Decoding Ourselves
The dream medicine of a Scorpio New Moon
Hi, doll.
It happens every year. Daylight savings time ends, and my dreams start feeling more real than my waking life.
It’s not just that I sleep more, though I definitely shift into hibernation mode once the sun starts setting before 5pm. I am a reasonable primate, after all.
But I also receive so much rich data in my dreams that I feel like my unconscious is where the real action is.
I mention this because tonight’s new moon will download everyone with super-detailed dreams. The trick is to take steps to remember them when you wake—not just for your sake but for the sake of the collective.
We need new visions for the future, and this is just the sort of moon to deliver it.
Every lunar cycle begins with the sun and moon’s conjunction, which means the new moon slides unseen into a night sky lit only by the stars. This is an ideal time to work with the subconscious and unconscious—everything that dwells in the divine unknown.
Darkness is often regarded as a negative, but really it is the void from which life and love spring. It is the center of creation and, by extension, creativity—the opposite of the nihilism ravaging our world.
We fear this unknown place is an abyss, but it just as often births miracles.
Think about it. When we close our eyes or enter unlit spaces, our nervous systems and minds calm. Our egos take a backseat and our intuition and imagination surge.
The void invites us to practice radical receptivity—the state in which we can welcome wisdom from other dimensions, depths, consciousnesses.
It’s why I turn off all electrical devices when I meditate and sleep. It’s also why I love, love, love dreams—mine and everyone else’s. In dreams we dead-awaken, indeed.
“You can’t wake up if you don’t sleep.”—Wes Anderson
Exact at 4:27am EST tomorrow, this new moon is in Scorpio while the Sun is also in this sign.
Scorpio is the sign of the unseen and plutonic transformation. As we move toward winter solstice—the darkest day of the year—we move deeper into this land of myths and shadows, everything that rules us without our consent or awareness. That sacred space where human and cosmic consciousnesses entwine.
During the next six weeks, we come most alive in our sleep. Constructs like linear time fall away, and we work more directly with pure energy. Anything and anyone can reach us more easily in the dreaming realm, much as gravity can move across all dimensions.
Dreams are never just a connection to the subconscious. They articulate our unique connection to the collective unconscious—what some call divine intelligence, the universe, or God.
Dreams are metaphysical blueprints we can decode, especially as we start working with the unique symbols that our dreaming selves choose to play with.
Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid
later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere
—Adrienne Rich
Long before I fully trusted my clairvoyant abilities, I already trusted my dreams as guides and portents. They’ve led me down wonderful paths and delivered messages I couldn’t hear anywhere else.
Lately I have been dreaming a history of the future—an enchanted forest beyond the dystopia of contemporary life. Every night I receive more details, and what I glimpse is remarkably less wired in than the world we inhabit now. There’s solar energy, sure, and a lot of yurts, but also a wryer sense of humor and a gentler intimacy. In this small-scaled utopia, we are healing along with the land we tend more humbly.
I’ve also been hearing, somewhat improbably, from Alan Rickman, the British actor best remembered for his languid baritone and singular villains (Snape, Hans Gruber, the lout who made Emma Thompson cry in Love Actually).
Truly, Madly, Deeply
You could argue I’m dreaming about Rickman because I’ve been reading Madly, Deeply, his posthumously published journals. But I suspect I’m dreaming about him for the same reason that I suddenly decided to read this 2022 book.
Something in his energy field is resonating with me in this cultural moment.
Despite his chilly manner, Rickman was a curious, probing person who was as sensitive and compassionate as his standards were high. In 2011, I interviewed him in front of a Brooklyn Academy of Music audience for a screening of Die Hard. Though I’d been warned that he was notoriously difficult with the press, I found he merely shared my unwillingness to suffer fools.
In fact he was deliciously willing to giggle, especially at himself, and after the event we knocked back a few whiskeys with his partner Rima as we dished about art, theater, and politics in London and Brooklyn, which they both adored.
I floated away from the night with no illusion that I’d made a friend for life. Instead, I’d registered the refracted warmth of someone who raised the bar of every conversation—more good will and integrity, less bullshit. When I heard the news of his death, I was deeply unsurprised to learn of how many artists and loved ones he’d quietly supported.
One reason I think Rickman has captured my attention now is because he lived so well, and I’m feeling overwhelmed by everything but work.
He invested in the people and causes he cared about, thrived in a wide network of friends and colleagues, and ate, traveled, and ogled art with great gusto. He also did not shy from taking stances, which may be the other reason he’s showing up now.
In 2006, he directed and co-edited My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play adapted from the journals of a pro-Palestine activist who was killed at age 23 by an Israeli soldier. When the NY theater scene rejected the project (it was well-received abroad), he was not afraid to cry censorship.
