of my life?

Quote:

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But instead of going into a lot of detail, I think it’s best to follow the advice of the boy in the dream, that is, “not to think about it too much, and just accept it and let it be”.

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I felt this was true as well, yet I had an inner itch to know the truth behind the dream. Lately, I have been over analysing things. My mind has been everywhere.

Quote:

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There you find stones with magical symbols on them. Such stones would tend to symbolize an individual’s most central identity, so it looks like the theme of the dream is the importance of carefully sorting through various alternatives to find out what your true identity is as you move into adult life where you will probably be faced with a bewildering number of possible choices as presented by society as a whole.

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I already feel this at the moment, again with me analysing everything in my life at the moment. I often feel it's my life purpose to seek out the truth.

Quote:

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Taken together, it’s possible that since it’s the boy who presents the stones to you (that is, a sort of “inner opposite” to the way you normally orientate yourself), you might not normally use thinking about sensations in order to make your decisions, perhaps preferring instead a more intuitive and values-orientated approach.

In this take on his image, the boy would symbolize a potential “helpmate” who will be there for you if thinking and sensation are gradually developed at least to a reasonable level in the years to come.

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The moment I met this person, I felt he was my opposite. I also felt he'd help me balance parts of my personality that are scattered. The boy, who's a pagan witch, actually worships a Goddess. He seems more feminine and I more masculine. Which seems very ironic :D

Quote:

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The dream is likely pointing out the important truth that an ongoing feeling of “energy” as well as overall “peace” and ultimate contentment can come only from finding the true central part of your personhood (the goddess) and bringing it out as much as possible by gradual persistent work as the years go by, that is, by continually working at the unique mix of abilities, talents, etc. etc. which make up your overall personality.

It looks like basic contentment will mainly come from being true to your essential feminine nature (the goddess and the strongly “feminine” approach of “don’t think about it, accept it, let it be”) whereas the more “masculine” side of thinking can only assist this process in an important but secondary way.

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I feel this is most true. I do have a massive problem with over thinking things, and often times I have to go through the long path of finding out that I should have just let things be.

Thank you very much for your insights. I'll look at the suggestions for books too, they look helpful!

Hi again,

You’re right, finishing college would add to the whole idea of transition and the “next step” in your life. And since you mentioned that you like to analyse things a lot, it does seem that the dream is specifically zeroing in on this fact in an attempt to have you balance it somewhat by “doing nothing” more often and allowing deep-down instinctive guidance to keep emerging in whatever form that might happen to take, either in your drawings, writing or dreams for example.

Also, I forgot to mention a dream website that you might like:
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/dreamforum.html

The dreams submitted there are looked at with great care by knowledgeable and trustworthy people, and you might like to try submitting your rune dream in order to see if the same general interpretation is made. There are also a lot of other very useful dream resources there.

Best of luck in pursuing your goals!

Thank you! I will look at that website and post my dream there to see what they think of it.
Your insight has been very valuable to me.

Clytemnestra, I read another post where you were doing the interpretation and was very impressed.

There is nothing I can add to improve on Athanor's excellent interpretation, except maybe just to second it. My three word synopsis: Trust your intuition!

You two are both very skilled at this! If I wasn't so awed I would be jealous...