There are many ways we can connect dreams to astrology, and many don't require that you know all about your Natal Chart. In this column we will be exploring the symbolic rather than predictive aspects of astrology. Symbolic astrology attempts to use the images of astrological to give meaning to one's life and empower choices rather than predict paths. We do this by imaginal overlay. In this process we impleach, (poetically interweave)dream, image, feeling, life and symbol in a way to evoke a felt sense of the dream's imagery and its position in our life.

This year we are focusing each month on a different House.
The inner circle of the Natal or Birth Chart is divided into 12 distinct regions know as Houses. They relate to everyday activates. One will be about physical appearances and temperament, while another relates to possessions, for example. Planets and signs fall within these Houses and influence the areas of focus. We will be watching for images of planets, signs and other celestial events and hopefully begin to see the emergence of an astrological chart that dips into birth charts, dreams, and our waking life.

Tenth House: Saturn in Capricorn. Aspirations, ambitions, public standing, matters out side the home, social staus, responsibilities, discipline, personal image, role in life.

Dream: I am at a social function, its someone's graduation and I'm going to be giving the graduation speech. I walk up from a building through some gates onto a lawn where the reception will take place. People come up and introduce themselves to me. I can tell they are really just saying hello to the selected speaker and not me. There is a large table of food and I begin handing it out to people as they go by, feeling I can use my authority to start the reception early.

The Tenth house can be seen on a mundane level as the outward expression of the home and 4th House. Outside, the persona one projects and the role we inwardly feel we have are dominant.

Look for dreams where we appear in society, have roles in groups, function in outward movements. But also look for the purpose we identify with when we consider our deeper reason for being.

Dream: I'm walking to work downtown when I see some other women get out of a cab. A man in another car stops and jumps out with a knife. I shout at the man that he'd better take off, or we'll have to sick the dogs on him. When I woke up, I realized how my role in the dream was like my role at work, continually protecting people from attacks of others and developing guard-dog programs.

Occasionally a dominant parent is seen connected with this house. It might be useful to ask which parent most shaped our social attitudes and ethics. But is may also be the hidden ambitions of that parent which manifest in the child and the dream. Look less for the inner need to achieve than the need to prove these achievements to others.

Dream: We are building a giant housing complex and the plans call for this to be just 4 or 5 stories high. I am talking with a group of workmen and trying to convince them to keep going. I feel that if we double the height of the buildings they will be seen by the investors in the bank down the block and they will accept up into their neighborhood. One of the men from the bank drives by and I see my mother in the car. I think it is odd that my mom would have an account with this bank.

These achievements my be pushed on other as well lived out by oneself. In a dream it is difficult to separate our own self from others, but this fogginess may serve to allow the self-other identity to shift back and forth in transformative and insightful ways.

Dream: I am babysitting my uncle's kids again. We are in a park near a stream. The little boy J. and girl K. are trying to build a boat that will float down the stream. The girl keeps tiring of the game. I keep telling her to keep trying, and tease her that important people are across the stream watching her progress. The girl finds a newspaper with a blueprint on it and tears it in half. Part of it she makes into a sail boat, and then she eats the other part.

Due to the intensity of public attention, issue of public exposure and hiddenness can be viewed as Tenth house concerns. The following dream combines this with the need to rise above others.

Dream: I'm racing up a ladder outside a large building. There are other ladders next to mine, maybe 5 or 6, each 4 or 5 stories high. I don't know why we are racing but I feel it is very important to stay ahead of the others. The ladder keeps catching the fabric and I'm concerned about the people below me looking up my skirt and have to keep pulling it in with my hands. I'm surprised that I'm not at all scared of the heights, just of being passed by and exposed.

This outward movement can lead to values that transcend the need to be seen as successful.

Dream: I'm in a space ship that has been trying for many centuries to reach a star in the Vegan sector. We are the great- grandchildren of the original explorers. My family is like a guild that controls the speed of the vehicle and I'm very proud that we have contributed to speeding up the ship to nearly twice the original speed. But now the Vegan system is approaching and I realize our family will no longer have its function and status and tell my sister who is working at a very large motor, like one that would be found on a submarine, that our success has ruined us. She isn't worried at all and tells me about all the other skills our family has learned in working with others. I think about our family becoming an ambassador like guild on the new plant.

M. Aionia

Next month: 11th House: Friends, acquaintances, clubs, societies, intellectual pleasures...

