Forest

The forest is the classical terrain of European fairy tale and Jungian dream — where children get lost, where witches live, where Dante finds himself midway through his life. To enter a forest in a dream is to leave the cultivated self behind. Shinto tradition treats the forest as the home of kami — the living presences of trees, stones, water. Jung: ‘The forest is the unconscious itself in its wild, undomesticated form.’ What you meet in the forest matters more than the forest itself. Pay attention to whether you are led by a figure, pursued, lost, or simply walking. Forest dreams most often arrive when a path in waking life is becoming necessary but has not yet been found.