Dreamcatcher: Bear Medicine

Bear Medicine

I was staying in a large home with several people, most of whom were male. We were all working on something together, it seemed like each of us had a project we were trying to complete and we were taking turns helping each other with what we needed done. My project required a trip to the hardware store so i was waiting for the person who was going to take me there.

There was a romantic backstory happening behind the surface of this dream...a young man who was helping me with my project, with whom i had a very soulful connection. He appeared occasionally for brief moments but then disappeared again and left me wondering where he was. I remember feeling a longing to discover more of that connection but the timing was never right--he was taking a nap at one point, i was in a conversation at another point where he'd come upstairs to get some water, and i think he was the one taking me to the hardware store but he'd gotten involved in someone else's project and that was holding everything up. Meanwhile, one of the other guys liked me a lot and was paying attention to me. It's the story of my life, really--the one i'm longing for is mysterious and fleeting, only showing up occasionally, and then someone else is following me around just waiting for me to say the word. So the guy who liked me, well, he was nice...we had a bit of a connection too...so the last thing i remember in this dream before waking up was kissing him in the kitchen while my heart was echoing for my true soul lover.

Another layer of this dream was that some people were to be arriving soon and staying with us, and they had such a large group that it was going to require a lot of rearranging of the house and especially the kitchen. Then i found out who was coming--it was Roman Villagrana and his new band called Bear Medicine. He was traveling around with a huge family posse, like Sly and Family Stone, only the family was a tribe of Native Americans and he had his kids with him too. So in this dream layer, i watched what amounted to a music video of their debut song which was about a bear that was the largest bear ever observed on earth. Roman's girlfriend had a business making colorful panties and that was how the band made enough money to tour. Everyone sat around helping to assemble the panties, singing together, all day long. So they showed up and took over the living room, had boxes of panty parts and sewing stuff spread out all over the floor, and they had cooks with them preparing food for everyone--because their tour group had something like 30 people in it. The cooks were preparing salad and those of us who were staying there originally had to stay out of the kitchen. At about this point, the dream faded into the music video which began with a poster that Roman was downloading, which Naiya had found online. It was a photo of an enormous bear that he was paying $40 to print out. I looked deeply into the photo and the bear's face started to change. Then the music started, and i was in the cave with the bear. There were children with us and we were all observing it. This bear was as large as an elephant, and i was very nervous having the kids so close to it. As we were watching the bear, Roman was singing. He sounded like Stone Gossard and looked like a real rock star. I was really impressed. The song was kind of grunge rock but had these Native American people singing back up and playing flute. I had the lyrics and melody in my head when i woke up but can't remember them now. I only remember that the song was passionate and kind of sad, and that Roman looked really beautiful, and Naiya was singing backup, and the bear started humping something in the corner of the cave and we all felt embarrassed watching.

I never did reconnect with that boy i liked, but i feel him in my belly...that yearning feeling that never quite goes away, only occasionally sends sparks up to my heart. He is my Spirit Lover, and will probably elude me for the rest of my life until i can feel complete without him.

Dream Moods

To see a bear in your dream, symbolizes independence, the cycle of life, death and renewal, and resurrection. You are undergoing a period of introspection and thinking. The dream may also be a pun on "bare". Perhaps you need to bare your soul and let everything out into the open.

To dream that you are being pursued or attacked by a bear, denotes aggression, overwhelming obstacles and competition. You may find yourself in a threatening situation or domineering relationship.

To see a polar bear in your dream, signifies a reawakening.

10,000 Dreams Interpreted

Bear is significant of overwhelming competition in pursuits of every kind.

To kill a bear, portends extrication from former entanglements.

A young woman who dreams of a bear will have a threatening rival or some misfortune.

Hyper Dictionary

Dreaming that you are being pursued or attacked by a bear indicates aggression, overwhelming obstacles and competition. You may find yourself in a threatening situation. Alternatively, bears symbolize the cycle of life and death and renewal. It may signal of period of introspection and thinking. The dream may also be a pun on "bare". Perhaps you need to bare your soul and let everything out into the open. Dreaming of a polar bear means a reawakening.

Meaning of Dreams

A bear in a dream is a very rich and complicated dream symbol.

Bears are highly regarded symbols in a variety of cultures and traditions. The interpretation of the bear in a dream may be influenced by your perception of it and by the events in the dream. The bear may represent qualities in your character or specific aspects of your personality. Bears are usually associated with danger and aggression, and a bear can represent an adversay, but this is a very narrow view of this powerful dream symbol.

Bears are solitary animals, so a bear in a dream can signify the ability to rely on your own strength to survive. Bears symbolize independence, either in yourself or in someone else.

Females bears are solitary mothers. Therefore,a bear in a dream often symbolizes a mother figure. The behavior of the bear, whether it is uncaring, possessive or devouring, can indicate how you feel towards your own mother.

A bear that is clearly male can stand for a father figure, or just an overbearing person in your life.

