Hi, dear Blog friends,

what a joy for me to get back in touch with you after my long absence since 2013!

After the 2013 summer holidays, I was coming back to my normal activities when in October I received a dream that shook me.

Dream: "That's enough! You need time for your book!"

In my dream, I'm cooking food. It is crowded, and I work a lot in the kitchen and at the table to feed people. My father arrives. He is my father and even better. He has huge shoulders. He says to me in an imperative and almost unhappy tone:
- That's enough! Enough of preparing food for the others! Enough of your feeding others! You need time for your book!

I woke up stunned, happy, grateful. I decided to stop all my activities where "I fed others", to have time to write a book. For this book had been waiting for a long time. The publisher of the Piktos house had asked me in 2007 to write a book whose title could be: "The Therapeutic Dream". It took me 7 years of work to accumulate the material and reach the maturity necessary to write it and explain with dreams the highly therapeutic process of alchemy.

This book, Ces rêves qui vous protègent et vous guérissent (These dreams that protect and heal you), was written in 2013 and 2014 and was published in 2015.

Today, seven years later, I come back to you enriched by years of experience with dreams, consultations, non-stop workshops and training seminars, blog, conferences, newspaper articles, interviews in the media... And also...

A great joy...

... Marianne, one of my students, who speaks not only German but also English, has agreed to revive the English blog and to take over the translations of my articles.

I am talking about the very charming Marianne, here she is!

Hi everyone!

I am Marianne Schertenleib, a German teacher here in France. I teach students who attend the two-year highly selective classes to prepare for the competitive exams to the "Grandes Ecoles". I have earned a Master of Arts in German Studies and a Master of Education, both from the Ecole Normale Superieure (Lyon).

I have been interested in dreams since childhood, because I am a sleepwalker, which led to many funny situations! Although I have always been very impressed by the power of dreams, I only discovered recently (in 2015) that dreams have a meaning and a message.

In March 2020, I started studying dream interpretation with Christiane Riedel after reading her book Ces rêves qui vous protègent et vous guérissent (These dreams that protect and heal you). I realised that this approach would allow me to bring together many of my passions: text analysis, translation (but this time not from German to French, but from dream symbols to words), my interest in psychology, my desire to help others who confide in me and my search for the Divine.

I am now very happy to translate Christiane's blog articles into English, because I think that her meticulous work can be useful to many people around the world!

Let me tell you how helpful it has been for me!

When I met Christiane, I suffered from depression. As soon as I started studying my dreams, they embarked me on an incredible alchemical process of transformation: in the course of this process, the dreams advised me for instance to work less, to make love more often, to do more sport, to stop meditating and doing yoga, to defend myself instead of always being the nice girl and to accept the bitter experiences of life because they are fortifying.

After three months, I had recovered my smile and laughter, my joie de vivre, I was devouring life to the full, and I immediately agreed to translate the articles of Christiane's French blog for her English blog.

It is a great joy for me to present my translations to you. I will deliver the first one to you very soon and look forward to getting back to you.

In the passion of dreams I am friendly yours,

Marianne

Illustration

"Rêverie" ("Dreaming") by the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, in the early twentieth century: https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/660199626598174579/

CH 5 : The death of a loved one

In the preceding texts, I presented two dreams: one giving a warning about a physical cancer putting the body at risk, the other warned of a moral cancer gnawing at the dreamer’s spirit and soul. 

I compared  the two dreams, and I showed you how to differentiate between a dream that is premonitory and one that isn’t. I explained how to distinguish whether the alert designates a physical, material danger or rather a symbolic one. 

Let us underline that the symbolic message isn’t of a lesser importance, even if the dreamer often considers it as such.

I now will pursue this exposé on premonitory dreams with some dreams that really inspire fear, because they announce the death of a close one.

So today I will recount dreams that talk about a real death. 

There are many excellent studies on the subject.  One of the best research has been made by the famous scientific Camille Flammarion, ( 1842-1925).  So my first example is taken from his book titled  “La Mort et son Mystère” : “Death and its Mystery”, (1921).

