In the dream I had several nights ago, I am attending a large wedding. Two good friends of mine are the bride and groom, and the bride takes center stage. I have been invited to attend but not be in the wedding. The bride is dressed in grey toulle and she has a large number of tall, thin bridesmaids dressed in full-length, shimmery white satin gowns that nearly glow in the dark--beautiful and dreamy like moonlight. The bride is a small, active nucleus in her grey puff of a dress, like a cloud or a grey, fluffy bird. I am relegated to the sidelines and I am green with envy, wanting to be more involved, wanting, really, to be one of the bridesmaids. I love those dresses.
Instead, I am in the audience, in the dark, aware that I am being punished somehow by the bride. It feels as though the grey bride is twisting the knife of alienation in my side. It's painful to be there, to want so much to be a part of something. This only gets worse as we move to the ceremony itself, which takes place on stage, as an elaborate theater production, very avant garde. The bride and groom have written a play that somehow fills the function of the more traditional exchange of vows, rings, etc. I am once again filled with envy for the brilliance and originality of the spectacle.
Well, I think Jung would say that any dream about a wedding probably references the conjunctio, the archetype of the holy wedding in alchemy. This is the symbolic marriage of the feminine and masculine within an individual. The fact that I am outside the ceremony, looking in, indicates that I am not ready for this unification of "opposites" within myself. The bride's greyness, to me, means that she has unified black and white, shadow and light, unconscious and conscious. She has owned her shadow. In the dream, I want to be a bridesmaid, though, not the bride. I want to still be a girl--a maiden--not yet an individuated woman. I long for simpler times. And this part of me, that wants to be a girl, is shunned by the more mature bride, who has accepted and embodied the inherent contradictions in life, as symbolized by her grey dress.
The grey may also symbolize old age, grey hair. The bride has no time for primping and preening. She leaves that to the shimmering bridesmaids. She is all vision, action, and execution, as they follow on her heels. I have thought a lot about this as the ideal image for growing older. Vanity fades and is replaced by vision and action.
As I stand at the threshold of a new life, defined by the achievement of my Masters, the grey bride is the way-shower on the path of becoming a full human being, with responsibilities. That may be why she didn't choose me as a bridesmaid. That's no longer my role in this ritual.
