“Dreams are symbolic expressions of the hidden and half-glimpsed truths that operate in the dark, in our blind spots. They reveal what’s unconscious to us but what nevertheless affects our thoughts, feelings, and motives.”

Sue Monk Kidd, Dance of the Dissident Daughter, pg 138

I had a dream recently where I was unprepared for primary (I am the primary president) – I was panicked the whole time, confused. I had to run to the bathroom, so I told the primary kids to play a game for a moment and I would return. In my dream, I ran through an obstacle course in a quaint, beautiful town. Forgetting why I was running, I turned back toward primary, anxious about the kids, but a massive jungle within a glass dome blocked my way. I tried to go around it, wondering how I made my way through or around this wild landscape the first time.

Eventually, I found a glass door in front of a mossy path. I opened the door preparing to run through the dome, but before I could step into the jungle, a hippopotamus rose from the algae-green water. Alarmed, I stared at the calm, majestic animal. As the hippo lowered herself back under the water. I closed the glass, choosing not to enter the jungle. Remembering primary. Then I woke up.

Later that day, I listened to Sue Monk Kidd’s Dance of the Dissident Daughter and in it, Sue has a dream where she turns into an elk with large antlers. She finds it comical until she finds that elks are symbols of deity and protectors of women. 

I thought of my dream, rolled my eyes, and looked up the word hippopotamus on the internet. It had been years since I had felt that burning, tingling, hyper-focused feeling that I have correlated with the spirit, my inner knowing, or God, but I felt it then, about a hippo.

I learned that in Egyptian mythology, the hippo was an ancient symbol for women. The Goddess Taweret has the body and head of an Egyptian hippo. Taweret means “The Great Female One,” and is often depicted as pregnant. She is the protector of motherhood and fertility. This random animal, a hippo of all things, an animal I have never seen in real life, visited my dreams; but perhaps it wasn’t random at all.

Egyptian women used images of Taweret as a way of preventing evil from reaching their infants, placed on cradles, stools, and amulets. She was worshipped at home and in domestic areas rather than big temples. She was a symbol for women, by women. She wasn’t found in the men’s temples but in the homes where women birthed and bled.

The Egyptian hippo is now extinct. Hippos now only exist in protected areas. It is believed that the symbol of the hippopotamus, like most feminine symbols, changed as men began conquering them for sport. Hippos became associated with chaos, and the hunt for hippos became a metaphor for how the pharaohs of ancient Egypt could conquer evil. Ancient Egyptian paintings and art depicts kings and Pharoes killing the fierce, evil hippo. Causing extinction, hippo hunts became symbols of bravery and strength as the mother hippo, The Great Female One, was pushed aside, slaughtered, and erased; the traditions of our mothers have become palimpsests. 

Sue Monk Kidd believes that we hold the ancient truths of women in our DNA and when I learned about Taweret, I felt something ancient churning in my veins. Plato says, “The soul knows who we are from the beginning.” So while Taweret has been erased and written over, a fierce, protecting hippo visited me in my dreams.

It is written in the Gnostic Gospels that Jesus taught, “If you bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you.” My hippo. My Goddess. My dream brought forth what is in me, and what was brought forth will save me. So why was that ancient feminine symbol rising from the murky water in my dreams? Was she protecting me from returning to primary? Was she protecting the primary children from me?  Was she protecting me from returning to the patriarchal system that continually lulls me to sleep, continually teaching me to silence myself? Was she inviting me into the jungle? Or was she, like I felt, allowing me to witness her? Showing herself. Letting me know she is not hidden or secret or extinct. She is within me, rising up, waking up, standing with me. Remember, Taweret says. Remember who you are. Remember what was erased.

Photo 1 by UnKknown Traveller on Unsplash

Photo 2 by Hu Chen on Unsplash