Divining Your Dreams: How the Ancient, Mystical Tradition of the Kabbalah Can Help You Interpret 1,000 Dream Images

by Jonathan Sharp, Edward Hoffman (Introduction)

Overview

Your Dreams Can Show You the Way
We all know that our dreams mean something, but do you realize that your dreams can actually help you? In the Kabbalistic tradition, dreams are prized as the key that unlocks the spiritual door leading to a path of greater wisdom. In this rich and unique guide you will learn how simple and practical steps can help you use the messages in your dreams to unleash healing, creativity, and personal fulfillment.
Kabbalistic experts Jonathan Sharp and Dr. Edward Hoffman clearly explain how the Kabbalah works, along with its varied, mysterious, and fascinating components. These include the Tree of Life, the Tarot deck, the hundred most important symbols from Zohar (the ancient text on which the Kabbalah is based), and the numerology of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Following is a comprehensive list of more than eight hundred and fifty dream images with interpretations, evaluations, and unique prescriptions to help bring energy and inspiration to your spiritual journey. Each dream entry includes:
Meaning: An overview of the image's significance as well as a numerological evaluation and interpretation
Tree of Life: What the dream tells the dreamer about where she is on her life path, specifically in terms of spiritual development and emotional relationships
The Journey: Practical advice on what steps to take so that you can use your dream to take you where you want to go — solve problems, explore possibilities, find the inspiration to live more deeply, and much more
Rich, comprehensive, and full of beauty and mystery, Divining Your Dreams will be a bedside companion for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743229418
Publisher:	Atria Books
Publication date:	10/03/2002
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Sharp is the coauthor of The Hidden Power of Everyday Things and a contributor to The Hidden Truth of Your Name. He lives in Norfolk, England.

Read an Excerpt

From The Dreams

ABANDONING A CHILD
hala yeladim-hla yldym

MEANING On the surface, this seems to be a dream that does not paint a very pleasant picture of the dreamer. However, unless this dream is a reflection of something that the dreamer has actually done in reality, it is important to remember that the dream is symbolic. In terms of the Kabbalah, the child is a symbol of purity and innocence. In abandoning this part of ourselves, we are reliving our entry into adulthood. While we need worldly experience in order to function well in our practical lives, it is worth remembering that almost all reigious systems stress the importance of retaining one's innocence at a spiritual level.

The value of this dream is 130, which reduces to 4, the number of materiality and all things physical. This is significant because it suggests that in abandoning our innocence we are entering a wholly material existence. A world without the element of spirit is a barren existence, so we need to find a way to recover our spiritual innocence. Interestingly, the value of the Hebrew word for "children" reduces to 13. This is the same value as Achad, a Hebrew word that means "unity" and has a strong association with the idea of the Divine.

THE TREE OF LIFE At the spiritual level this dream suggests that there is a need to reawaken yourself to the possibility of the wonderful. It is very easy to allow the certainties of a materialistic outlook to disguise the enormous loss that occurs when we dismiss higher concerns from our life. In terms of the Tree of Life, this dream is solidly placed within Malkut, the Sefirah that represents the fully manifested physical universe. However, because the dream also contains the idea of a child, it points us toward the path of Tav on the Tree, which leads from Malkut to Yesod. In doing so, the dream indicates that we do not have to be trapped in the everyday world, unless we choose to entrap ourselves.

THE JOURNEY If you have had this dream, it is quite possible that you are either very skeptical or are going through a period where you are experiencing significant doubts about your faith. It is notable that the value of the dream can be arrived at by combining the letters Qoph, meaning "head," and Lamed, meaning "ox-goad." The symbology here suggests that the head or rational mind is driving the individual relentlessly. The solution then is to find a way to free your mind from its insistence on viewing the world through wholly rational eyes.

