The cartography of dreams is another technique of dream recall. Its origin lies in practices of the ancient shamans, who used to make maps of their dreams and other worlds they visited in their visions.
The technique was also explored in the works by Carlos Castaneda and is successfully used by modern dream explores for better dream recall and navigation in the dream world.
The difference between dream cartography and keeping a dream journal is that cartography is focused on dream locations and not characters or events. Dream cartographers claim that this technique provides a better dream recall, making it possible to remember even your childhood dreams.
The number of locations we visit in our dreams is more or less limited. As the cartographers’ experiments show, dream maps of different dreamers are very similar: they usually have one city, which is the eclectic image of all the cities you’ve ever visited, and borders, represented by rivers or mountains, almost never crossed.
Why to Map Dreams
As we visit different locations within the dream world, we get an impression of unlimited and chaotic universe. The plot of a dream rarely takes us to more than one location. However, as you start to map the dreams, you will soon notice that we often visit the same locations. Moreover, some locations connect the others, merging together the points that seemed to be geographically distant.
Any world becomes more familiar and easier to navigate once you have a map and is capable of some topographic orientation. Dream world isn’t an exception. As soon as you realize how all those strange places you’ve visited are connected, you’ll be able to navigate them as you do your own hometown.
Where to Start
Of course, you need your dream journal. Go over the entries and make a list of all the locations (I keep it in an excel file, together with all other dream information). Try to remember every detail and describe those locations as precisely as possible. Probably you will see some connections immediately.
Familiar locations (such as your home, school, job, your parents’ house etc.) are most likely to be situated as they are in the waking reality. Other, especially fantastic locations, may be trickier to place.
For instance, I couldn’t place a mountain I’ve visited once, until I remembered seeing a mountain top when I was stranded in a forest. The two locations – the mountain and the forest – appeared to be connected.
Topography: How to Map
Dream cartographers usually assume your home as the center of the map. It is not necessarily your real home, but a place in dreams that is considered “your home”. It may be like the one in the waking reality or be a palace, a cabin, a zoo… The thing is, it is your home in dreams.
For instance, I assume a location named “The Palace of the Rising Sun” as my “dream home”. I’ve first seen it a couple of years ago but immediately felt and knew that it is my home where I’ve returned after a long absence.
After your center is chosen, start to add other locations. Some will go in quite naturally, such as most locations familiar from the waking experience; some will take time to be placed properly. It’s ok to go with your intuition sometimes. After all, it’s your map and your world. You can always fix it after you have more information.
Just take into account that forests, rivers, seas and mountains are usually situated at the borders of the map. Urban and urban-like locations will be closer to the center, to your “home”.
Also remember that your map is three-dimensional. That means that beside the regular world you will also have some sort of underworlds that may be represented, for instance, by a subway or Hell. There is also a “world above”, a higher realm you may be unaware of yet.
As for how you go about placing the new locations, you may draw your map in a drawing redactor, such as Photoshop or Paintbrush. They are easier to change, and you won’t be making a mess out of your papers.
I prefer to draw my maps in paper, though. So I draw new locations on small pieces of paper, preferably sticky-posts, adding a brief description of the place and characters I’ve met there and add it to the map, often on the base of pure intuition. I can always re-arrange them if I need.
Map Orientation
Dream cartographers prefer to arrange their maps so that the South takes the place of the North, and the East of the West. They follow the shaman tradition: shamans oriented their maps so that the realms they visited looked like the mirror images of our world.
You may do so or not, it’s up to you. After all, the map should be easy for you to read in order to navigate your dream world.
Good luck to all dream explorers! Let us know how things go!
