Sandman and Morpheus’s Tools - Helm, Sand, Ruby, and the Tensional Selves

When I search for my inner strength, I notice parts of it scattered in objects, rituals, and symbols.
My dreams are not only images: they ask for instruments to remain alive.
Like Morpheus in Sandman, I too feel the need to reclaim my helm, my sand, and my ruby — not as external possessions, but as fragments of myself dispersed in the world. Each tool is a piece of my consciousness that must return to its rightful place.

The Original Paradigm: Objects as Extensions of the Mind

In Amerindian paradigms, there was no rigid separation between body, mind, and object.
A necklace, a staff, or a painting were not “things,” but living extensions of consciousness, carriers of memory, belonging, and spirituality.
Morpheus’s helm, sand, and ruby symbolize tensional selves — existential states shaped by memories and emotions that crystallize into symbols.

The avatar Math explains: “Every object of power is an existential equation. It is the invisible calculation that organizes memory, emotion, and action into one flow.”

The Old World’s Domestication

The Old World, however, domesticated objects into property.
What once extended the self was reduced to commodity, inheritance, or fetish.

• The helm, once existential protection, became a symbol of war.
  
  

• The sand, once time and flow, became measurement and control.
  
  

• The ruby, once a crystal of energy, became currency and ostentation.
  
  

In Sandman, when Morpheus’s tools are stolen, we see precisely this domestication: power turned into possession and manipulation.

Sleep Science and Evidence

Morpheus’s tools can be interpreted as cognitive functions distributed in N2 sleep:

• Helm → protection against external stimuli: linked to K-complexes and sleep spindles, which “shield” the brain from interruptions.
  
  

• Sand → inner time transition: tied to the consolidation of episodic and semantic memory.
  
  

• Ruby → condensed emotional energy: associated with emotional processing, where dreams weave feelings into coherent narratives.
  
  

EEG and NIRS research shows that N2 is a key stage for consolidating tensional selves — memories and emotions that become stable structures of identity.

Zone 1, Zone 2, and Zone 3

• Zone 1: we use symbolic objects only as practical tools (property).
  
  

• Zone 2: we recognize these objects as living extensions of the self, opening existential plasticity.
  
  

• Zone 3: when the tools are hijacked (as in Sandman), they cease to be part of us and become instruments of ideological domination.
  
  

Morpheus’s quest to recover his tools mirrors our own: reclaiming inner symbols from Zone 3 captivity and reintegrating them in Zone 2.

Synthesis

Morpheus’s tools are not simple artifacts: they are metaphors for the mind distributed across symbols, memory, and belonging.

• In original paradigms, objects extended the self.
  
  

• In the Old World, they were domesticated into property and control.
  
  

• In science, they map onto N2 sleep functions that consolidate memory and emotion.
  
  

• In our framework, they embody tensional selves, organizers of existential life.
  
  

Or, as the avatar Math concludes:
“Helm, sand, and ruby are not things: they are equations of being, fragments of my tensional self that must remain in harmony for the dream to stay alive.”

Suggested References:

• Graeber, D. & Wengrow, D. (2021). The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
  
  

• Iber, C. et al. (2007). The AASM Manual for the Scoring of Sleep and Associated Events.
  
  

• Lüthi, A. (2014). Sleep spindles: where they come from, what they do. Neuroscientist.
  
  Adultization FALAN LatBrain SfN 2025
  

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