'O pate d'e criature

'O pate d’e criature: the father of the children. It’s the male counterpart of twenty-eight, and the Smorfia says it with the same candor — it’s the male principle as origin, the force that sets things in motion, the seed. It isn’t the father as a figure of authority, that one lives elsewhere: here it’s the father as the beginning of something. In dreams, twenty-nine arrives when something is set in motion. A project you launched, a decision that started a chain of events, a responsibility you took on first when no one else was moving. It’s a number of energy and drive, and it also carries the risk that comes with drive: setting off and never getting there. The images that lead here all point the same way. Virility. The hammer, which is strength in motion. The beard, the sign of that strength come to maturity. And the arrow, which is drive and distance — what lies far off and what you take aim at. If twenty-nine has shown up in your dream, there was a push. The Smorfia doesn’t say whether it’s the right push, and it doesn’t tell you where to take it. It points out that in your dream something got going, and that almost always it got going because of a choice of yours.