Sword Options

There's a swordsman who challenges be to a duel. I didn't have a weapon so I'm in this temple rock garden. I pick up this rock which apparently is suppose to be forged into a sword. My dream skips how the sword was made, but what I get is this extremely flimpsy blade. To describe it, it was like it was thin like paper almost transparent, but could fold like cloth. When I start to wield it, the blade vibrated bluish and settled into a rigid form. This swordsman's sword was cut clean with one strike.

My simplist answer would be confronting a situation, emotions, memories or desires you are not ready to face or are not yet well equiped enough to handle.

Swords are also associated with the penis and masculinity. Thus dreaming yourself to have a flimsy sword while being challenged by another can show feeling jealous or emmasculated towards another male in your life you feel inferior towards (not necessarily even sexually, like your brother or father). Under this context the sword might also represent feeling sexually inadaquet, or feeling inferior as a male in general.

Combine that last suggestion with a more Freudian approach, this clash of swords (or in Freud's world, penises) can be related to feeling opressed by your father, or feeling that you are not living up to his standards or that you are not otherwise replicating a life that respects his values.

Finally, the last thing relavent about swords that pops into mind, is that the guy who is challenging you, is yourself as you wish to be, but you with the flimsy sword, is how you actually see yourself on some level. Thus this challenger may embody qualities like confidence, strength, power, dominance, maybe sexual abilities and so on. You, with the lesser sword, feel as though you do not have these qualities, or that you know you have them (I mean you do at least have a sword right?) but do not know how to really embrace them to give them substance (hence the "flimsy" substainceless sword) within your life.

The temple garden and the rock symbolize peace, tranquility and innovation (the rock changes into a sword), but your approach is flawed, its why you do not know how the rock became a sword (if you did, you'd know why your sword did not match the challenger) and ultimately your approach is not putting you in a position to match the challenger of your dream.

A more mystical interpretation of the challenger is that is not actually your enemy, but rather a guide from an alternate plane attempting to show you the way to gain the qualities it represents. Or rather challenge you in a way that stimulates your mind to find the correct answer that leads you to be able to overcome the challenger and gain his abilities.

If you have a tarot deck I would suggest you meditate over the meaning of the "king of swords" card.

This post has been edited by Acid09: Feb 18 2008, 07:26 PM

Swords are also associated with the penis and masculinity.

Sounds like a western dictionary meaning. I guess some symbols mean different things to different people of different cultures. Something I'll look into in the future. This temple looked like one of those shinto places in Japan. I guess flimpsy was a bad word to describe the sword, it was more cloth. When the sword became energized it blade became a normal blade, only that the edge was unusually thin like a piece of paper and sharp. This is my second dream that had something to do with Japan within the couple days.

Weapons like swords, knives, stalves, wands and guns are pretty much subconscious can represent symbols of the phallus across the globe. Thats not all they represent though, and not only that I listed is associated with the penis or masculenity either - which is why I try to provide multiple interpretations of any given symbol.

If you are Japanese then the shinto temple likely represents you tapping into parts of your mind that are connecting you to that culture, or a desire to connect with that culture on a spiritual level. Along with spirituallity, often there is humility. Not being humiliated, just humbleness. The sword going from cloth to really sharp could represent inventivelness or intelligent. But the masculine aspect of the sword still remains. And again this doesn't have to be a sexual interpretation, just that the sword is relating to something about your male ego. Weapons like the sword can also represent honor, strength, competitiveness, courage, even cowardice in certain situations (like hidding behind something for protection rather than facing truths).

The challenger, imo, would still seem to be someone who is either trying to provoke a conflict with you (someone in your life or even within your own ego who you compete against), one that you may need smarts to overcome (if you change the meaning of the sword from flimsy to sharp). Or the challenger is not a "negative" conflict persay, but more like a trainer, or someone more experienced trying to teach you a lesson to improve your inner potential that you already have.

Also if you are not Japanese, or even oriental, then dreaming anything with a theme that is foreign tends to point towards learning new things, being in unfamiliar situations, exploring new parts of yourself, lonliness, going through change (especially like moving or relocating or changing the people you hand out with). Dreaming of other cultures can represent strong changes in social relationships too.

This post has been edited by Acid09: Feb 20 2008, 07:46 PM

Sounds sorta futuristic to me.
A cloth-like sword made from rock? Sounds like ceramic monofilament blade! It even looks like two major problems of monomolecular wire are solved, namely rigidity and visibility.

Futuristic is not the vibe I got, but its your dream. If you think it relates more to your future, either as a premanition or just where you think you are heading in time, then that is where you should look for interpretation. I guess the challenger may be a future representation of yourself. I can also see how a rock changing from stone to a sword could represent transition of some sort (thinking about stone age vs. iron age sorta theme). But that really doesn't necessarily mean anything relavent towards your future. If the time line is in question I would imagine that the symbolism of the stone changing into a sword more likely means change from the past to the presant. Just in general the dream has a kind of "freudal" sense. If you were talking about the stone changing into a light saber or something more fanciful, that might point towards future aspirations. I don't know at some point I think its best to not read too far into dream symbolism because then they tend to lose any meaning at all, imo, and can just mean whatever you want them to.

Thanks for the intepretations. I guess I don't read much into Freud. I kind of find it difficult to understand and believe that every pointy or sharp object has something to do with the penis or sex. On the other hand, this dream has given me ideas on constructing a sword out of nitinol wires, oddly.

Swords always have violent meaning for me. If I were to create an astral sword without any thought I would pull out the one I use most often, it is a rather painful experience for others as it seems to rip and tear, not just cut. This reminds me of a time where a fellow mystic couldn't access a certain god without going through its bodyguard type creature. It was a left handed sword duel.

And no, blowing up the guardian was against the rules, no cheating allowed here. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I meant "feudal", not Freudal, thats kinda the sense I got from the dream. I deffinately agree that not every sharp or pointy object has to symbolize the penis or sex. But in a given context where two are dueling its often about masculine symbolism. And masculinity often does revolve around the penis in many men. It all just depends on personal interpretation and the context the dream itself.