Psychological Perspectives

A Quarterly Journal of Jungian Thought

ISSN: 0033-2925 (Print) 1556-3030 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upyp20

The Sleep Paralysis Nightmare, Wrathful Deities,

and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious

Oreet Rees & Leanne Whitney

To cite this article: Oreet Rees & Leanne Whitney (2020) The Sleep Paralysis Nightmare, Wrathful
Deities, and the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Psychological Perspectives, 63:1,
23-39, DOI: 10.1080/00332925.2020.1738189

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00332925.2020.1738189

Published online: 18 Jun 2020.

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Psychological Perspectives, 63: 23–39, 2020
# C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles
ISSN: 0033-2925 print / 1556-3030 online
DOI: 10.1080/00332925.2020.1738189

The Sleep Paralysis Nightmare, Wrathful

Deities, and the Archetypes of the
Collective Unconscious

Oreet Rees and Leanne Whitney

The sleep paralysis nightmare has been reported from antiquity to modernity across
manifold cultures. Many people who experience nocturnal assaults by dark entities,
demons, hags, or incubi during sleep paralysis ascribe them to evil spirits with vary-
ing degrees of malevolence. The majority report the episodes as terrifying, mysteri-
ous, and uncanny. Known in the neurocognitive literature as “isolated sleep
paralysis” or “sleep paralysis with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations,” the
phenomenon is fascinating to researchers across disciplines because it occurs when
we are both asleep and awake, presenting fundamental questions on the subject of
conscious experiences in sleep.
This article considers the nightmare of sleep paralysis to be an archetypal psy-
chic process akin to Jung’s night sea journey and having correspondence to the
wrathful deities presented in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With a Jungian perspec-
tive directed at artwork created by a person who has experienced sleep paralysis,
archetypal imagery emerges and reveals elements missing from conscious view.
Utilizing the interpretive frameworks of Jungian-oriented depth psychology and
Tibetan Buddhist psychology, this universally experienced nightmare of terror can
also be undergone as a dream of transformation with potential for psychological and
spiritual growth.
Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung turned to the stories and images of religion and
mythology to explore psychic life, in general, and the religious function of the psy-
che, in particular. For Jung, both myths and what Jung termed “big dreams” are
expressions of psychic content emerging from the collective unconscious, which
includes the entire spiritual inheritance of humankind’s evolution. Because dreams
contain images that are not created with conscious intent, they provide self-portraits
of the psychic life process and can be utilized for their objective insights into the
psyche’s teleological directedness. Jung’s psychological theories drew on a vast num-
ber of sources, including shamanism, art, religion, alchemy, parapsychology, and
Eastern philosophy. Notably, Tibetan Buddhist cosmology strongly influenced his
thought (Jung, 1935/1989a).
Whereas Jungian psychology is rooted, albeit loosely, in the philosophies of
empiricism that presuppose a subject–object duality, Tibetan Buddhist philosophy
emphasizes the empty and illusory nature of the separate self, whether in waking life
or nightly dreams. Nevertheless, although all phenomena are empty of inherent
existence, they are, at the same time, pure manifestations of Buddha mind. In this
philosophical system, the world of dream occupies an interesting paradox. On the
one hand, dreams are considered to be unreal and deceptive, yet they are also a
24 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

Margaret Nielsen, Cat’s Cradle, oil on panel, 20  16 in., 1993.

 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 25

magical art to be mastered by the seeker, and their meanings are deemed of highest
importance (Wallace, 2012; Young, 1999).
Drawing on the dreams and subsequent paintings of one person, this article
investigates the sleep paralysis nightmare—a phenomenon that has been recognized
universally across time in folklore and myths, as well as by contemporary science—
through the lens of both Tibetan Buddhism and Jungian-oriented depth psychology.
With its emphasis on image and symbol, Jungian-oriented depth psychology is espe-
cially well suited to dialogue with art in the exploration of psyche. Both expressive
product (image) and experience (meaning) are essential in this process. Jung (1946/
1972) stated, “Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, so the
latter becomes clear” (p. 204, par. 402).

