Sleep, Sex and Serpents: Oracular Dreams with the Queens of Heaven

It seems likely that the practice of dream incubation as a ritual — began in a distant past when it was usual to worship a female deity as creatrix of the universe. The dreams sought by her supplicants offered them oracles, wise counsel, contact with the ancestors, divine inspiration and perhaps even a sort of miracle-working in an Otherworld. Before human language for example, dreams would have had a distinctly different character. Modern dreams contain thought-forms and imagery created by language. Dreams evolve within the cultural landscape.

We know little of the thoughts that produced the types of female figurines known as ‘Venus’ — the earliest found examples of which are attributed to the Aurignacian and Gravettian cultures of the Upper Palaeolithic. Certainly there is a clear continuity of culturally significant female forms that persist throughout early human culture and were intrinsic in the development of spiritual ideas and the formation of the earliest philosophies. The Venus of Willendorf for example was found with pieces of Moldavite — a tektite produced by the Ries asteroid impact in Central Europe 15 million years ago. Perhaps this hints at the fact that the sculpture is more than just a figurative representation and was, in the mind of her creator, connected with the heavens.