The Beansidhe Alchemist
presents
The Art of Dream Alchemy: Imaging the Mythical Contest
Every time I gaze at an image: the photograph upon a wall, the painting at a museum or the flashes of pictures that come from the dream soul, I ponder, what are the tones and rhythms that make up this artistic image? It is always the crossroad of uncanny cadences and in sync rhythms, a song that stirs the memory. So to replicate remembrance, I go in search of a song, engendering the image in front of me, ultimately to shine a light on the offering from the collective unconscious. This is a process of engaging with psyche, and in particular, with the unconscious aspects of psyche: the underworld of soul. For me, the way to move to the depths of the underworld, to know the archetypal presence of the dream is to know the presence of the unconscious through its archaic remnants that move through the presence of music.
And so this contest is a practice in engaging with all the elements: the dream soul, a mythological story, a photograph, and imaging them into a short story, so that you build a relationship with your personal psyche, in relation to the unconscious realms of the psyche in the world.
Within the photograph, the dream soul, the mythological story, and the lyrical elaborations through prose, we engage with the image: psyche. This is The Art of Dream Alchemy: Imaging the Mythical, a process whereby psyche or soul reveals our most intimate imaginative muses into the daylight realm.
To enter the contest, you will need to submit the following elements. All materials must be emailed to beansidhealchemist@gmail.com by November 30, 2018. The winner will be announced December 15, 2018. The winner will receive a cash scholarship and a free coupon to take our 8 week online creative writing course, The Art of Dream Alchemy: Imaging the Mythical Tale. The winner’s submission will be posted to our website for one year. Below the instructions is an example of the process of imaging, and what you will submit.
Instructions for contest:
1) Brief description of your dream image (one paragraph)
2) Brief description of the mythological story you will use (one paragraph)
3) Photograph of artistic image
4) One page, single spaced (no more than 550 words) short story that encompasses and images the dream, mythological story, and photograph.
Meeting the dream soul, Bok:
I am sitting on a chair, looking at a pale blue/grey wall. There are rows of chairs lined up, as if, for a concert. The room appears to be empty but then it shifts, as if, in a mist, and it is now a bar, rather quiet though. A lad with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes sits in a chair in front of me and turns around towards me. He reminds me of Essex, maybe it could be … the older Essex, but then he says, “My name is Bok.” I smile and giggle, thinking and wondering, if he is German … reminding me of Maibok … but he is not. He reaches out his hand and asks me to come with him. He wants to take me out of this room and show me something. “You need to go out,” he says, with a crooked smile. I take his hand and go with him, wondering, if he is another trickster.
Revealing the Myth: Deidre
The most compelling image and idea of this Celtic mythological story is the foreshadowing of the great female warrior, Scathach’s teaching of the salmon leap to Deidre, for even Deidre does not know this warrior’s tool will release her from a life long sorrow. Although the salmon leap brings her life to an end, she would rather follow her beloved to the death realm than live in the arms of the king. This choice of moving into the underworld through a warrior’s leap, reminds me that to take risks for our truth is never easy, a major feat beholden with great sorrow at great costs to our physical body and wounding to the psyche. But I would like to move deeper into a knowing, that leaping for love brings us closer to the personal, as well as, the collective soul, revealing the depths of the unconscious elements of psyche.
The Prism of Psyche
by: gina rochell (2018)
“It’s our dream, lavender and no affection.”
(There’s Your Man, Ben Howard)
Dagmar always said, “Listening to music is a metaphorical act, an unraveling concoction of a composition that beckons me to the door of my tribe … it is never one word, nor a single melody: the crash of the horns against the strings; it is much more complex and perverse … embedded in the depths of the archaic past, trinkets that remain hidden if ignored. We, the world must take steps to return to the soul memory: the prism that contains fragments of our psyche that we must put back together.”
Then she said, “And you Bok … you cannot rescue me, nor can you save me from the pain of what is to come … you may only be a witness to the crack in the crossroad, where I will fall, in order to retrieve the remnants left by my tribe.”
I wanted to be the one that took her hand, but instead, I just observed … I gazed into the prism, which revealed so many contradictions that I would never be able to balance upon the scale … And she…
Dagmar looks to the troubadour belting out a ballad in a subway station; the drunken woman, holding her glass of whiskey, cigarette between her fingers, head titled, as she summons with her rough voice the gods to grant her a single wish … the repetitive internet stream of just one song, reeling in the teenage mind … the strumming of the lover’s fingers upon her belly, as if, the notes, echoing outwards, shifts into a composition that only he can hear…
Shall we call it a lyrical sonnet?
The intricacies of each string, contains a tone that shatters the clarity of the prism, blurring the dimensions so that we see on her face the contorted lines of a musical note. She could be a blushing bride, but instead winter’s windy snow places her in an indefinite sleep. There … there … in the prisms you will find her dream image: the leap of descent. And within each block lives the yet to be heard tones of words. And such words twist and contort to create the story, reflecting the cavernous darkness of psyche. She wants to call it death but for me it is just remnants of, that which, we are trying to retrieve. I know … repetitive … repetition … just so I am clear…
This choice of dangerous love fractures: a searing tone that shatters a prism, which does not mean the musical mystery will fall apart; it answers the question … not all romantic tones lead her to love, what they do is create a trick in the mind that all can be trusted, when trust is, that which, we struggle with daily. And really … I just want her to scrutinize the lines … listen longer … listen over and over and over to that rhythm … the pattern that repeats … this is the signal that reveals the map of her psyche … to leap into his arms, or better yet, to plunder to the depths, where something more elaborate awaits: music dwells not in the physical; music is soul memory.