In order to take your first steps on the path toward spiritual realization, you must be able to open yourself to experiences and ideas that run counter to the world of mortgages, offices, and financial concerns. The easiest way to achieve this is to look at life with the eyes of a child, albeit tempered to a degree by adult thoughts. At a practical level, you could consider working with young children on a voluntary basis just to see how fully they immerse themselves in their worlds of imagination. Spiritually, you should try meditating on all the "important" things in your life, such as your job or your financial commitments. The idea is to progress from a view in which you see these things as important to a position where you can realize that in the grand scheme of things they are supremely unimportant.

ABDUCTION
khateefah-chtyph

MEANING Although it may be perceived by many as a relatively recent phenomenon, the idea of abduction by nonhuman beings has a very long history. The fear of being removed from those we love and the places in which we feel comfortable is deep and profound. Today we often hear about alleged alien abductions, but if we go back in time a few hundred years, we see the same fear being played out but with fairies or "the little people" as the perpetrators. In terms of a dream, the theme of abduction is focused on the idea of confusion and worrysome change.

The value of this word in Hebrew is 107. If we use "compression," that is, looking for the fewest letters that will give us this value, we come up with the letters Qoph, meaning "head," and Zayin, meaning "sword." This creates a mental image of the head or mind being in some way attacked or challenged. Interestingly, if we use reductive addition — a process where we add up the individual numbers — we end up with 8 (1 + 0 + 7 = 8). The letter Cheth has a value of 8 and means "wall." This suggests that our response to the challenge to our mind is quite literally to put up a brick wall. The dreamer is taking a very defensive position in relation to new ideas that he is being exposed to.

TREE OF LIFE The dreamer who experiences images of abduction is sitting on the path that runs from Malkut to Netzach and is associated with the letter Qoph and the tarot card The Moon. This person is still very much focused on the purely material world, but he is beginning to look upward and see that there are greater things in life than career and possessions. However, The Moon card indicates a significant degree of anxiety and possibly melancholy. This negative aspect links to the idea of the dreamer putting up a wall against his spiritual potential.

THE JOURNEY Congratulations! You have taken the first steps toward unlocking your spiritual potential. As the old proverb says: Even the longest journey begins with a single step. It is important that you allow yourself to accept your fears and anxieties because only in doing so can you truly overcome them. It is difficult to try to achieve what we truly want when that means letting go of what we are used to. In your dream, the desire to find something new has become a threat; you are being abducted, taken away from your familiar surroundings against your will. The solution is to inwardly accept that change is positive and ultimately rewarding. Spend some time writing down all the things in your life that would improve if you had a more spiritual outlook, and read that list every night before sleeping. Pretty soon you will find that you are wielding the sword and that it can be used to cut away doubt and fear, rather than cause anxiety and uncertainty.

ABOVE
lemalah-lma'alh

MEANING This is always a positive element to experience when dreaming. In the broadest psychological terms, the idea of being above carries with it ideas of control, confidence, and achievement. Spiritually, it is entwined with the notion of approaching the Divine. The value of this image is 175, which reduces to 13, a number associated with significant transformation in one's life. Additionally, the number carries the three letters Qoph, Ayin, and Heh, with values of 100, 70, and 5, respectively. As all Hebrew letters have a meaning, we can, with experience, find a tale within a single word. In this case we have a mind that is active and vital, leaping higher and higher to see the light from the Divine.

THE TREE OF LIFE This dream image could be placed on almost any of the paths on the Tree of Life that are associated with positive self-development. Dreams of being above can occur very early in our spiritual journey, spurring us on to greater things or, indeed, in its latter stages as tantalizing glimpses of the final goal. However, placement in Tiferet is probably most appropriate, as this is associated with both the creative energy of the Sun and the powers of Raphael the Archangel of the element Air, which is linked with mental agility and progress.

THE JOURNEY You are making excellent headway in your life both physically and spiritually. It is for us easy to bask in our achievements, though, and when we do this we not only stop moving forward but can start to slip backward. In order to ensure that this does not happen to you, it is important to continue to set goals in all aspects of your life. In terms of your spiritual journey, you should consider focusing on some form of esoteric learning. For instance, you could buy a set of tarot cards and learn not only how to use them but how to meditate on each card in order to find new insights into your soul.

Copyright © 2002 by Lark Productions, LLC