As the first rays of the sun touch me, I let go of the all that doesn’t serve you, love!
-Dreamcatcher
Dreamcatchers are loops filled with web and decorated with tassels, feathers, beads, etc. As per Native American beliefs, dream catchers are charms to protect mankind when asleep from bad dreams, spirits and unwanted entities. The undesirable gets entangled in the web and the good will pass through. The entangled stuff then perishes when the sun rays touch them.
All parts of the dreamcatcher have meaning tied to the natural world. The shape of the dreamcatcher is a circle because it represents the circle of life and how forces like the sun and moon travel each day and night across the sky. The dream catcher web catches the bad dreams during the night and disposes of them when the day comes. As for the good dreams, the feathers and tassels act as a fluffy, pillow-like ladder that allows them to gently descend upon the sleeping person.
A dreamcatcher legend:
A spider was quietly spinning his web in his own soace. It was beside the sleeping space of Nokomis, the grandmother. Each day, Nokomis watched the spider at work, quietly spinning away. One day as she was watching him, her grandson came in. “Nokomis-iya!!!” he shouted and marched towards the spider ready to hurl a stone at it. The old lady intervened and said, “Don’t hurt him, child”. “But why do you protect it grandma”, asked the little boy. The old lady smiled but did not answer. She hugged her grandson and asked him play in the yard with his friends. When the boy left, the spider thanked her for saving its life and it said, “ For many days you have admired my work. In return for saving my life, I give you a gift. A gift of love, hope and faith.” As the moon rose, he asked to observe how it wove its web. “See and learn, how I spin, for each web will snare bad dreams, only good dreams shall pass these holes. This is my gift to you. Use it so that only good dreams will be remembered. The bad dreams will become hopelessly entangled in the web.”
So buy yourself one or weave it with the help of freely available videos!