A bear can also represent the ability to revive yourself after a period of rest, based on the fact that bears hibernate in winter.

Bears in dreams may represent a period of introspection and depression. However, this may be a part of a healing cycle, where the dreamer has retreated into himself in order to regenerate and in order to create something new and valuable in his life.

Whats Your Sign Animal Symbolism

Bear Meanings from Native North American Views

When we walk the Path with the bear, this animal will inevitably tell us about its long history with the First People of North America.

As a Native American symbol, the bear is as free in spirit as the great wind; and grander than its mass. To match that magnitude is the quality of unpredictability in the bear. A massive animal who forages seemingly peacefully in the woods on berries and bush. when provoked in certain ways, the First Peoples witnessed a ferocity expressed from the bear that (understandably) could elicited terror.

Because of this potentially furious storm brewing just under the surface of bears spirit, our native forebears were extremely cautious and respectful of this animal. Even tribes inclined to peace honored the spirit of a warrior, and witnessing the bear seemed to embody that kind of blind, powerful surge of courage and strength that every warrior is want to tap into.

Bear meanings were enhanced by observations made tribal sages. These vital tribal figures were inclined to pensive and deeper understanding of how nature communicated intent in all her forms. These sages found connections between human and beast and from these associations would interpret profound meanings that propelled the community into direction, action, and wisdom.

One such connection to bear meaning comes from a Shoshone sage who, set about bridging worlds in a manner of trance walking. During his trance walk, he was gifted with the site of a clan of bears who were performing what seemed to be a ritual dance.

These were not spirit bears, but real bears, on their hind legs, dancing in the golden rays of the sun. The Shoshone sage understood this to be a dance of gratitude as well as a prayer for the healing and protection of their young. From that point further the Shoshone have instigated their own Sun Dance where the bear is a central figure of the ritual symbolizing protection, strength and continuation of the progeny of the tribe.

Native American Bear Meaning - A quick list of keywords summoned by the tribal mind:

Protection
Childbearing
Motherhood
Freedom
Discernment
Courage
Power
Unpredictable

We see a lot of connections with bear and man in the Native mind. We can intuit these bear meanings to come from the human-like appearance of the bear when it’s posed on hind legs. Further, the natives observed the bear looks remarkably human when skinned of its fur.

Bear meanings of motherhood and child protection continue in the Aleut and Haida minds where legend indicates the bear would take a tribal woman as its wife. From this union, man and bear strengthened their greatest aspects, combining the best (and sometimes worst) traits.

As a Sioux symbol, the bear also has healing symbolism. Sioux legend indicates mother bear was weary from carrying her heavy babies in her belly. She was having trouble walking and feared she could not make the journey to the great foraging fields to feed during her final days of pregnancy. She rested against redwood sorrel plant and the plant spoke to her, telling her that if she ate of its leaves her body would be able to sustain her load. Mother bear did as the sorrel advised to discover the treatment worked. She knew her Sioux sisters would have the same troubles when they were heavy with their own babies, so she shared the medicinal advice with the Sioux medicine woman.

The bear is a strong Native American symbol to the Cree who are powerfully connected with the bear. Recognizing its girth, and amazingly effective teeth and claws, the Cree adopted the bear as a symbol for successful hunt. Intricate preparations were made prior to a hunt. These preparations featured the bear as the guest of honor. Every aspect of pre-hunting ritual was designed to honor the bear. Even after the ritual bear skulls would hang in the lodge overnight to induce dreams of bears that provided good luck in the hunt. That is, if the bear was pleased, the dreams would come, and the hunt would be a success.

Above all, bear meaning holds incredible influence and magnitude to the North American tribes. And although the bear is a profound Native American symbol of majesty, freedom and power it is far more. The spiritual connections made with the bear makes it a brother to the First People.

As a brother, the bear imparts this advice to both our ancestors and us today:

Because the bear is cautious, it encourages discernment to humankind.
Because of a fierce spirit, the bear signals bravery to those who require it.
Because of its mass and physical power, the bear stands for confidence and victory.
Because it prefers peace and tranquility (in spite of its size), Bear calls for harmony and balance.

Spirit of Angels Animal Totems

Hibernation is a key attribute of the bear. Having a bear as your power animal indicates the need to go within yourself - to withdraw from the world to find your answers. Your dream time is extremely important.

