[Marianne]

Hi Shaheda, thanks so much for your response, and your ideas and your dream you include are expressed in a way that is so lovely. It always delights me when two people (or more, of course) have the same types of archetypal images come up in dreams which demonstrates the universality of the archetypal symbols even when they present/express to different people in different ways/variations. There is a theory that archetypes too shift (Mercury) and evolve just as we do, that the archetypes go through their own type of growth and individuation so to speak. When a symbol is known to conscious psyche, it does make the “dream dictionary” definitions of things in a dream such as the glass ceiling more apparently meaningful to an individual–and as you say the meaning of the glass ceiling which you provided here is a literal definition. So even though I usually do not look to dream dictionary type definitions for dreams, I like how you add and consider the definition for the glass ceiling that you came across and may have been consciously aware of prior to the dream. What really stands out to me are the diamond patterns you say the sparkling glass makes on the floor. That sounds so very special and rather numinous. I could give rather quick possible meanings of the dream or things to consider which I am sure you already have, that even with the definition of the glass ceiling being literal as in meaning no advancement (what is above you) that at your feet what presents itself anyway are beautiful diamonds of sparkling richness of earth material and gems/mythologems. (I say mythologems, knowing you.) The song “Diamonds on the souls of her shoes” comes to mind too, but it does not have to be material wealth but gifts nonetheless from the “inner” earth come to surface and at your very feet (what is beneath you). It sounds like a beautiful image and perhaps the glass ceiling is not a limitation in career with no room for advancement but instead a clear vision into higher floors/realms, clear sight into the sky or ceiling of ‘beyond.’  It reminds me of the Qabalistic maxim of “As above, so below. As without, so within.” It reminds me too of the diamond soul, the diamond mind, the diamond sutra. And that all sounds very much like brilliancy, brilliant thoughts, feelings, and words, brilliant mind and soul, or psyche and soul.

I also enjoyed the Campbell quotes you applied to my dream and I thank you for those and they are so fitting. The journey to the afterlife was very much a ritual, a ritual journey, and it was also where I was at the time feeling the tiredness and weariness of my grandparents’ in their old age in my heart as compared to how they were when they were young. It is interesting to me to think of this dream now that I am now a grandmother and also am finding my body (or mind for that matter, lol, when I forget things sometimes!) is not what it used to be. It is also true that my dream was about a permanent condition in my psyche because a lot of my life has been about death (as I mentioned in my earlier post), just as Stephen said to you that at our age we have had more people we know and love die by now. And there is more I will not discuss here now. And here I think way back to Alison’s post (when the forum was just starting up again!) about trying to save the dead bird and then all the dead birds in my yard after that in a storm. Throughout my life, as in many lives, a big question was always the question of death, what it was like, what might be after life, etc. so that is a permanent thought in my psyche, and of course too it is hard not to wonder about it when one was raised in a Catholic family and Catholic school!

Thanks so much, Shaheda!