Jung and UFO dreams
UFO dreams or dreaming flying saucers is a phenomenon rich in meaning.
In one of his last essays, “A modern myth“, Carl Gustav Jung examines the phenomenon of UFOs. Without questioning the fact that they may be real objects, Jung deepens the psychological value of the phenomenon. Jung finds in UFOs a unifying symbol of opposites: as objects that are mostly spherical, they are symbols of the totality, of the Self. They are mandalas, just like the Tarot World.
The essay reports several dreams where celestial spherical entities break into dreamers’ everyday life. UFOs, flying saucers and “extra-terrestrial” experiences are then described as symbols. From a symbolic perspective, these dreams recall the archetypal experience of Jacob’s ladder dream (read here): the irruption in the consciousness of a “divine” element. The divine is here perceived as something that goes beyond the limits of the human experience. It is the Self that shatters the unstable constructions of the one-sidedness of the Ego.
Meaning of dreaming UFOs
UFOs appear in dreams when our materialistic-rationalistic view of life neglects the spiritual world. If we live too horizontally, on the field of visible things, the unconscious forces us to shift our attention to the vertical field, that is, to the relationship between what is above and what is below. It suggests thus an equilibrium between material and spiritual needs.
The Self, in the form of UFOs, is our original totality that claims to be recognized and restored.
UFOs, as umifying symbols, can also appear when our psychic totality is broken up, when we feel that our life is falling apart, when we live by relying on a one-sided attitude while our other potential lie in the unconscious and demand to be reintegrated into our consciuosness.
The Tarot Tower and UFO dreams
Arcanum XVI, the “Maison Dieu” (or Tower), can be associated with dreams with UFOs, where a celestial entity crumbles the Tower, that is the “mask” of our Ego (or “Persona”).
The solar disk at the top right is again a symbol of the Self just like UFOs. We also observe the other disks that surround the tower; they too are “rotunda” similar to UFOs.
We could think of the solar disk as our Self, our very personal individual destiny which, unique among many other possible “selves”, calls us by name!
In the last chapter of the essay, Jung collects some examples of “strange objects” in ancient painting. A particular representation struck me for the extraordinary similarity with the figurative elements of Arcanum XVI: it refers to the famous “celestial phenomenon of Nuremberg” of 1561.
You can see all the items of the Maison Dieu or Tower of the Tarot! The solar disk (which is also very similar to how it is depicted in the Arcanum of the Sun), the coloured disks, the “cloud” that emanates from a house … and even the two men struck by the “lightning”.
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