1) This is about a perfectly level headed, rather skeptical territorial judge and land administrator in Russia in 1894. 

In the evening he goes home where he lives with his mother.  He finds her quietly playing cards with friends.  After wishing her a good night, he goes to bed.

He says:

“- The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat, shaking from the terrifying dream that had assailed me…

Dream :

I clearly saw my mother approach my bed. She kissed me on the forehead and said:

- Farewells, I’m dying, I’m dying !”

I was about to get up and go to my mother’s room when I heard a big commotion in the house, people were running.  My mother’s maid rushes into my room, in tears and screaming:

- Sir, the Mistress has just died !

Her death was caused by an aneurysm : crushing congestion.”

We find similar testimonies everywhere. It’s up to you to forge your own opinion. 

2) Now I will choose an example taken from my own experience and report the story that one of my students told me.

When I was teaching (I’m now retired) every year I would ask that my students write a paper on the following subject: “Tell us about a dream that made an impression on you.”

Here’s what one of my pupils wrote:

“ Last year when I was still in primary school, one morning I woke up distressed. I had just had a terrible nightmare. 

Dream :

In my dream I saw me just awakened.  As usual I went to say hello to my grand mother and kiss her. So in the dream, I was going to walk through the living room to reach grand mother’s bedroom.  I went into the living room and in the middle of it I saw a big bulk.  It was a big box. Horrified, I knew that it was a coffin, in which my grandmother was lying.

I burst into tears and all of a sudden, I saw my grandmother get up and get out of her coffin with ease.  She came towards me, took me in her arms and held me tenderly against her.

With an affectionate and comforting voice she told me :

“Don’t cry, it’s a farce !

On those words I woke up crying.

I ran into my grandmother’s room whom I found as joyous and alert as usual.

Reassured, I left for school after breakfast.  After morning classes I went home for lunch and, when I came in, my mother told me that my grandmother had died.”

What can I tell you?  There’s nothing to interpret.  I can only ascertain the bad joke.  The latter is usually for laughs but in this case it what an odious, macabre farce.

The young girl didn’t take her dream negatively.   Very simply she told me:

“- I understood that death was a bad trick, that it’s not for real.  I understood that my dream was telling me that, in reality, my grandmother was still alive, even though I couldn’t see her anymore.”

Alive!

Alive!

There is nothing to interpret. I’m only telling the story.

3) Now let me tell you what happened to me. 

I was sixteen and my mother had died a few weeks earlier.  She had had a brain cancer and had been operated on. As the tumor had severely affected her brain, following the operation she could neither speak nor move.  Paralyzed and mute, she died three months later.

Soon after, one night I dreamt :

I was in an unknown bedroom.  I could see my mother covered with sheets lying in bed. I was crying. Suddenly, to my astonishment I saw my mother move. She sat up in bed. 

Completely disturbed I told myself :

- It’s impossible :

First, my mother was paralyzed, so she can’t be moving.

Second, she’s dead, so she really can’t be moving.

Bewildered, I then saw my mother set her two feet on the floor, get up and start walking. 

I was flabbergasted and repeated the same reasoning:

- It’s impossible :

First, my mother was paralyzed so she can’t be moving.

Second, she’s dead, so she really can’t be moving.

Then I saw her coming towards me with opened arms and she said laughing :

- Christiane !  I’m alive, I’m alive !

For me, life after death became evident.

The dreams that I have spoken about don’t need interpretation. They speak for themselves. They happen very frequently and you will find people who have had dreams with such messages in your entourage. 

Next time I will present similar dreams that are not premonitory on the concrete level but symbolic.

Illustrations

La Bocca Della Verità in Roma.

North Star by Alfons Mucha, Czech Art nouveau painter, 1860-1939

Camille Flammarion : 1842-1925

Madame Eugène Carrière by the French painter Eugène Carrière, 1849-1906

The Cross in Solitude by the American painter Thomas Cole, 1801-1848

Love by Eugène Carrière :

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty by the English painter and poet William Blake, 1757-1827

Resurrection by William Blake