PART I: THE PHENOMENON OF SLEEP PARALYSIS AND ITS

ACCOMPANYING NIGHTMARE
he nightmare of sleep paralysis is known in the neurocognitive literature as
T sleep paralysis with hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, isolated
sleep paralysis, and arousal system REM [rapid eye movement] intrusion. This
article refers to the phenomenon as the “sleep paralysis nightmare” because it
seems to be the most accurate and neutral referent beyond and prior to a medical
or pathological label. The phenomenon is fascinating to a wide range of investiga-
tors because it occurs when we are both asleep and awake, posing fundamental
questions regarding conscious experiences in sleep, and the notion of conscious
experience as such. In the scientific literature the term conscious is associated
with the human waking state and specifically refers to thoughts and feelings other-
wise described as the content of consciousness. It is beyond the scope of this art-
icle to engage all the arguments around the nature of consciousness; for clarity,
awareness is used when referring to the human experience of self-consciousness,
and Awareness (capitalized) is used in the context of Tibetan Buddhism to refer to
a radiant, unfabricated, nondual consciousness or mind.
In the sleep paralysis nightmare, accompanying the paralysis is a subjective sense
of being awake, feeling intense terror, and sensing the presence of a threatening entity.
During this state, subjects are aware of their thoughts, bodily sensations, and surround-
ings, and the phenomenon is experienced and perceived to be as real as any waking life
experience (Cheyne, 2003).
In the most vivid sleep paralysis nightmares, people portray their experiences as
nocturnal assaults by demons, incubi, hags, or dark entities, ascribing these assaults to
evil spirits with various degrees of malevolence. Even those who adamantly claim they
do not believe in a spirit world have given accounts of the experience as terrifying,
overwhelming, mysterious, and uncanny. One person said, “If I were a religious man,
I would describe my experience as a contact with a god or devil” (Cheyne, 2001, p.
146). Countless similar personal testimonials can be found online, such as, “It felt like
pure evil and scared the hell out of me” (Fallen Halo09, 2009), and, “I thought that the
Grim Reaper was coming after me, so I was freaking out” (MettalicBlood, 2010).
For centuries and across many different cultures, the origin of the sleep paralysis
nightmare (known by different names in folklore) has been attributed to the spirit
world (Davies, 2003). In fact, the literal translation of nightmare is “nocturnal demon,”
and is believed to be the original referent for the word “nightmare” (Hufford, 1982).
Jung’s (1917/1953) notion of archetypal images and motifs creating identical or similar
26 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

mythical ideas over and over again appears quite evident in the nightmare of sleep par-
alysis. Although all humans have an identical psychic structure with an innate propen-
sity to create myths, every society creates myths of its own. Archetypes are the ruling
powers of these myths as they are “images of the dominant laws and principles …
regularly occurring events in the soul’s cycle of experience” (Jung, 1917/1953, p. 95,
par. 151). Accordingly, the particular narrative of sleep paralysis changes from culture
to culture, but the key elements of intense fear, motor paralysis, and a sensed presence
remain the same.

Sleep, Dreams, and Fear of the Unknown

In orthodox Western psychology there is a propensity to differentiate between
sleeping, imagining, and the waking rational mind, while ranking the imaginary sec-
ondary to the so-called real. With no causative stimulus in the external world as to
whether hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations during sleep paralysis could be
considered perceptions, arguments arise across disciplines. The notion of perception
in relation to dreaming is highly debated in that many scientists believe that dream-
ing is more closely related to imagination than to perception (Nir & Tononi, 2010).
Though unquestionably relevant to this article, the understanding of perception in
orthodox Western science, like that of consciousness, is too vast of a topic to be
adequately addressed here.
Likewise, there is no scholarly agreement regarding the function of dreams. In
the fields of psychology and neuroscience, theories abound from the consideration of
dreams as simply epiphenomena—by-products of neural processes in sleep—to dreams
as a clearing out of memories, to the linkings and consolidations of memories, to cre-
ative problem solving. To reiterate, for Jung, both myths and what he termed “big
dreams” express contents of the collective unconscious. Perhaps significantly, many of
these Western dream theories do not contradict the Jungian-oriented depth psycho-
logical approach. In fact, they are commensurate, and they ultimately point to Jung’s
synchronicity hypothesis whereby psyche and matter are considered two aspects of
one underlying ontic whole (Lindorff, 2004). Indeed, a team of isolated sleep paralysis
researchers concluded that the universal fear experienced in sleep paralysis is as much
the cause of the hallucination as it is the consequence (Cheyne, Reuffer, & Newby-
Clark, 1999). The team hypothesized that the entity in sleep paralysis, or the felt
intruder presence, possibly arises from the same brain neurophysiology that detects
survival threats. The sensed presence actually represents the experience of ambiguity
regarding the danger to the organism’s survival, the researchers proposed. Hence, it
could be inferred that the “sensed presence” is a symbol, or personification, of psychic
content. In Jungian terms, the universal fear experience symbolized by the sensed pres-
ence can be understood as an archetypal psychic confrontation with our deeply rooted
fear of death.
All the different variations of the malevolent entity documented throughout
time—from demons to hags to incubi to aliens—can be seen mythologically as a com-
bination of personal and cultural projections that have been activated in response to an
archetypal experience. In this archetypal experience, the ego complex is confronted
with a threat to its very existence.
A gripping fear of death is very common. The body just naturally wants to hang
on to life. However, death in Tibetan Buddhism is not considered a final state, but a
transitional process; it is a potent opportunity for transformation and release from
 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 27