Send in your 11th house dreams to
M. Aionia at aionia@dreamgate.com

Island (1997 October). Reflections on the Tenth House. Electric Dreams 4(10). Retrieved July 26, 2000 from Electric Dreams on the World Wide Web: http://www.dreamgate.com/electric-dreams

When I thought about framing tenth house dreams in my mind, my gut reaction was, "I probably don't usually remember tenth house dreams." Then I clucked to myself. Saturn, the natural ruler of Capricorn and the tenth house, is a great defender of psychological turf, that is, until the mask proves too brittle, shattering into millions of fragments. Meaning for me that feelings which threaten me, undermine my defenses, depress me, cripple me, bring me pain, make me feel weak, limited, restricted, and so on, I repress, suppress, control the feelings as best as I can. Thinking, however, beyond my gut reaction, I realized I have had dreams where a mirror, or image, shatters, or millions of tiny bits of papers have blown helter skelter onto a yard, and I am left, sorting through the debris. I have seen my face multiplied ad infinitum before an audience, who cannot know which face is authentic. In dreams, I have been on stage, playing the female version of Hamlet, wondering how the audience responds to the role I play? My dreams have been peopled with celebrities and dead Presidents, famous writers and others of public renown, bosses and employers, the elderly. My dreams have also been filled with masks, bones, crystal, canes, clocks, climbing and falls, ceilings and walls, workloads, carrying bodies on my back, winter, delays, frozen foods, stones, ordeals, mud, monuments, skeletons, scaffolds, all potentially resonating with tenth house concerns. A few years ago I used a computer program to index all words appearing in my dreams, simultaneously performing a word count, on seven years of dreams. Heading the list? Mother and Daddy. Also tenth house, where the jury still seems to be out on which parent is fourth house and which tenth.

The conclusion to a tenth house dream I had 20 years ago which changed the direction of my life was simply, "I stand before an applauding audience. They see only a beautiful face, yet they do not see my real, hideous face, which bears the mark of all I've experienced." In the last year or so, I've begun to spend a great deal of reading time on just that painful incongruency -- public image versus private Self -- so I've taken to reading women's journals, longing to immerse myself in the authentic beingness behind the mask, or persona. I've noticed lately that if I experience even one hint of disapproval or disappointment from my partner, I unfairly retaliate, "You cannot expect anything of me," really only an outcry for him not to assign me any role. Just this week, I caught a glimpse of a half hour show called, "Hollywood Diaries." I was struck by the words Marilyn Monroe wrote in her private journal, especially because there was nothing in her public life and image that hinted at what real depth of feeling and insight this woman possessed. Yesterday, someone phoned, in despair. He's struggled for years, teaching himself to play the piano, because he loves music, and now he plays quite well. When he was a child, his parents were told by a music teacher not to give him music lessons since he was tone deaf. He thinks and feels with childlike simplicity, and burst out with, "if the world would recognize my gifts, then I wouldn't be such a bad guy after all," a arrow released straight into the center of his tenth house. The following dream, I feel, expands on his tenth house concerns:

I am in the middle of a tornado. I see an owner and his dog, a Doberman pincer, walking. The owner lets go of his dog, something that I have always hated, and I am afraid the dog will come toward me, but the dog runs past me instead. There is a fisherman's net which I move away from during the tornado but, as the winds grow worse, and the storm howls, I find myself having to lay down as I can't stand up, the winds are so fierce. Huge objects, like cars, whirl above me, so I grab the fisherman's net and find that it is concrete (not moving). So I say, "Thank you, God, for giving me something to hold onto, for safety." The storm dies quite suddenly and, as I awaken, I see a moving train flash before me.

Because the tenth house is traditionally associated with the parent of greatest influence, usually the parent who mothered us and whose ambitions we may live out unconsciously, then I suspect dreams of that parent will help us to fathom what roles we play in the world, whether unconsciously, because expected, or by choice. Some of the questions I have asked myself are what is my attitude to the world? How do I participate in it? Do I feel that I am a daughter or son of the Universe and have a right to be here, or do I feel alien, outcast? How do I define and preserve my boundaries? How do I respond to authority? To regulation of any kind? Do I assume responsibility for things I cannot control? Do I carry burdens that are not mine? If so, why? Do I equate self-worth with power and status? How will I be remembered? In what manner do I wield authority, delegate responsibility?

Ultimately, I feel that, for me, dreams which seem to relate loosely to "tenth house" concerns, admittedly, a rather nebulous concept and difficult for me to grasp, shed light on my reason for being on earth. My sense of purpose, my ambitions, social status, whether I count myself or am counted by others as a success or failure - and, more to the point, how I respond to life's limitations generally, surface routinely in my dreams, I suspect. Generally, though, I feel my tenth house dreams are dreams of compensation. Though I may dream of figures of power and influence, in reality, I feel my influence is that of a tiny ripple, rather than a huge wave. One of my all time favorite songs is "Dust in the Wind," because it resonates deeply with my sense of Self, and I'm not sure I would want to feel otherwise, though my dreams may actually be asking me to balance things out a little more.

