It must have been an interesting dream, but, unfortunately, when I woke up all I could recall was a single image of a strange creature that was half redbird and half squirrel. Even now I can remember vividly how it looked as it stood in a glowing area of light surrounded by darkness. The front half of it was the redbird, and the back half was a squirrel with an unusually long and bushy tail. I have wished that the dream would return to me because I would like to know the context. I have the feeling that this would reveal the meaning of the symbol. I am not even sure why I feel that the symbol is important, but I do.
Searching through my mind, I have many ideas. It seems that when I began calling the bird by its proper name, cardinal, rather than calling it a redbird, I moved closer to what the meaning of the symbol could be. My first thoughts are that I can think of hardly any wildlife more commonly seen in this area. Surely, a cardinal is always a shock against the luxuriant green of nature. Then there is that saucy, impertinent little fellow the squirrel. Sometimes I have been sure that when an acorn fell out of an oak tree that it was really a squirrel that threw it at me as he scolded about my being there. Since these two creatures are part of my daily experience, it is not surprising that I should dream about them: but why would they have been combined? In Greek and Roman mythology there is an abundance of combined forms from nature. My little dream creature could hardly be campared with any of these, but in consideration of those sources it is apparent that it is not strange for the mind to resort to such combinations.
When I started thinking about the word cardinal, my first association was Cardinal and the Catholic Church. I recalled that my sister had told me that her daughter's boyfriend is a Catholic, and his wish is that my niece should become a Catholic too. Of course, this means that they are considering marriage; in fact, they believe they are past the point of consideration to the point of planning on it. They are both very young as they are not out of high school as yet. When I think about my miece who has long, thick hair, and I remember that she is a little saucy, then I am reminded of a squirrel with a long busy tail. I don't want to think of my niece as a squirrel, but my unconscious mind apparently made this analogy, and I don't think it is such a bad one when I really consider it.
The creature from my dream is incongruent, and perhaps this is how the marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant would be. The image reminds me further of the Biblical description of the role of the partners in the marital relationship. The man is the head, and the wife is the body as in the image, the cardinal is the head, and the squirrel is the body.
I can remember that my first reaction when my sister told me that my niece's boyfriend was Catholic was to say, "Well, at least he believes in something." I know that since that time I have been concrned about whether or not that was an appropriate reaction. It was almost as if I had shrugged off the whole area of adjustments that the couple would have to make. I wonder now what my dream really tells me about this couple, but perhaps I could only conjecture that in consideration of the light and darkness of the dream. I feel that all I really could say now would be an observation about young love. This image is in the glowing circle and obviously has the full relationship that marriage incorporates. The image is surrounded by darkness that is the way in which young lovers often view the world. They are in the light of love, and the rest of the world is in the darkness of misunderstanding.
— Diana Mathews
© Copyright 2002 by Robert J. R. Rockwood. All rights reserved.