The Mills of God -- A Dream

"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Recently I dreamed:

I am in a very large public space the size of a domed football stadium, possibly larger. In spite of its great size, the space is encompassed by an even larger structure -- an enormous rotating drum.

The drum resembles a “ball-mill,” a crushing and grinding machine used to pulverize ores and other materials. In the case of this particular drum the material to be pulverized is a white, earthen material.

Not only will the drum reduce the material to a powder, but it will also perform a transformative operation, turning the white powder into something else and giving it a new shape in the process.

I observe this scene from a second floor balcony. On the ground level there are groups of people going about their business, which consists mostly in recreation and entertainment. One group is playing ping-pong.

The “drum” is so large, and is turning so slowly, that most people are unaware of it.

Reaching over the balcony, I crush a portion of white material in my hand and let it fall to the ground below. In this way I add material to the overall “mix” of what the drum is processing.

Some of the lumps in my hand are resistant to crushing. I am concerned they might interfere with the process, but decide the drum is large enough that the small lumps will be pulverized. I let them go.

Apparently the drum has completed a preliminary phase, for it ejects a large mass of prepared material, flopping it onto the ground like a gigantic batch of bread dough. Immediately a second, smaller batch of gold or yellow material -- similarly mixed -- is added to the white. Both the white and the yellow earthy materials will be thoroughly intermixed before proceeding to the next stage.

Whenever it is ready, the material will either be (1) formed into a new mold to receive and give shape to a completely different material (as in bronze-casting), or (2) given shape itself by an as-yet unseen form or container, the way an amorphous mass of bread dough is given shape by its baking pan. [End of dream.]


The transpersonal perspective of this dream was so striking to me that I felt it belonged in the series of dreams I am presenting in this column as examples of “Wisdom in Dreams.” Whenever we see our lives from a higher, wider perspective, we are probably being gifted with wisdom.


ASSOCIATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:

1. The “rotating drum” depicts a structure and process larger than most human enterprises. As such, it suggests a collective phenomenon affecting individuals, groups and the institutions by which they feel contained. The drum, in other words, contains our containers. I take the drum, therefore, as an expression of an archetypal, “macrophase” psychological process to which we are all subject. It reminds me of Longfellow’s poem quoted above, in which he refers to the “Mills of God.”

2. The drum is visible, but only in a peripheral or subliminal way. To see it requires an unusual type of vision. Because most people focus on what they are doing and do not pay attention to the periphery of their awareness, they cannot see the drum and hence do not know it is there. Nevertheless, even if they are not consciously adding their own material to the process -- their own “white earth” -- their lives are inexorably subject to the grinding and pulverizing action of the drum.

3. No one really knows what the final shape or outcome of the milling process will be. As Jung said, “The great problem of our time is that we don’t know what is happening to the world.”

4. “White earth” resembles the white plaster material I used for many years as a bronzecaster, as I formed molds in the “investment” method of lost-wax art bronze-casting. The psychological and alchemical properties of bronze-casting were quite evident to me during those years. Following are some correlations between bronze-casting, alchemy and the dream:

-- The mold has to be strong enough to withstand tremendous heat, yet sensitive and delicate enough to retain impressions of the wax within. This hints at the way structures of consciousness must be refractory enough to withstand the “heat” of intense emotions, conflict, stress, disappointment, etc., while still retaining the insights, the valuable impressions, received along the way.

-- In order to release the fresh casting from the mold, the mold must be broken. The spent material is then crushed, pulverized and added to the fresh mix for a new mold. Worn out attitudes and forms -- the old molds into which we once poured our experience -- must be willingly sacrificed if there is to be any re-birth, any re-vitalization of life. The dream suggests that the renewal process is actually taking place.

-- Alchemically, “white earth” refers to what remains of the prima materia after it has undergone the nigredo, also known as the “dark night of the soul.” Associated with silver, the moon, and the albedo, white earth announces a new light after darkness, a capacity for reflection and heightened psychic sensitivity.

-- The yellow-gold earth, in contrast, hints at something inherently luminous, e.g., “the sun” or “gold.” Because the yellow mass is smaller than the white, it suggests to me the product of a refinement, an extract or precipitate, in the same way that tons of ore must be processed to extract a few ounces of precious metal.

-- Implicit in the two materials are pairs of opposites: silver and gold, moon and sun, passive and active, reflection and radiance. The combination and mixing of the two colors pre-figure the possibility of balancing solar and lunar potentials. Although the black phase, the nigredo, was not explicitly mentioned in the dream, it is implicit in the “fire” -- and therefore “death” -- the material had to undergo in order to reach the albedo phase. Thus a tentative alchemical sequence of symbolic colors is suggested: from black to white to yellow.

5. I take the “substances” in the dream, and the processes with which they resonate, to be metaphors for the development of personality and soul. When one has gone through the fire and endured -- a process of conscious suffering -- then a state of whitened reflectivity is possible. Thus we are all potential contributors to the larger collective psychic process that is shaping our common future, even though we cannot yet see clearly what form that future will take.

6. In Aion, Jung pointed out that the historical phase now coming to an end -- astrologically, the Age of Pisces -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the “separatio.” Thus we have seen two thousand years of the development of consciousness based on the separation of opposites: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, etc. The coming aeon -- astrologically, the Age of Aquarius -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the coniunctio oppositorum, or the conjunction of opposites. (For more on the communal aspects of the Age of Aquarius see Russell Lockhart’s Psyche Speaks.)

Because of the correlation of historical processes with alchemical symbolism, I anticipate that a confrontation with the opposites, with a view to their eventual integration, will increasingly predominate in human affairs. Everywhere we turn we will be faced with an implicit task, to find ways of integrating what seems to be opposed.

7. Edward Edinger’s prophetic vision of the “Coming of the Self” (cf. his book The Archetype of the Apocalypse) portends a planetary psychological crisis of enormous proportions. Whether humanity rises to the occasion will depend on whether enough people meet the challenge head-on, consciously, or whether the passion for unconsciousness prevails.

8. The Rotating Drum dream suggests that the larger process of synthesizing consciousness on a new level may yet take precedence over the indifference of the people playing “ping-pong.” The outcome, however, is by no means assured. A shared responsibility is implied.

9. The mechanical metaphor of the Rotating Drum does not exactly qualify as an image of God. But I see no reason why the drum and its operations cannot be regarded as a direct metaphorical parallel to Longfellow’s “Mills of God.” Of course, we no longer imagine our world in such poetic terms, but dreams are not bound by our conscious limitations. Nor should our imaginative responses to dreams be limited by those same intellectual fashions. When I imagine the drum, therefore, I also see a vast hand turning it -- what we used to call the Hand of God. This great hand, imparting movement to events and shaping them at the same time, acts most forcefully upon our world in a time of crisis and change.