painful and fearful cyclical existence. According to this tradition, Awareness survives
bodily death. In conjunction with this understanding is the previously mentioned
Tibetan Buddhist notion that our conditioned mind is empty of anything absolute.
Consisting of peaceful and wrathful images, fragmentary thoughts, and illusory percep-
tions, the conditioned mind—of both daytime and nightly dreams—is the source of suf-
fering and attachment. When not seen through by the luminous ground of Awareness,
this mind distorts our ability to discern and it hinders psychospiritual development.
Learning to “wake up” in the dream state, through the direct realization that all appear-
ances are empty of any absolute nature, can be a path to understanding primordially
radiant Awareness. According to Tibetan Buddhism, the deities appearing in the bardo
during the transition between life and death are awe-inspiring and frightening, even in
their peaceful forms, and overwhelmingly terrifying in their wrathful manifestations.
Like these peaceful and wrathful appearances, the entity of sleep paralysis threatens
and terrifies, but the confrontation can also be experienced as an invitation to new
ways of being with fear. The telos of this psychic confrontation would then be
transformative.
In this study, the art inspired by the sleep paralysis nightmare is the work of a
fifty-year-old woman. Her first sleep paralysis nightmare occurred when she was eight-
een. That time frame aligns with the typical time of onset, which is adolescence. From a
Jungian viewpoint, this artwork is a channel through which archetypal imagery may
emerge, revealing elements missing from the dreamer’s/artist’s awareness. Further
amplification in this article seeks to make connections and meanings of a collective
nature, taking into account ancient and contemporary cultures, as well as associations
with worldwide myths, religions, arts, and histories.

The Entity and the Night Sea Journey

Figure 1, a reproduction of an oil painting titled The Entity, represents the wom-
an’s sleep paralysis nightmare of over 30 years. She summed up the recurrence of nar-
rative and feelings thus:

I suddenly wake up from sleep aware of the bedroom surroundings and

realize that I am paralyzed. I sense a malevolent presence lurking just at the
periphery of my vision. The presence, an entity, has come to suffocate me, or
do me some other mortal harm. The entity feels very real but has no specific
identity, resembling a figure with a head and body devoid of flesh and blood.
Sometimes it comes very close, and I can feel its hot breath on my neck and
face. At times, I feel pressure on my chest, back, or neck, believing that the
entity is trying to strangle me.

Like hundreds of similar online testimonials, in most of these occurrences there

was an intensely felt struggle to wake up, but the paralysis persisted, and the entity
continued to threaten. A loop of intensified terror perpetuated the fear.
In the painting, a woman is lying on her back, corpse-like, her naked paralyzed
body floating horizontally in an oceanic netherworld. A huge dark figure looms above
her, with a smaller dark-blue figure engulfed in it, occupying the vertical space. This is
the entity. The painting’s color palette is predominantly blue, with black and white
used for shadowing and contrast. At the top left of the painting, a white owl is depicted
with its wings beating and beak wide open.
28 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

FIGURE 1. The entity.

The owl is backlit with the light of the hidden moon. Acknowledging the moon as
a female symbol, Jung (1996) stated, “The moon is always understood as the receptacle
of the souls of the dead [and] a symbol of rebirth” (p. 22). From the beginning of human
history, the essential myth of the moon is one of transformation. Through her phases,
the earthly tides bound to her waxing and waning, the moon has carried the image of
sexuality, life and death, the image of time, and eternity (Cashford, 2003).
Beside the white body of the paralyzed woman lies another traveler who shuns
light. Crawling toward the bottom of the canvas, a scorpion begins to descend into the
depths. Millions of years ago the scorpion was able to successfully make the evolution-
ary shift from sea-dweller to land creature (Wu, 2020), but here, it returns to its
oceanic origin to guide the paralyzed woman through the underworld. Thus, this wom-
an’s nightly encounter with the entity of the sleep paralysis nightmare includes a sym-
bolic image of death via the mythopoetic experience of the night sea journey—a
journey whose ancient and cross-cultural archetypal theme appears time and again in
myths, legends, and fairytales.
In fact, Jung (1944/1968) used the Greek term, nekyia, which translates as
“corpse,” to describe the dangers of the night sea journey. He portrayed this perilous
adventure as “a descent into Hades and a journey to the land of ghosts somewhere
 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 29

beyond this world, beyond consciousness, hence an immersion in the unconscious”

