Aniela Jaffe: Pyramids are an expression of an archetypal image.
Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940 (Philemon Foundation Series)
“I see a pyramid in front of me”—no further details about its form or dimension are revealed.
But we will hardly prejudice the meaning of the dream if we assume that this is a building of immense proportions—there is room for a whole house on its top, and in most cases the term pyramid generally indicates, in common usage, a high building that rises above a quadratic base.
In addition, most often there is still another qualification: a pyramid as it is found in Egypt is a tomb of a Pharaoh.
Pyramids as sacred buildings, however, have been erected not only in Egypt, but also in Mexico, China, and Java, in completely different cultural environments.
They are an expression of an archetypal image.
Of the many observations that have been made on the construction of those pyramids, so mysterious to this day, I would like to single out only those that seem to be important for the understanding of the dream, acting on the assumption that this is about the Egyptian pyramid.
It has been observed that the pyramids, in whose interior the mummy of a Pharaoh was conserved in a burial chamber, had a glossy, polished, and reflecting surface.
The rising triangular areas acted like gigantic mirrors that during the day reflected the sunlight onto the land like a gigantic cone of light, and at night showed the stellar constellations.
The hieroglyph for certain pyramids, therefore, means source of light, and various inscriptions indicate its light symbolism.
Something very strange or even contradictory seems to lie in the fact that these of all buildings symbolize light and radiance, because with all the impact of their completely unstructured, immense surfaces they seem to represent the impenetrability of stone and the epitome of structured matter.
This double aspect is also expressed in the composition of the form: with their greatest width, the surface areas solidly rest on the ground, and then narrow more and more toward the top; they seem almost to dematerialize.
Finally, coming from four sides, the surfaces meet in one single point of no square dimension at all.
This point has always been considered the crowning feature of the whole edifice, however, its most sacred and mystic place.
Often the tops of Egyptian pyramids were gilded or made of a specially gleaming stone.
It was assumed that after the Pharaoh’s death his soul, that is, his image, the Ka soul, would travel through the underworld and then be transformed into the god Osiris, or rise to Atum, the highest god of light, exactly at this top of his grave. ~Aniela Jaffe, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Pages 281-282.
