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In a recent dream, I was surprised by the appearance of the Greek word for S/spirit, πνεῦμα. It was a well-planned move, coming just after what was a disturbing scene.
Another surprise: the ν and εῦ of πνεῦμα reversed places.
A third surprise: the meaning of the new word, πεῦνμα, was explicitly spelled out in the dream. In the lexicon of the dream, πεῦνμα means companionship.
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In dreams, unconscious thoughts are translated into consciously recognizable/acceptable forms. The goal of the dream is not to disturb consciousness (because the purpose of dreams is to keep us asleep). If consciousness is disturbed, the results are wakefulness and the end of unconscious communication.
Πνεῦμα is a positive, upbeat word, and its appearance in the dream, just after a bloody moment, was an attempt to soothe consciousness. Consciousness was getting ready to hit the wake up(!) button—and at just that moment, it was reminded to breathe. The strategy worked. A win-win. Consciousness was spared catastrophic disturbance and the unconscious received more time to makes its next move.
***
One way to make sense of the moving ν (nu) is to attend to how it sounds. When ν takes a back seat to εῦ, it makes πνεῦμα sound differently. Εῦ is a diphthong in Greek; it sounds like the eu in feud. The sound is subtle, so here is another way to get at it: when ν moves, we no longer hear newma (the pi is silent) but ewnma. The bloody scene prior to this wordplay was, indeed, ew.
We may also understand the moving ν more literally.
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The dream is clearly emphasizing what is happening internally to, or in the context of, πνεῦμα. So, we are right to focus there, on what is new about πεῦνμα.
I am an academically trained, Christian biblical theologian and ordained minister, so I was naturally curious about what the Greek of the Christian mythos may have to do with the new word, πεῦνμα, and with the dream’s translation of it as companionship.
Interestingly, there are only six words in the relevant Greek that begin with eun (allowing for a variously accented epsilon [for the sake of easy writing, I’ll be omitting accents throughout]; in any case, the unconscious makes meaning via chains of seemingly random associations). They are:
- Eunike: a female name
- eunoeo: to be well-disposed to make friends
- eunoia: a positive attitude in a relationship
- eunouchia: a state of being unmarried
- eunouchikso: to cause someone to emasculate another
- eunouchos: a castrated person
Again, I am surprised: these six words make perfect sense of all the yet undisclosed aspects of my dream. They are:
One figure in my dream was ambiguous, in terms of both sex and gender. It was this ambiguous figure that was being anally penetrated by a more typically masculine figure. This happens as a third person watches the scene unfold.
Each of those elements of the dream are related to the above string of words: a feminine male (combining words 1 and 6) being anally penetrated, roughly in fact, by another male (word 5), in a situation ménage à trois (words 2 and 4 if we allow both to mean something other than monogamy).
Yet, what are we to make of word 3? What is positive about the relationship(s) in the dream, especially between the ambitious [I meant to write ambiguous] bottom and the rough top?
What was disturbing about the sex scene was the aforementioned blood . . . gushing out of the ambiguous figure’s anus as they were being anally penetrated rather roughly (the cock was coming out fully, allowing for blood to gush out, before being thrust back in). It was the presence of blood itself that was disturbing and not all the rest. It was immediately following this scene that S/spirit appeared.
Interestingly, the gushing blood had the quality of gushing water from a fountain of water (rather than out of a traumatic wound). In the Christian mythos, S/spirit is associated with both blood and water (e.g., 1 John 5:6; John 19:34), each in turn is associated with redemption and baptism. The blood/water may have been a way of signifying redemption/baptism. But of what?
It would seem that the ambiguous figure was baptizing the top, or more specifically, the cock, as the blood was gushing from them as if from a baptismal font. The top is the object of baptism.
According to Paul of Tarsus, baptism is associated with a change of style, and one that results in the nullification of significant social distinctions, like male and female (Gal 3:27-28). The Trans* figure may be teaching the cock to be less aggressive, defensive, fearful (perhaps that is also the point of the nu’s detachment or fluidity–along with it’s moving to the “backside”). And herein is the positivity of the relationship: it is a scene of redemption, the nullification of immobile (hardened) masculinity.
*****
Πεῦνμα seems to signify something new, a new kind of relationship with masculinity. The dream, however, makes its own sense out of πεῦνμα: companionship.
There is a word in the Greek of the Christian mythos that gets at what we may think of as companionship: συγκοινωνός (see Phil 1:7; Rev 1:9). Sugkoinonos means “participant, partner.” Significantly, sugkoinonos is also one of three words that shares a similar “core.” The other two are:
- sugkoimaomai: to sleep with (also as in to have sex with)
- sugkoinoneo: to be associated with someone in an activity
Yet again, the chain of words makes sense of the described elements of the dream—but this time, these words add something that was not explicitly in the dream.
My dream manifestly includes a sex scene (word 1 above, but that mu makes it somewhat less significant at this point than the other two words, both hanging onto a nu as part of their “cores.” Yet, when the nu moves to the “backside,” it does link itself to a mu). It would seem that the dream’s translation of the new word πεῦνμα as companionship is also an invitation to participation.
The dream is calling out to the observer, to the voyeur (and maybe even calling into question the notion of voyeurism as participation) to join in the act . . . to join in as the object of baptism (?) or the subject of it (?) or both (?). This association is only strengthened if we follow the Greek to words beginning with koin.
******
What the dream wants to make common (see koinoo) is what is taken as defiled or impure: a gay masculinity. It is calling one to move, to transform, to become more fluid in one’s masculine comportment.
It is a S/spiritual calling. It is a calling born out of πνεῦμα.
Internal to S/spirit, to newma, is something new, what is often considered or taken as ewnma. The (un)holy work of the (un)conscious is to provoke a recognition of the new in the ew, of the holy in the unholy.
Gay Thoughts 