(1946/1985, p. 246, par. 455). The goal of this descent is the triumph over death and
the restoration of life (Jung, 1944/1968). Because the perils are real in the night’s jour-
ney, one needs spiritual guidance and protection. As mythological guardians, both Owl
and Scorpion will aid the dreamer in negotiating the energies of multiple dimensions in
the service of transformation.
For many years this woman considered the entity in this recurring nightmare to
be an autonomous evil spirit with dark malevolent intentions. As intimated earlier, the
entity of the sleep paralysis nightmare, a universally sensed presence, can be under-
stood as an archetypal energy—in this case, a core, mysterious, yet inherently frighten-
ing energy representative of the Jungian shadow or the collective unconscious.
The sensed entity encountered in the sleep paralysis nightmare (be it a phantom,
demon, hag, or incubus) shares a correspondence with the wrathful deities that appear
in the in-between state connecting death and rebirth, as elucidated in the Tibetan
Buddhist text, the Bardo Thodol, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Fear of emptiness and the fear of losing oneself are the prominent emotions in this
state, or bardo, literally meaning, “between two” (Fremantle, 2001). The meditational
deities in Tibetan Buddhism are of two types: peaceful and wrathful. As the Dalai Lama
(in Coleman & Jinpa, 2007) stated regarding these deities,

In general terms, these are concerned with the transformation of the

cognitive and emotional states associated with attachment and aversion
respectively. The peaceful deities are quiescent and are expressions of the
natural purity of attraction, that is the mind resting in its natural pristine
state. The wrathful deities are the dynamic aspect of the peaceful deities and
are expressions of the natural transformation of aversion. (p. xxvi).

When one sees through the wrathful deities, Tibetan Buddhism teaches, one is
able to transform delusion into pristine cognition.
The entity of the sleep paralysis nightmare haunted the artist for many years with
a fear-inducing masculine energy. It appears, however, that the accompanying presence
of Owl and Scorpion indicate responses from the psyche of its complement: the divine
feminine. In the painting, the woman lies naked and paralyzed, seemingly passive in a
liminal dark space in which archetypal images appear. She must surrender and submit
to the divine feminine in a posture Jungian analyst Sylvia Brinton Perera (1981) charac-
terized as active receptivity. “This openness to being acted upon is the essence of the
experience of the human soul faced with the transpersonal. It is not based upon passiv-
ity, but upon an active willingness to receive” (p. 13). Active receptivity requires the
ability to host archetypal images and experience.

The Numinous Encounter and Symbols of Transformation

“As above so below” is an alchemical saying Jung often referenced, signifying the
idea that everything psychic carries symbolic meaning. Three symbolic aspects of The
Entity are explored here: blue-black as the dominant color palette and the archetypal
figures of Owl and Scorpion, as both are mythically associated with the regeneration of
life, which is symbolically embedded in death.
The archetypal images in the artist’s psyche ignite confrontation, regeneration,
and transformation. She is being asked to let go of what she knows, or thought she
30 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

knew, and to be present to an imaginal world where death and resurrection may occur.
In Jungian psychology, the aim of psychic transformation, or individuation, is the real-
ization of wholeness. However, there are no guarantees. This phase of the artist’s path
of individuation, represented symbolically by her figure lying unprotected in the
oceanic blue of the unconscious, suggests a trust and commitment to the process of
regeneration and healing, be what may.

Blue-Black

Intuitively, the artist chose blue-black as representing the color of the night and
dark mystery. The sensate feeling of blue-black in The Entity is at first cold and fear-
evoking, she reported. At the same time, blue feels magical and mysterious to the art-
ist—exciting, in a chilling way. Recent medical research has actually found that blue
light enhances alertness, vigilance, and memory recall, while also giving rise to sleep
disturbances (Alkozei, Smith, Dailey, Bajaj, & Killgore, 2017). In other studies, blue
light was found to lower blood pressure, resulting in relaxation (Litscher, Wang,
Gaischek, & Litscher, 2013). In ancient goddess traditions the world over, black was
the color of fertility and abundance. For example, in ancient Egypt, the rich black soil
of the Nile symbolized the mothering darkness of germination (Tresidder, 2008).
In a blue-black netherworld, the naked body of the paralyzed woman lies supine
in a liminal state. She is no longer what she has been and is not yet what she will
become. The entity bears witness to her suspended state of animation. Blue-black is
the crucible in which the woman and the archetypal images of the painting—Entity,
Owl, and Scorpion—have sprung from the collective unconscious to engage with
each other.

