The Dream Book of Self-Knowledge
- gas: helps the dreamer abandon the old, infested world (see Apocalypse archetype), or can protect from poisonous chemicals that symbolize inappropriate inner content of the mind that the dreamer must resist and then deal with the inappropriate waste (neutralization, dilution etc.).
- damage of the gas mask and ensuing death: death of the dreamer's personality (death of the ego); such images frequently accompany the Alchemist archetype.
- the unconscious uses masks to make a parody of everyday life in which people proudly wear embarrassing personality masks and ridiculous caricatures of themselves; it also evokes the desire to know the true faces (individualities) hidden behind the masks.
- wearing a mask: once the dreamer shows the world his "perfect" mask, the mask will fall off during the first crisis and the true face of his individuality will be fully revealed; the wearer of the mask thus becomes a freak on the world's stage in the endless pantheon of disguises and mask (falsehood and hypocrisy).
- people do not recognize the dreamer under a mask: the dreamer is becoming a mere and powerless tool of the ego; he is unwittingly cramming his individuality into the darkest corner of his soul and awkwardly hiding behind the increasingly distorted mask of his personality.
- not recognizing others behind a mask: the dreamer is becoming a helpless tool of the ego and is blind to the pain of individuality that is hidden beneath the mask; he will seek the same hypocrisy so that he wears the most attractive and popular mask in the eyes of others.
- inability to remove a mask: a premonitory dream – the dreamer has identified with his appearance (with his personality) to such an extent that he is unable to see his true suffering individuality.
- in some emotionally distinct dreams the dreamer can understand the faces of others or even his own face to be a mask, whose meaning it then bears.
- white: feigned innocence.
- menacing, a person in a mask is threatening the dreamer or his friends: personified evil (see Shadow archetype).
- removing, setting aside a mask: the dreamer has surrendered his contrived personality and found within the potential for healing since he has understood the traits and, in particular, the dependencies that he should rid himself of in order to progress toward future healing of his ailing individuality.
- once a person sets out on the path to understanding his own psyche, he will find within increasingly more masks or will identify with masks of various types of personalities (apotheosis23); he then appears in dreams as an aristocrat, king, Napoleon, saint, savior, Jesus, Joan of Arc, noblewoman, beautiful princess or wise queen, master of the world, world champion, superman, supernatural being and all such masks void of inner content as if the dreamer were tempted by the words: "Put me on and you will be perfect and famous and all will envy you." (as soon as a person is trapped in a similar labyrinth of masks of different personalities, he should immediately read the Treasure archetype).
- destroying masks or seeing them destroyed: the dreamer is freed from the hypocrisy of the ego and is willing to examine his own ill individuality to finally begin the healing process of the soul.
- seeing a corpse with a mask: the dreamer has got to the stage in which the contrived personality definitively collapses and the ego is no longer built so that he can finally find his own individuality.
- clown mask: in the higher sense, compassion with the mad world and then even knowledge in perfect indifference are concealed behind the clown's mask and makeup; see Clown.
- ritual: offers the dreamer the chance of considerable facilitation of the spiritual path if the dreamer is able to internally (emotionally, not intellectually) understand the meaning of the ritual and essence of the ritual mask; the most frequent dream rituals include maturity tests, initiation rituals to induce altered states of consciousness or other shamanic practices to acquire extrasensory information.