The Dictionary of Symbols

The symbolism of music is of the greatest complexity and we cannot
here do more than sketch out some general ideas. It pervades all the component
elements of created sound: instruments, rhythm, tone or timbre, the notes of the
natural scale, serial patterns, expressive devices, melodies, harmonies and forms.
The symbolism of music may be approached from two basic standpoints: either
by regarding it as part of the ordered pattern of the cosmos as understood by the ancient, megalithic and astrobiological cultures, or else by accepting it as a phenomenon of ‘correspondence’ linked with the business of expression and communication. Another of the fundamental aspects of music-symbolism is its connexion
with metre and with number, arising out of the Pythagorean theory (27). The
cosmic significance of musical instruments—their allegiance to one particular
Element—was first studied by Curt Sachs in Geist und Werden der
Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1929). In this symbolism, the characteristic shape of
an instrument must be distinguished from the timbre, and there are some common
‘contradictions’ between these two aspects which might possibly be of significance as an expression of the mediating rôle of the musical instrument and of
music as a whole (for an instrument is a form of relationship or communication,
substantially dynamic, as in the case of the voice or the spoken word). For
example, the flute is phallic and masculine in shape and feminine in its shrill pitch
and light, silvery (and therefore lunar) tone, while the drum is feminine by virtue
of its receptacle-like shape, yet masculine in its deep tones (50). The connexion
of music-symbolism with self-expression (and even with graphic art) is well in
evidence in primitive music-making, which often amounted to almost literal imitations of the rhythms and movements, the features and even the shapes of
animals. Schneider describes how, hearing some Senegalese singing the ‘Song of
the Stork’, he began to ‘see as he was listening’, for the rhythm corresponded
exactly to the movements of the bird. When he asked the singers about this, their
reply confirmed his observation. Given the laws of analogy, we can also find
cases of the expressive transferred to the symbolic: that is, a melodic progression
as a whole expresses certain coherent emotions, and this progression corresponds
to certain coherent, symbolic forms. On the other hand, alternating deep and highpitched tones express a ‘leap’, anguish and the need for Inversion; Schneider
concludes that this is an expression of the idea of conquering the space between
the valley and the mountain (corresponding to the earth and the sky). He observes that in Europe the mystic designation of ‘high music’ (that is, high-pitched)
and ‘low music’ (low-pitched) persisted right up to the Renaissance. The question of relating musical notes to colours or to planets is far from being as certain
as other symbolic correspondences of music. Nevertheless, we cannot pass on
without giving some idea of the profound, serial relationship which exists in
phenomena: for instance, corresponding to the pentatonic scale we usually find
patterns grouped in fives; the diatonic and modal scale, since it has seven notes,
is related to most of the astrobiological systems, and is unquestionably the most
important of all the series; the present-day tendency towards the twelve-note
series could be compared to the signs of the Zodiac. But, so far, we have not found sufficient evidence for this particular facet of musicsymbolism. All the
same, here are the correspondences as set down by Fabre d’Olivet, the French
occultist: Mi—the Sun, fa—Mercury, sol—Venus, la—the Moon, ti—Saturn,
do—Jupiter, re—Mars (26). A more valid series of relationships, at least in the
expressive aspect, is that which links the Greek modes with the planets and with
particular aspects of the ethos, as follows: the mi-mode (the Dorian)—Mars
(who is severe or pathetic); the re-mode (the Phrygian)—Jupiter (ecstatic): the
do-mode (the Lydian)—Saturn (pained and sad); the ti-mode (the Hypodorian)—
the Sun (enthusiastic); the la-mode (the Hypophrygian)—Mercury (active); the
sol-mode (the Hypolydian)—Venus (erotic); the fa-mode (the Mixolydian)—the
Moon (melancholy) (50). Schneider’s profound investigations into the symbolism of music seem to us well-founded. The tetrachord formed by the notes do, re,
mi, fa, he considers, for instance, to be a mediator between heaven and earth, the
four notes corresponding respectively to the lion (signifying valour and strength),
the ox (sacrifice and duty), man (faith and incarnation) and the eagle (elevation
and prayer). Conversely, the tetrachord formed by sol, la, ti, do, could represent
a kind of divine duplicate of the previous tetrachord. Fa, do, sol, re are regarded as
masculine elements corresponding to the Elements of fire and air and to the
instruments of stone and metal, whereas la, mi, ti, are feminine, and pertain to the
Elements of water and earth. The interval fa-ti, known to musicologists as a
tritone (or augmented fourth), expresses with its dissonance the ‘painful’ clash
between the Elements of fire and water—a clash occurring in death itself (50). We
have been able to suggest here only a few outlines of the music-symbolism
developed by Schneider in his work The Musical Origin of Animal-Symbols, the
scope of which is so wide that, as he has privately intimated to us, he believes all
symbolic meanings are at root musical or at least to do with sounds. This becomes
easier to understand when we recall that singing, as the harmonization of successive, melodic elements, is an image of the natural connexion between all things,
and, at the same time, the communication, the spreading and the exaltation of the
inner relationship linking all things together. Hence Plato’s remark that the character of a nation’s music cannot be altered without changing the customs and
institutions of the State (26).

Dream Moods

To hear harmonious and soothing music in your dream, signifies prosperity and pleasure. You are expressing your emotions in a positive way. Music serves to heal the soul.

To hear discordant or out of tune music in your dream, signifies unhappiness, lack of harmony, and troubles in your relationship or domestic life.

10,000 Dreams Interpreted

To dream of hearing harmonious music, omens pleasure and prosperity.

Discordant music foretells troubles with unruly children, and unhappiness in the household.