Owl

The reputation of the owl as a powerful hunter is well known. With large eyes
evolved for acute perception in near darkness, ears that can locate the rustle of a
rodent in total darkness, and wings softly feathered at the tips to remain silent in flight,
owls quietly await their prey, descend without warning, and seize with uncanny sud-
denness and finality (Ronnberg & Martin, 2010).
Owl’s association with death can be found across most of the world, including, for
example, in the mythologies of Native American Pueblos, in which Owl accompanies
Skeleton Man, the God of Death, who is also a spirit of fertility (Andrews, 2010). In
Germany and Eastern Europe, an owl perched on a dwelling is believed to foreshadow
an imminent death (Ronnberg & Martin, 2010). Owl is also a common companion to
shamans, who, at times, are assisted by owls in evoking spirits in the shamanic journey
of death and rebirth. Furthermore, archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1974) found the owl
accompanying the goddess as a representation of her dual role as the goddess who
gives life and the goddess who takes life away in a perpetual cycle of death and
regeneration.
Not surprisingly, a creature that sees and hears with extraordinary prowess, and
hunts in the night by stealth, conjures images of mysterious powers. Often associated
with the world of magic, the owl is depicted as a regular companion of witches
(Ronnberg & Martin, 2010; Walker, 1983). The medieval fear and rejection of the mys-
terious powers of Owl can be traced back to the gradual suppression of goddess
 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 31

worship in Western Europe that began a few thousand years BCE (Gimbutas, 1974;
Woodman, 1985).
When the painting first took shape, the artist experienced the owl as screech-
ing with its entire being, crying danger, and beseeching her to wake up. Owl is
screeching to “wake up” both on the level of awakening from the sleep paralysis
nightmare and the threat of the malevolent entity, and awakening on the level of
spiritual awareness. Owl’s innate talents are an invitation to seek out what lies
beyond the veil of fear.

Scorpion

Older than the dinosaur yet physically almost unchanged to the present day, the
scorpion is a descendant of a marine animal that lived on Earth 360 million years ago
(Sofer, 1995). Hence, since the earliest of times, the scorpion has symbolized the bridg-
ing of fluid depths and terra firma. Like the owl, scorpions are solitary creatures that
avoid light. They like to sleep in warm, dark places. Adapted to rain forests, deserts,
and urban settings, scorpions burrow in the sand, hide in crevices of buildings, or
slither under rocks. Scorpions have poor ocular vision and rely on other senses to locate
prey. They are nocturnal hunters and fierce opponents. The scorpion’s stinger, a
weapon of last resort, is both lightning fast and lethally accurate. The poison is usually
powerful enough to immobilize or kill almost any struggling creature (Fredericks,
2010). Interestingly, the scorpion’s toxin, which affects the nervous system, is now rec-
ognized as also having healing properties and is used medicinally in some indigenous
cultures (Frembgen, 2004).
Even more so than the owl, the scorpion’s uniqueness lends itself to both sublime
and ominous projections. One of the oldest Egyptian goddesses is Selket, portrayed as
a woman with a scorpion on her head. Selket is represented as the Sphinx in her role as
protector of the throne and the king. Her tail, ending in a venomous stinger, is raised,
warding off enemies. Her human arms stretch toward the sky to receive the setting sun,
“mediating its descent into the underworld from which it will emerge, renewed, at day-
break” (Ronnberg & Martin, 2010, p. 218). Selket’s most important role is with the
ancient Egyptian funerary cult and the deceased. With her companion goddesses Isis,
Nephthys, and Neith, Selket guards the coffins of the dead and the embalming jars con-
taining their vital organs (Walker, 1983).
Along with Selket, many other goddesses of antiquity have been associated with
Scorpion. Ancient seals and cylinders depict scorpions protecting the birthing
Mesopotamian Great Mother of Ur or surrounding the rosette of Sumerian Inanna
(Ronnberg & Martin, 2010). Chamunda, the “Horrific Destroyer of Evil,” is a ferocious
aspect of the Hindu Divine Mother, often associated with Kali (Chamunda, n.d.).
Adorned with skulls, serpents, and scorpions—symbols of sickness and death—
Chamunda often haunts cremation grounds or fig trees. At times, Chamunda is por-
trayed seated on an owl (Chamunda, n.d.; Goswami, Gupta, & Jha, 2005).
When looking at blue-black as representative of the underworld, and the two fig-
ures of Owl and Scorpion as symbols of transformation, we recognize these solitary,
ancient, and mystical feminine symbols in their stunning power of death. By comparing
how an image of fear speaks of both death and, often, the forgotten aspects of rebirth
and transformation—over time and across cultures—an understanding of the recurrent
sleep paralysis phenomenon can expand and deepen.
32 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

