dreamcatchers…

“Good dreams pass through the center hole to the sleeping person. The bad dreams are trapped in the web, where they perish in the light of dawn.”

no, i haven’t turned tribal. but i just really believe in that dreamcatcher hanging above my bed!

…

when i was much younger, i used to have terrible nightmares… in some i’d be running away from a fire that seems to never stop chasing me. otherwise i’d dream of all sorts of monsters. you know, NIGHTMARES. you’d think nightmares are caused by your sub-conscious thoughts, the things you worry about, the happenings of the day gone by; who’d have known there was a way to prevent bad dreams?

and then i chanced upon a dreamcatcher…

i saw these pretty things hanging in a store, somehow looking at them brings about some sort of calm. they looked so magical just swaying with the wind, occasionally sparkling in the light… so i asked what they were, and this is what i was told…

“these are dreamcatchers, originated in the Ojibwa Nation, they’re made of sinew thread and feathers, sometimes seashells… legend goes that if hung above the bed, it will trap bad dreams and let only the good ones through” and i knew i just had to get one!

here’s a short extract about dreamcatchers from Wikipedia:

Traditionally, the Ojibwa construct dreamcatchers by tying sinew strands in a web around a small round or tear-shaped frame of willow (in a way roughly similar to their method for making snowshoe webbing). The resulting “dream-catcher”, hung above the bed, is then used as a charm to protect sleeping children from nightmares. Dreamcatchers made of willow and sinew are not meant to last forever but instead are intended to dry out and collapse over time as the child enters the age of adulthood.

The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person’s dreams. According to Terri J. Andrews in the article “Legend of the Dream Catcher,” about the Ojibwa nation in the magazine World & I, Nov. 1998 page 204, “Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through . . . Bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day.”

It’s recommended to hang the dream catcher above someone sleeping to guard against bad dreams. Good dreams pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper.

…it’s been years since i’ve hung a dreamcatcher above my bed, and i must admit, there have been fewer nightmares. once in a while i sleep on the wrong end of the bed, with the dreamcatcher hanging over my feet instead of my head, and on such nights, occasionally i do get some really weird dreams that are far from pleasant. so, believe it or not… the legend still stands…