The Engagement Ring -or- Circle of Life
SATURDAY, I HAD MY FIANCE (Ginnie, 26)PICK OUT AN ENGAGEMENT RING. SHE TOLD ME SHE DREAMT THAT THE DIAMOND KEPT CHANGING SHAPES, FROM THE CUT SHE PICKED, PRINCESS, TO OVAL, ROUND, ETC. ANY SIGNIFICANCE?
Mr Hagen's Reply: The Vein of Love -or- Circle of Life
The engagement ring reportedly was a tradition since Roman times and only revived during the renaissance. The ring is placed on the fourth finger of the left hand, because it is known as the vena amoris or the "vein of love".
For Lewis Hyde The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World the language of the gift is central to the psychodynamics of social exchanges of communities. As it relates to women's dreams, specifically your "fiancé's", the dream is part of modern Western women's collective rites of passage, part of her coming of age story. The dream of the engagement ring can seen as a ritual sign to herself and to her circle of friends and her family that she has received from you the promise to marry, to have a family and in most cases to have children, and have a home of her own.
In the dream, geometry of the diamond begins to transform into a variety of shapes. As an archetype, we find geometric transformations in numerous dreams sent to the IIDR such as Jungian Individuation: Development of Women's Personality. Geometry becomes a collective metaphor for the path of a woman's life and the poetic transformations she will undergo. The circle (one of the forms the diamond transforms into) is a time honored sign of nature and ecology. Think of the film Lion King and Elton John's signature theme song The Circle of Life (listen to music video). The song Can You Feel the Love Tonight by Elton John fits the enduring sentiment of engagement.
What future dreams will your fiancé have, has ritually, culturally and creatively been laid down for her by a multitude of past generations we often call our "ancestors". Varieties of modern women's dream thematic patterns such as marriage, pregnancy, birth (read Entering the Global Village), post-partum (read Post Partum), marriage perspectives (read Maternal Bond or Closet Girl), menopause (read Women's Bodies, Women's Dreams), death (read Poetics of Women's Autobiography) and dying dreams follow the archetypal artist's path. Leonardo Da Vinci gave artistic expression to the symbolic geometry of the circle of life in his drawing of Vitruvian Man. The IIDR has placed the Vitruvian Woman alongside the Vituvian Man. I could say more about the circle, and of course I will in other interpretations.