PART II: THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION VIA THE SLEEP

PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE
As long as a symbol is a living thing, Jung (1921/1976) maintained, its expression
cannot be characterized in any other or better way: “The symbol is alive only so long as
it is pregnant with meaning. But once its meaning has been born out of it, once that
expression is found which formulates the thing sought, expected, or divined even bet-
ter than the hitherto accepted symbol, then the symbol is dead” (p. 474, par. 816). In
accordance with this idea, Entity, as seen in Figure 1, ceased to express itself as a sym-
bolic fear of death once the woman engaged her sleep paralysis occurrences as a prac-
tice of retrieving projections and surrendering to death. In fact, when Entity ceased to
appear, other phenomena were then undergone, such as out-of-body experiences and
lucid travel to symbolic oneiric landscapes. Similar phenomena have also been docu-
mented in people who have experienced the sleep paralysis nightmare recurrently over
long periods of time (Cheyne, 2010). No longer considered a nightmare, this dream
began to lead the woman toward an understanding of what is often referred to as non-
ordinary states of consciousness—and a portal for transformation.

The Procession, the Tree, and the Void

In the fourth decade of her experiences with the nightmare of sleep
paralysis, a seminal dream occurred in which the woman felt both fear and awe.
After several years of deep engagement, she could view this sleep paralysis
nightmare in a more refined way that prompted the painting titled, The
Procession, the Tree, and the Void (Figure 2). She described this seminal sleep

FIGURE 2. The procession, the tree, and the void.

 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 33

paralysis dream as follows:

I am drifting to sleep. I hear very loud crashing of thunderous waves—I know

sleep paralysis is coming on. Then I hear high-pitched fast-moving sounds. My
dream body lifts out of my sleeping body; I hear majestic orchestral music,
like a soundtrack score to an epic film as I am propelled into the black
vastness. Momentum gains, I can feel my dream body moving extraordinarily
fast through vibrational fields and swirling galactic clouds toward a dark
vortex that is magnetically pulling me. The Void. No fear. Just awe and
anticipation.
As we get closer to the vortex, I slow down and suddenly, the magnetic pull
reverses and I am now propelled back “down” toward a hilly landscape. As I
near the ground, I make out a procession of hundreds of people walking
down the hills (toward me it seems), each person holding a lit candle. They
are all wearing beige-colored linen or burlap robes with hoods. I am
reminded of Byzantine icons.
I am hovering above the procession with a bird’s-eye view. I feel sexually
aroused. I sense these hundreds of people have all come to pay tribute to the
goddess at a sacred spot. I may be she. With that thought, I become self-
conscious and notice that I am naked and aroused. I am embarrassed and a
feeling of shame begins to creep over me. But then I realize that the people
below cannot see me. Perhaps I do not exist in this form, on their plane,
I think.
The scene changes and I am out in space again battling a dark force that is
somehow contained within a rectangle. I can barely raise my spectral arms,
but I manage to make a kung fu gesture and shout: “I am not afraid of you!”
The rectangle bellows back with a thunderous vibration that hurls me. The
field between us is palpable with the intense energy of two magnets repelling
each other. I can hardly withstand the force directed at me and am seconds
from being annihilated.

Like the three-part structure of the dream, the woman immediately envisioned
the artwork (in Figure 2) as a triptych of paintings portraying a nighttime scene that
invites an expanded vision of the rhythms of the cosmos. The night sky does not negate
the daytime sky, but, rather, gives us a wider context from which to view and under-
stand the trajectory of life. Traditionally, triptychs were created as part of a panel for
Christian altars, and indeed The Procession, the Tree, and the Void does allude to
Christian motifs.
Due to the limited nature of this article, the focus will be confined to the bottom
panel of Figure 2, which depicts a procession of worshipers, all holding lit candles as
they travel across a hilly green landscape. The sky is a dark blue-black, the light of the
moon barely discernable behind the night clouds and the tree’s canopy of stylized
leaves. The worshipers wear hooded robes reminiscent of Russian icons, an image that
surprised the woman, given the specificity of the Christian imagery with which she had
not grown up in her Jewish tradition. When she awakened from this dream, the woman
had a strong awareness of the spot as a sacred tree, which rooted itself imposingly in
the painting. In point of fact, people in pre-Christian Europe revered the tree as a mani-
festation of the numinous (Eliade, 1957/1987), as did other ancient earth-centered peo-
ples across the world that worshiped nature in her many forms (Figure 3).
34 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

FIGURE 3. The procession.

