The Wise Woman and the Whale

Robert Moss’s Conscious Dreaming recounts a dream in which a woman encounters a wise older woman near a cottage and garden. The older woman offers hospitality, then leads her to a hill from which she sees a disturbing scene. An enormous whale is trapped among building foundations, blood fills the water, and the surrounding neighborhood appears to be in danger. The dreamer senses that something needs attention before greater destruction occurs.

I read this scene through the image of Bi, Kan above Kun. Kun supplies the older woman, great size, and the broad material setting. Kan supplies blood, suffering, danger, and the aquatic creature. The whale belongs to the fish imagery of this symbolic reading; the association concerns the image’s function in the dream rather than a biological classification.

The combined configuration suggests a crisis within a larger whole and a need for inspection. The interior Gen–Kun structure, associated with the erosion image of Bo, also connects with the threatened foundations. Something that should provide support has become the location of concealed danger.

In Moss’s account, the dreamer, Suzanne, connected the scene with a construction site near her home. She recalled a fatal accident at a similar site that she attributed to violations of building rules. Through her work in local government, she was able to initiate an inquiry into the new site’s safety practices. The dream thus led to a concrete act of scrutiny.

Li provides another aspect of the imagery: wisdom, beauty, and clear perception. The garden and the older woman’s insight can be read as Li guiding the dreamer’s response. In the language of the Hidden Hexagram, Li over Qian expresses insight directed toward a successful act of examination. The case illustrates how I use hexagram imagery to organize the meaning of a dream and the action it prompts; the narrative reports the inquiry, not a demonstrated prediction of an accident.