So to place a wide angle lens on the tenth house, I would like to share the following quotations taken from an excellent book of quotations, _The Whole World Book of Quotations: Wisdom from Women and Men Around the Globe Through the Centuries_ compiled and edited by Kathryn and Ross Petras (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading Massachusetts, 1995).

Image Presented to Public . . .
Life as it proceeds reveals, coolly and dispassionately, what lies behind the mask that each man wears. It would seem that everyone possesses several faces. Some people use only one all of the time, and it then, naturally, becomes soiled and wrinkled. These are the thrifty sort. Others look after their masks in the hope of passing them on to their descendants. Others again are constantly changing their faces. But all of them, when they reach old age, realize one day that the mask they are wearing is their last and that it will soon be worn out, and then, from behind the last mask, the true face appears. ***Sadiq Hidayat (1903-1951) Persian writer, _Buf-i Kur (The Blind Owl)_)***

A Noble Ruler Who Bore Great Responsibility . . .
You have said to me when I was still young and could hope, that in difficulty I could send a voice four times, once for each quarter of the earth, and you would hear me. Today I send a voice for a people in despair. You have given me a sacred pipe, and through this I should make my offering. You see it now! >From the west you have given me the cup of living water and the sacred bow, the power to make life and to destroy it . . . and from the south, the nation's sacred hoop and the tree that was to bloom . . . At the center of the sacred hoop, you have said that I should make the tree to bloom. With tears running, O Great Spirit, m Grandfather -- with running eyes I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old I stand, and the tree is withered, my Grandfather. ***Black Elk (1863 - 1950) Oglala Sioux holy man, song to Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, at Harney Peak, in the Dakota Black Hills (1912)***

Achievement . . .
We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power; it should close up, when we leave it, without a trace. ***Isak Dinesen, Danish writer (1885 - 1962)***

On Exercising Caution . . .
Take Care
then, mother's son, less you become
a dancer disinherited in mid-dance
hanging a lame foot in air like the hen
in a strange unfamiliar compound.
Pray
protect this patrimony to which
you must return when the song
is finished and the dancers
disburse.

***Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer, "Beware, Soul Brothers" (b. 1930)***

On Experience . . .
I wanted to be born at the
farthest limit of the world.
I'll explore it, I said to myself,
biting big chunks from it.
And when I want, I'll go
straight to the core.
This is the way of the world I
thought in my innocence,
round and around the layers of peel
until the taste becomes certain.
***Abba Kovner, Israeli poet, "Observations at the End of a Journey" (b.
1918)***

Greatness . . .
The great man is one who never loses his child's heart. ***Mencius, Chinese philosopher, _Meng-tzu_ (c. 390-305 B.C.E)***

We can do no great things - only small things with great love. ***Mother Teresa, Yugoslavian missionary, _Life in the Spirit_ (1910 - 1997)

Rulers . . .
Of myself I must say this, I never was any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strait fast-holding prince, nor yet a master; my heart was never set on worldly goods, but only for my subjects' good. ***Elizabeth I, English queen, to a deputation from the House of Commons (1601) (1533 - 1603)***

Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! They father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word. ***Elizabeth I, English queen, to Robert Cecil, from her deathbed (1533 - 1603)***

I never give answers. I lead on from one question to another. That is my leadership. ****Rabindranath Tagore, Indian writer and philospher (1861 - 1941)***

Some people have wondered if I didn't have a feeling that I was a man of destiny and that great forces were at work on me. No, I never had that feeling. I was ashamed. I wanted to do what was good rather than what was bad. *** U Nu, Burmese politician and first prime minister of Burma (b. 1907)***

Power . . .
Power immobilizes; it freezes with a single gesture - grandiose, terrible, theatrical, or finally, simply monotonous ù the variety which is life. ***Octavio Paz, Mexican writer (b. 1914)***

Power . . . is the supreme end for all those who have not understood.*** Simone Weil, French philosopher, _Gravity and Grace_ (1909 - 1943)***

On Success . . .
To have realized your dream makes you feel lost. ***Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist, _Letter to a Child Never Born_ (b. 1930)***

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. ***Booker T. Washington, American educator, _Up from Slavery_ (1856 - 1915)***

On Time . . .
Who is moving in the distance?
It is the clock's pendulum,
Hired by the god of death
To measure life.

Gu Cheng, Chinese poet (b. 1957)

Island