Tree

Since time immemorial trees have played important roles in mythology as natural
symbols of the vital connection between the human world and the world of the gods, as
in the case of the World Tree or Cosmic Tree. The Cosmic Tree or the Tree of Life
appears in Genesis; in the Koran; in Persian, German, and Aztec cosmogony; in Native
American, African, and Indian creation stories; and in many other traditions (Andrews,
2009; Frese & Gray, 2005; Leeming, 2005; Matthews, 1993).
Imagery of fecundity and birth have been attributed to the Tree of Life and to the
female principle, harking back to the Paleolithic Age (James, 1959, 1966). Symbolically,
the fruit, shade, and protective nature of trees naturally lend themselves to be seen as
feminine or maternal symbols (Matthews, 1993). In ancient Canaan, the tree trunk was
associated with femaleness, and apple wood was often burned during fertility rites
(Ronnberg & Martin, 2010, p. 168).
From the earliest of times, trees have been a place for worship, sacrifice, for com-
ing-of-age and initiation rites (Andrews, 2009; Leeming, 2005). Also, many goddesses
across the ancient world are specifically associated with their respective trees, such as
the Egyptian Hathor, who is called “Lady of the Sycamore”; or Asherah, the ancient
Canaanite mother goddess, who was worshiped under evergreen trees (Walker, 1983).
For Westerners, the most famous association of goddess and tree is perhaps found in
the story of Adam and Eve, in which the tree’s forbidden fruit of knowledge is often-
times associated with the stigmatized feminine. Prior to Judeo-Christian times, the
apple was honored as a symbol of creativity, motherhood, eternal life, and sexuality
(Walker, 1983).

Tree as Self

Jung (1938/2012) once observed that the tree is always the symbol of the before
and after of human existence. He went on to say:

It is the tree that nourishes all the stars and planets; and it is the tree out of
which come the first parents, the primordial parents of humanity, and in
 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 35

which the last couple, also representing the whole of humanity, are buried.
That of course means that consciousness comes from the tree and dissolves
into the tree again—the consciousness of human life. (p. 1433)

For the most part, though, for Jung the tree symbolized the development of psy-
chic life, the process of individuation, and the Self (von Franz, 1968). Most concisely,
Jungian analyst and scholar Marie-Louise von Franz (1968) distilled the symbol of the
tree, remarking that in dreams, the Self is frequently symbolized by the tree, whose
slow, powerful, involuntary growth achieves a distinct pattern. “The organizing center
from which the regulatory effect stems seems to be a sort of ‘nuclear atom’ in our psy-
chic system. One could call it the inventor, organizer, and source of dream images”
(p. 161).
The appearance of the tree in the painting (Figure 2) can indicate a meandering,
slow growth pattern. It can represent the subject’s own psychological maturation and
individuation process. The tree shows us how, from a tiny seed of potential, slowly over
time, the Self can evolve its appearance. Like a tree growing simultaneously downwards
and upwards, Jung (1945/1983) noted, the Self’s goal is “neither height nor depth, but
the center” (p. 264, par. 333). As a symbol of the Self, the tree is the center around
which occur continuous processes of propagating, perishing, and self-renewal. Thus,
we can see that the way to the center is revealed via multiple images in The
Procession, the Tree, and the Void. The artwork presents a way of allowing hidden
aspects of the psyche to emerge within an image, each panel functioning like a step-
ping-stone on the path toward individuation.

