The Woman's Book of Dreams: Dreaming As a Spiritual Practice (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It was early January when I made my first trek to meet Minisa Crumbo-Halsey, a Creek-Potawatomi medicine woman living in the hills above Malibu..." (more)
Key Phrases: moon power day, strawberry spirits, intentional dreaming, Dream Weave, Great Dreamer, Mother Earth (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Every culture throughout time has been fascinated by and curious about its dreams. In this book, dream teacher Connie Kaplan gives readers a way to understand their dreams as a spiritual contract with life. She shows how dreaming energy is connected with the womb and with menstrual and hormonal cycles. Even men and postmenopausal women share this unique connection through the metaphoric womb. Once readers learn to use these cycles to understand and chart their dreams, they can use the lessons learned to improve their lives. Kaplan's is a new look at an age-old system that allows dreamers to read the messages in their dreams as if they were letters from the soul. Her book will stir ancient memories of a time when the spiritual connection to the universe was deeply felt and celebrated.

Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Beyond Words Publishing (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582700087
• ISBN-13: 978-1582700083
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #303,282 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your dreams connect you to your soul!, October 27, 1999

By	A Customer (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

Connie Kaplan's book could revolutionize your life by changing your picture of yourself. Instead of seeing dreams as clues to your past, you will find that they are messages from your soul, guiding you into the future. She offers hints about dream interpretation that go far beyond the old "dream books" and even beyond psychology. This book is a very important tool for the serious spiritual inquirer.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some useful suggestions, April 20, 2001

By	A. J Greig (Vienna AUSTRIA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like this book, inspite of a number of shortcomings. It's a nicely presented edition from Beyond Words Publishing. The idea of creating a dream database for correlating lunar transits and days of the month with dreams is helpful, and the suggestion that we should recapitulate the events of the day before going to sleep each night is also very useful. I liked the idea of mapping the dream phases and establishing a dream circle of friends in which to share dreams. (The dream chart is the same idea as the menstrual mandala in "Alchemy for Women: Personal Transformation through dreams and the female cycle" by Shuttle and Redgrove, 1995, with the addition of lunar transits.) As an interesting aside, this author leads dreaming circles through lindagoodman.net's academy, with the most recent on being entitled "dreaming on the vernal equinox 2001."

Overall, though, I found that there was too much emphasis on simply recounting people's dreams and without much guidance for the reader on how to work with their own.

Kaplan refers a lot to astrology, but she should have paid more attention to its technical aspects. For example, void-of-course Moon is defined as follows: "As the moon moves from sign to sign during a month, she may, for a few hours, be outside the direct influence of any sign. (Those constellations are far apart!) When the moon is between signs, she is said to be void of course." In fact, a void of course Moon is one that does not make any complete aspect to any planet or the Sun before leaving the zodiacal sign that it is in. It is not somehow outside the influence of a sign. Elsewhere, as another exmaple, she makes an odd statement: "Sagittarius governs the blood. Dreams may refer to the sense of inner peace invoked by proper blood flow." For a fuller and more accurate treatment of this subject, see "Crossing the Threshold: The astrology of dreaming" by Linda Reid. For a more complete exposition on dreaming and shamanism/consciousness work, see Robert Moss's books, such as "Conscious Dreaming: A spiritual path of everyday life."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, practical guide to dreamwork with others, October 16, 1999

By A Customer

This book is wonderful - it approaches a subject that is vast and overwhelming in a down-to-earth way. The author and her companions in dream circle take their dreaming and their observations seriously, rather than making pie-in-the-sky generalizations. Highly recommended if you want to go beyond the endless dream interpretation books and work within the dreamweave.