SPIRAL

Things we repeat over and over, like habits; move­ment towards greater awareness or insight.

Example: We walk around, go upstairs, and I notice a staircase leading to a room or rooms.

The stairs are painted in the green too, and they go up square, about eight steps in a flight, but round and round—spiral. I am scared by them, don’t want to go up, but am curious. We move in and nobody but myself has really taken any notice of the stairs. Nobody has been up. Half way up I can see there is a glass roof, the wooden frames painted green. I am terrified but have to go on. Then I wake. Next dream I got up there. It smelt very musty. Lots of draw sheets covering things. I bent to lift a sheet. It was raining. I could hear it thrashing on the glass. Then I woke (Ann H). In this example we have the spiral and the square combined in the stairs. In this way the dream manages to combine many different ideas such as climbing to the un­known, spiralling or circling something, and the squareness or down-to-eanh nature of what is being discovered. There arc things we have learnt, yet not realised consciously. Like a jigsaw puzzle, we have all the pieces, and we sense the con­nection, but we have never formed it into a conscious thought or verbal idea. It therefore remains as a feeling sense or hunch, but not a rational idea. Ann is spiralling towards, or circling around, such a realisation. She is frightened because it may be difficult—one may realise that all the years of mar­riage point to having been used as a doormat.

Patterns such as those printed on cloth or displayed in mosaics represent the order or chaos of your inner thoughts and feelings; the patterns, habits and beliefs by which you choose to live. Dream spirals indicate the things you repeat over and over again in your life so that they become habits. They can also represent intuition, or the movement towards greater awareness and insight in your real life. The idea is that everything is in constant motion. In waking life, spirals appear as whirlpools or spinning wheels, all centers of energy and activity; your dreaming mind may use these images to reflect your own energy in waking life.

Water is also a symbol of the unconscious so if you dreamed of a whirlpool, could this reflect your feeling of going round and round in circles in waking life and getting nowhere? Or could a spinning wheel have reminded you of your simmering anger? Evocative of staircases and snakes, the spiral is also a symbol of sexual intercourse or movement either towards higher aspirations, if it is rotating clockwise and upwards, or basic instincts, if it is rotating anticlockwise and downwards.

If the spiral is moving toward the center, this suggests approaching your center indirectly.

If the spiral is inert and stylized, like those that appear on seashells or the winding paths of a labyrinth or maze, this suggests a concentration of inward energy; your unconscious may be urging you to gain a deeper level of self-awareness.

(1) The symbolism of spiral movement may depend partly on its speed and partly on how it feels - good or bad.

See also Anticlockwise, Clockwise.

Upward spiral movement may symbolize progress and achievement. (Dr Jacobi describes individuation as a spiral process. On individuation) However, if the speed is hectic, it may symbolize getting out of control through trying to achieve too much.

Downward spiralling may symbolize something negative: for example, sliding - or hurtling - towards destruction.

(2) A stationary spiral - staircase, candle, conch, etc. - may be a symbol of sexuality, representing either vagina or penis or of fertility, growth, well-being.