Magic Is Transmitted Through Images

• Magic is carried through images, and through the patient craft of making them

• Our dreams speak in images long before they speak in words

• Together, through painting, we can learn to listen to them

Last night I had two extraordinary dreams, the kind that leave a fine golden dust on your thoughts the next morning.

I woke up with the clear sense that something in me had been quietly speaking in images, not in sentences. The first dream was simple and full of wonder, and it felt like being handed a small, bright key.

I found myself inside a vast library with impossibly high bookshelves, the kind that makes you tilt your head back until your neck feels small. On one shelf sat a row of beautifully illustrated fairy tale books, their colors softened like pressed flowers, the drawings still bright with care.

Their covers were worn with age, so I carefully repaired one with transparent tape, smoothing it down as if I were mending a wing. As I turned the pages, one overwhelming feeling rose through me: I had found a place where magic was preserved, not as a performance, but as something patiently kept and quietly protected.

I was in a house I had never seen before, the kind of place your body recognizes as real even when your mind cannot place it. A pigeon was trapped inside a room crowded with furniture, and instead of finding the open air it kept pulling dirt up from below the floor, again and again, as if that puzzling task had distracted it from setting itself free. To stop it, a woman lifted one damaged floorboard and replaced it with an old Renaissance painting, crowded with angels, beautiful faces, and expressive hands.

Then she covered that painting with a new wooden floorboard, hiding the miracle inside the fix. While the woman focused on the practical problem, I knelt down and looked closely at the painting.

I was not interested in the dirt. I wanted to discover how the old master had painted those faces, how the light sat on a cheek, how a mouth could hold both tenderness and mystery.

The dream made me smile when I woke up. It was a little absurd, a little mysterious, and somehow deeply meaningful.

Perhaps that is why I liked it so much. If you live in a city, you probably know pigeons well.

They may be the closest thing to wildlife we meet every day, and in dreams they can become surprisingly eloquent storytellers

Next, these dreams reminded me of something I have experienced many times: dreams speak in images long before they speak in words. They rarely arrive as neat explanations, and when we demand a quick meaning, the dream often goes quiet.

They do not explain. They show.

If you do one thing, do this: stay with the image for 10 minutes before you interpret it. Write down 3 specific details you can actually see in the dream, like the color of the light, the texture of a door, the shape of a creature, or where your body is standing.

Here’s the catch: this works best when you let the image be strange, even a little embarrassing, and you do not force it into a tidy story. It fails when you rush to translate it into a lesson or a to-do list, like you are filing it away to be productive.

In practice, painting the image can be the gentlest way to stay. Try a simple 20-minute sketch in any medium and focus on:

• One main symbol (a key, a river, a mask)

• One mood color (smoky blue, raw umber, gold)

• One small action (opening, hiding, waiting)

A common mistake is trying to paint the dream “correctly,” as if you are copying a photograph. The fix is to paint the feeling of it instead, then give the image a title like “The Door That Would Not Open” or “The Soft Warning,” and see what starts to speak back.

Next, I want to name what sits underneath all the lesson plans and paint palettes: I am not simply trying to teach you how to paint with watercolour. If you have ever finished a painting and still felt like something in you stayed unsaid, you are not alone.

What I want is to guide you back to the deep well of images that already lives inside you, the ones that visit in dreams, daydreams, and quiet flashes on an ordinary afternoon. Together, through painting, we can practice listening to them with patience, so the image becomes a doorway instead of a decoration.

• Your dreams, including the ones you forget by breakfast

• Your imagination, especially the parts that feel "too strange" to share

• Your inner stories, including the ones without words yet

• Your symbols, the recurring creatures, places, colors, and objects that keep returning

Because I truly believe that magic is transmitted through images, and through the steady craft of making them. Works best when you give it time, even 20 minutes at a kitchen table; it tends to fail when you rush for a polished result and skip the listening.

If you do one thing, do this: treat each small watercolour as a conversation, not a performance. A common mistake is to paint what you think you should paint; the fix is to choose one symbol from a dream (a red door, a moth, a moonlit stair) and paint it three times in three moods, letting meaning arrive gently.

So, if anything in these dreams felt familiar, you are not alone.

Magic is transmitted through images, and through the patient craft of making them: the slow layering, the quiet choices, the moment you stay one more minute with a shape that still has something to say.

That said, you do not have to wait for a perfect mood or a perfect plan. If you do one thing, sit down for 10 minutes and make one small mark that belongs to you, then let the next mark answer it.

Because I truly believe that magic is transmitted through images, and through the patient craft of making them, your hands can become a gentle bridge between the invisible and the visible. And each time you return, you practice a kind of listening that keeps its promises.