Nakedness and Vulnerability

The seminal sleep paralysis dream that gave rise to The Procession, the Tree,
and the Void is initiated with an out-of-body experience catapulting the dreamer past
galaxies and magnetic fields into outer space. Later, the dreamer experienced herself
observing a procession of worshipers from above, in a naked state, as perhaps the very
goddess who the worshipers had come to honor. The metaphor of “outer space,” as dis-
cussed in Tibetan Buddhist theory, refers to “the total freedom and spontaneity of lib-
erating consciousness—personified by the d
akin
ı, a female figure that moves on the
highest level of reality; Her nakedness symbolizes knowledge of truth unveiled” (Haule,
2011, p. 60). The Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit term d
akin
ı means “‘space voy-
ager,’ space metaphorically implying emptiness, and voyager indicating someone
immersed in its experience” (Coleman & Jinpa, 2007, p. 457).
Interestingly, in the sleep paralysis dream, the woman’s identification with the
goddess brought about a self-consciousness around being naked and aroused—being
alive and human—resulting in shame, calling to mind the biblical story of Adam and
Eve. After eating the apple, their eyes were opened “and they knew they were naked;
so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves” (Genesis
3:7, NET).
The Eden story can be seen as both a psychological and spiritual story. One of
the reasons nakedness is seen as shameful is because Adam and Eve’s disobedience
exiled them from the presence of God. World mythologist Joseph Campbell (2001)
found the garden to be a metaphor for our minds. The knowledge attained by eating
the forbidden fruit created the ego complex and dualistic thinking. Similarly, the feel-
ings stirred for the dreamer/artist as a result of nakedness and shame could be
36 PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 䉬 VOLUME 63, ISSUE 1 / 2020

understood as a direct result of a sensed loss of connection to the goddess. What keeps
us in exile from god, according to Campbell, is fear of death and desire for more of this
phenomenological world. Hence it follows that overcoming our fear and desire is the
way back into the garden, back to the Oneness, to the unity with god, or the Self.

PART III: CLOSING INSIGHTS

This brief exploration has shown that an archetypal experience of intense fear,
like that of the sleep paralysis nightmare, can provide a portal to the imaginal, the
unknown, and the numinous. In the example considered here, going through the portal
offered by the sleep paralysis nightmare entailed a surrender to fear, first and foremost.
No matter how fear-inducing the nightmare was, being curious and turning an open
face to the portal was fundamental.
As a basis for working with the fear-inducing aspects of her shadow, this woman’s
path of transformation required an ability to hold the tension of the opposites, both in
her inner and outer life. A pivotal aspect of this path was the release of any idealized
images. Because idealized images inhibit openness and full presence, their release
allowed for an unrestrained embrace of her multifaceted and fluid nature, and that of
others. Furthermore, unveiling the vulnerability hidden beneath her fear was essential.
Vulnerability, Jungian scholar Marion Woodman (1982) believed, is the work of
the sacred feminine. The goddess “loves with her whole being so that her vulnerability
becomes her greatest strength,” Woodman taught (p. 126). Due to many years of living
with this nightmare, its intensity, and the subsequent psychological maturity it brought
forth, the woman was able to acknowledge and value the power of vulnerability.
Perhaps, by extension, the more awareness we each have of this power in our own lives,
the less likely it will remain veiled in the collective.
Jung maintained that the encounter with the numinous can be potentially con-
structive or destructive, healing or disorienting. It is all in our approach and attitude.
Jung (1973) noted, “inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences, you are
released from the curse of pathology” (p. 377). Similar to Jung’s thinking, Tibetan
Buddhism acknowledges that the wrathful deities, although appearing monstrous,
uncanny, and fear-provoking, also contain positive principles when experienced as
allies in the process of psychological transformation.
In the case of this woman and her artwork, her curiosity and surrender allowed
for an adjustment of her ideas and attitude, thus providing a creative and viable
approach to penetrating a lifelong recurring nighttime of terror. As a result of tending
to the archetypal encounters in sleep paralysis, she was assisted in her individuation
process. Coming to terms with the entity of sleep paralysis offered her a “wakeup”
opportunity on many levels and may provide a comparable opportunity for others with
corresponding experiences.

Oreet Rees, PhD, is a documentary filmmaker with a doctorate in depth

psychology. Her documentary work covers a wide range of topics, from the sex-
ual exploitation of children (Playground, 2016) to seminal historic events (King
Leopold’s Ghost, 2006, and 1968: The Year That Changed America, 2018) to the
incredible bond between humans and dogs (Love Life Dogs, 2019).
 OREET REES AND LEANNE WHITNEY 䉬 THE SLEEP PARALYSIS NIGHTMARE 37

Leanne Whitney, PhD, is an independent scholar in the fields of depth psych-

ology and consciousness studies. She is the author of Consciousness in Jung and
njali (Routledge, 2018) and several professional papers, including “Innate
Pata~
and Emergent: Jung, Yoga and the Archetype of the Self Encounter the Objective
Measures of Affective Neuroscience” (2018) and “Jung and Nonduality: Some
Clinical and Theoretical Implications of the Self as Totality of the Psyche”
(2015), coauthored with Dr. Lionel Corbett.

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