It’s highly possible Rickman’s consciousness has been re-activated by the Israel-Hamas war. Certainly the destruction and death in that part of the world has caused a disturbance in the Force everywhere.
Fight the power, he rumbles in all my dreams while gliding me through gorgeously appointed Italian villas and 1960s Fellini film sets. Commit more to what you care about, he burrs as we sidestep long-lashed divas dripping furs. Rrrrrrelish your embodiment and love while you’re still alive!
In my cold Williamsburg apartment, I wake as warmed by his dream self as I was by his physical presence. I spring out of bed recharged with an optimism I haven’t experienced since my breakup last spring.
I want to swim in all directions at once.
If everyone is moving together, success will take care of itself.
—Alan Rickman
A triple Pisces with a Scorpio moon (another synchronicity!), Rickman poured an old-soul intuition into his performances and relationships. He transcribed many of his dreams, and even discussed the significance of being a water sign in his journals.
It makes so much sense that he’s still using his mediumistic powers from the other side. Asked whether my subconsciousness has selected Rickman as a messenger or his consciousness has selected me as a vessel for his concern, I answer as I answer all my clients’ either/or questions---
Yes.
Dream Medicine
Obviously, my big advice this week is to transcribe your dreams.
Dreams are medicine. They help us find our equilibrium without dissociating from the wilds of the cosmos and our personal experience.
Dreams reveal our demons and obstacles as well as our pathways and cures. They communicate about imbalances and ill health that haven’t yet been diagnosed. They process the residue of our days and sort our memories. They prepare us for future events and unpack realities our conscious minds can’t process.
Dreams are missives from our higher selves—experiences that guide us toward wholeness—so the more we record and interpret them, the more divine information we receive about our past, present, and future.
This year, I am convinced we are being downloaded with extra information to raise us collectively and individually from this unprecedented chaos and despair.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
—Adrienne Rich
Even if you don’t usually remember your dreams, commit to recording whatever you remember upon waking—even if it’s just to note that you don’t remember anything at all. You can use a notebook or whatever electronic device suits you, and write them out or record them orally.
Just make sure to to record whatever you do or do not remember the minute you gain consciousness—before checking your phone or making coffee, even.
By doing this, you are signaling to your dream self that you are paying attention. Like a child who blooms in an adoring parent’s gaze, it will send you more information as it gains more confidence that you are glad to receive whatever it creates.
Do not try to immediately interpret your dreams. Put them aside for at least a day. When you take them back out, study them like a treasure map. Explore every association that comes to mind. Use them as a journaling prompt. Pay extra attention to any recurring elements. Often a dream can kill many birds with one stone—kindly, of course.
Commit to this dreamwork as much as possible over the next six weeks. This will open the channel between your waking and highest self, and activate the psychic information always available to you.
Rituals, not Rules
Readers of the Ruby Report know I do not advise setting intentions or making wishes with new moons. Do that instead on November 17’s Mars cazimi.
Every two years, a Mars cazimi occurs when the sun and Mars are within one degree of each other. The Sun represents consciousness and light, and Mars is the planet of drive and desire. So when Mars is in the “heart” of the Sun—the word “cazimi” comes from the Arabic “kaṣmīmī,” which roughly translates to “as in the heart”—your personal will aligns more easily with divine will.
This cazimi is especially potent because it is in Scorpio, the home of desire and alchemy. Whatever you feel drawn to on this day can magnificently be manifested, so long as it supports the highest good. Your recent dreamwork may guide you to what best supports your path.
Take some time Friday to meditate with one hand on your heart, the entry point of transpersonal support, and one hand on your lower abdomen, the seat of the second chakra, which controls personal desire. Ask yourself—what do I really want? After breathing three times, answer aloud in your deepest voice.
Trust that the multiverse is really listening. Words are spells, don’t you know.
In my practice, I am honored to offer dream medicine. The way it works is simple. Bring a transcribed dream to a session, especially one that is still affecting you after you wake. We’ll unpack its practical magic together.
We’ll distinguish between its psychological and psychic messages, decode its symbols, craft questions to be answered in dreams to come, and pull tarot cards for additional guidance.
Dream medicine is also offered to those who don’t dream but would like to start.
For dream medicine or to align with your best path, book an intuitive reading for yourself or a loved one. If you are so inspired, share this post and gift yourself or another with a paid Ruby Report subscription. (Paid subscribers recently received a Scorpio season Spotify playlist and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of my intuitive practice.)
Your support allows me to serve, and I’m so very grateful.
With waggling eyebrows and slow kitty blinks,
This was magnificent, Lisa. I adore Alan Rickman, and everything you share from him feels spot on and pulsing. My dreams have been kooky & anxious of late, especially last night, but I can recall almost nothing aside from the feelings, because I never write them out--taking this assignment on & changing that now! ❤️
Thanks for this, great practice as usual. My dreams have been so vivid. I should write