In an early statement, Colquhoun asserted that ‘my life is uneventful, but I sometimes have an interesting dream’. (1) This downbeat proclamation seriously understated the part that the dreaming state played in her art and magic. Elsewhere I have described the extent to which her novels and short stories derived their content directly from her dreams. Dreams held a special significance for occultists. It is primarily in the context of the occult that Colquhoun’s interest in her own dreams, which extended to the life-long keeping of dream diaries, and the use of them as a source for her paintings, poems and prose must primarily be understood. The influence of the theorising of Sigmund Freud and Andre Breton about dreams must also be acknowledged.
Throughout history people in all cultures have felt driven to explain the content of their dreams. Culturally-informed expectations influence dream imagery and socially constructed concepts about dreaming help determine the ways in which they are interpreted. Psychoanalysts hold the belief that dreams can be analysed and interpreted to reveal some deeper truth about the dreamer. To Freud, the interpretation of dreams was the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. Andre Breton, who dedicated Les Vases Communicants, his own book on the nature of dreams to Freud, wrote that ‘It is my desire that [Surrealism] be best recognised for having attempted to set up a line of communication between the over-disassociated worlds of sleep and wakefulness, of interior and exterior reality, of reason and folly, of the calm of knowledge and of love, of life for the sake of life and of revolution.’ (2) He used the phrase ‘communicating vessels’ as a metaphor for the relationship that he believed should exist between the dreaming and the waking states. Three paintings by Colquhoun: Communicating Vessels (1941), Zephyr and Aurora (c.1941) and Les Vases Communicants (André Breton) (1948) refer to this idea.
Occultists go further, claiming that dreams contain deep truths not merely about the dreamer, but also about the cosmos. Golden Dawn adepts taught that dreams can be a source of revelation, recommending that an aspirant should ‘impress upon his mind that he must recall on waking any teachings that has been given him in dream or vision’ (3) The basis for this is the belief that the real world and the unseen world are all created by the one God whose unseen powers created and sustain the material world and whose guidance can be given through dreams. In night dreams the initiate is released from the material world and can traverse, without limit, the astral planes. Components of these travels may be remembered by the sleeper as dreams. According to Dion Fortune, the universe is a thought-form projected from the mind of God. The Tree of Life is synthesised from the subconscious of the deity, just as a dream reflects the subconscious of the dreamer. Dream analysis, therefore, is akin to meditating on the Tree.
Golden Dawn magicians also believed that control over the dream world could be learned and that adepts could become skilled at travelling in the astral world whilst asleep. To facilitate this and to influence the content of her dreams and astral destinations, Colquhoun meditated upon magical symbols, such as the Tattvas, before sleep. The content of the subsequent dream or voyage would represent the astral territory symbolised. Not all of her astral voyaging was deliberately induced. As an instance of this, she cited the prose poem Everything Found in the Earth is Found in the Sea. which came to her during a dream and was later incorporated into Goose of Hermogenes.
One dream exerted a particularly lasting influence. Dreamt in 1942, she reflected upon its meaning for many years. It became the subject of an oil painting ten years later, Grotto of the Sun and Moon (1952). It retained a fascination for her and inspired her to research the topography and archaeology of Nicaragua, where the dream grotto was located. She finally concluded that ‘the Grotto was an occult centre used by an eponymous order which existed in the past or still exists, either in that state of being commonly recognised as reality today, or else in regions variously called the Higher Worlds or the Inner Planes.’ For some reason she obtained a glimpse of this mysterious centre, ‘and now if I receive an idea or perception which does not seem to be a direct result of anything I have read, heard or thought, I take it to be a message from the Order.’ (4)
A dream, as a channel for occult revelation, does not just provide the dreamer with a route into the spirit world. It also opens a channel in the other direction. During sleep, spirits or demons may visit the dreamer and leave an astral mark of their presence that was also manifested on the physical body. Colquhoun incorporated one such experience into an unpublished poem:
Last night on my left thigh
A purple ring was imprinted
Seal of what obsession
What numinous tooth?
An instance of a different kind of occult revelation, in this case, the development of a new method of Taro reading, was disclosed during a dream in 1978. In this technique, the court cards were to be dealt into a four by four grid, the columns being attributed to the elements and the rows to the four worlds of the Qabalah. (5)
Historically, peoples in many cultures have believed that some dreams are predictive. Predictive dreams were distinguished by the ancient Greeks from false dreams by their mode of delivery to the dreamer, through the Gates of Hypnos. Gate of Ivory and Gate of Horn, a stillomancy of c.1952, refers to this belief, which also appears in a poem Muin, published in Grimoire of the Entangled Thicket:
I drank from the horn-cup and swam into a trance
So deep that only attraction amethystine
Recalls me, after a voyage through gates of horn.
I come now to bless and renew dreams that are true
Golden Dawn magicians believed that two dreaming consciousnesses might encounter each other on the astral plain, resulting in what might be experienced as telepathy. An apparent instance of a telepathic dream, dreamt simultaneously by Colquhoun and a psychotherapist, resulted in the cover design for a book jacket. The design, consisting of a grid of horizontal wavy lines and parallel vertical lines, was ‘composed from two very similar forms which occurred in dreams of Dr Alice Buck and Miss Ithell Colquhoun on the night of 14-15 February 1950.’ (6) An alternative explanation is that the forms were experienced as part of hypnagogic states rather than true dreaming states. Geometric mental images are common in hypnagogic states, and undulating parallel lines are particularly common. Colquhoun was unlikely to have known this, although she had earlier shown interest in hypnagogic states, painting two works entitled Hypnagogic Image in 1940.
In the early 1950s Colquhoun was a member of a therapy group run by the Jungian psychotherapist, Alice Buck. Regular group meetings, supported by frequent individual sessions, focussed on dream interpretation. An unconventional therapist, Buck believed in the transmission of intrauterine thoughts from mother to unborn child and conducted research into what she described as ‘the worlds of forces and powers that lay beyond our present comprehension’. (7) Buck was willing to analyse Colquhoun’s dreams by letter when personal meetings were not possible. Surviving letters show that she addressed, for example, Colquhoun’s relationship with her mother. In a wonderful example of unconscious surrealism, Buck’s interpretation of a dream concerning underwear contained the memorable suggestion that ‘your knickers sound like a hair shirt to me’. (8)
Notes
1. Colquhoun, I. 1939. What do I need to paint a picture? London Bulletin, No. 17:13. Reprinted: P. Rosemont (ed). 1998. Surrealist Women. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2. Quoted by Carrouges, M.1974. André Breton and the Basic Concepts of Surrealism. Alibama, University of Alabama Press. p.13.
3. Regardie, I. 2002. The Golden Dawn. 6th revised edition. St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications. p. 94.
4. See Colquhoun’s unpublished essay, (1979), at TGA 929/2/1/43.
5. See manuscript at TGA 929/2/1/63/1
6. Buck, A. and Palmer, P. 1956. The Clothes of God: a Treatise on Neo-analytic Psychology. London: Peter Owen. The quotation is from the blurb.
7. See TGA 929/1/251, which contains the text of a lecture from which this quotation is taken.
8. Letters from Buck are at TGA 929/1/235-252. The phrase quoted is from a letter of 1960, at TGA 929/1/234.
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