Dreams have probably always been of interest to humankind. Their vivid,
emotional and strange events would have gained attention and required explanations.
It is likely that in early societies, unencumbered by the multitude of
distractions that affect people today, many significant truths about dreams
were discovered.
Among the earliest surviving writings of humans,
there are references to specific dream meanings and prophetic dreams. There
were gods and goddesses of dreams, reflecting the significance of dreaming.
Clay tablets bearing cuneiform script, found
at the site of the great library at Nineveh (5000 BC) referred to particular
dream meanings. While in Babylonia, the goddess of dreams, Mamu, was worshipped.
The ancient Egyptians paid much attention
to their dreams. Dream 'incubation' was practised at Serapeums - temples
named after the god of dreams, Serapis. The procedure was intended to encourage
an especially informative dream that would be interpreted by the 'learned
men of the magic library'.
The incubant would sleep at the temple (or
could send a stand-in) after undergoing, perhaps for several days, various
rituals of cleansing, fasting, abstaining from sex, making offerings, and
praying. Sometimes, harmless snakes were placed near the bed. All these
unusual situations probably put the incubant in the frame of mind - of
expectation - to have a meaningful dream.
Incubation seems to have been enormously popular
and effective - major dream temples existed at Thebes and Memphis in Egypt
and at many other sites in the Middle East. Incubated dreams were used
to discover the appropriate cure for an illness - say, particular herbs
to use - and advice on many topics such as what to do about a relationship,
or to know the future.
Some ancient papyri provide lists of dream
themes and their corresponding meaning. One such document from the XIIIth
dynasty (1770 BC) states that if a woman dreams of kissing her husband,
trouble lays ahead. This is an example of an 'opposite' - a notion that
often crops up in dream interpretation everywhere - i.e. the apparent dream
topic in fact means the reverse. Thus, too, a dream of death may presage
a birth.
Visitors to the sphinx can see an inscription
placed there by Thutmose IV (c1450 BC) recording that, while asleep by
the sphinx, he was promised the kingdom by the god Hormakhu in return for
clearing away the sand from the statue.
In ancient Chinese society, it was believed
that the soul ('hun') went on nightly visits during sleep. One important
manuscript, the Lie-tseu, listed six different types of dream : ordinary
dreams, terror dreams, day-residue dreams, dreams of waking, joyful dreams
and dreams of fear.
External stimuli were known to be incorporated
into dreams, so that if one slept on a belt, a snake might be dreamed of.
Singing and dancing meant imminent weeping - again, the concept of opposites.
The wonderful 4th century BC sage Chuang-tzu
considered that life is itself a dream :
'While men are dreaming, they do not perceive
that it is a dream. Some will even have a dream in a dream and only when
they wake they know it was as dream.
And so, when the Great Awakening comes upon
us, shall we know this life to be a great dream. Fools believe themselves
to be awake now.' (Mc Kenzie, 1965, Page 57)
The Christian Bible relates several accounts
of dreams as divine revelations. In the Old Testament there are some fifteen
dream mentioned, which coincided with critical times in the development
of Judaism. Dreams would recur until appropriate action was taken. Such
a case was that of the dream of the Pharaoh who dreamed of the seven fat
cattle which were eaten by seven skeletal ones (Genesis, 41-43).
The puzzling dream was deciphered by Joseph,
who was recommended by the Pharaoh's servant. Joseph recognised it as a
dream of the future and the fact that a Pharaoh received the dream pointed
to a major, national matter.
Joseph saw the dream as illustrating seven
years of plentiful harvest, followed by seven years of little or no harvest.
The Pharaoh acted on the interpretation and set about building up large
stores of grain. The interpretation apparently saved the country and the
ruling system.
In the New Testament, four dreams of an important
nature happened to Mary's husband, Joseph. The first encouraged him to
accept her pregnancy, the next told them to flee to Egypt, the third informed
them of Herod's death, and another told them to move to Galilee.
For a few hundred years after the death of
Christ, Christian writers commented on dreams, but in the Middle Ages,
any interest in dreams was seriously curtailed when the subject was linked
with sorcery.
Highly symbolic dreams were reported relating
to the life of Gautama, who became the Buddha, around 500 BC. His mother,
Queen Maya, dreamed of being pregnant with an elephant which was shining
silver/white and possessed six tusks.
For a long time it had been predicted that
a chosen one would arrive, and this dream was seen by the interpreters
as an announcement of the arrival.
Gautama's father, King Cudhodana, experienced a
dream of his son leaving the royal family and becoming a monk ; and Gautama's
wife, Gopa, saw herself in a dream naked, with hand and feet amputated,
and viewing various catastrophic scenes. Gautama saw it as representing
him leaving her and the family in order to seek enlightenment.
Dreams seem to have been of some consequence
in the building of Islam. The angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to
Muhammad and dictated the fist chapter, or Sura, of the Koran, and the
adhan, or call to prayers by the muezzin from a minaret, was dreamed by
one of Muhammad's disciples and subsequently incorporated into the daily
prayer ritual.
In a dream or vision of Muhammad that he had
in Mecca in 620 AD, he 'journeyed' in the company of the Archangel Gabriel
and angels. He travelled on a strange creature called a Buraq and was taken
to holy places (such as Mount Sinai and Jerusalem), seven levels of heaven
of hell, and met significant religious leaders and prophets from the past,
including Adam, Zacharias, John the Baptist, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
This famous experience of Muhammad has been termed the Isra and Miraj or
Night Journey.
The ancient Tibetan Book of the Dead (also
known as the Bardo Thodol) which came to Western knowledge only in the
20th century, states basically that death is a dream-like condition. The
book describes the three distinct illusory states (Chikai, Chonyid and
Sidpa) which generate visions - pleasant and fearful - based on the individual's
expectations.
If at any time the individual can recognise
the situation as being unreal - like becoming 'lucid' (i.e. aware of being
in an ongoing nocturnal dream), the soul elevates to a higher plane and
so avoids the constant cycle of death and rebirth.
An ancient Indian book of wisdom - the Atharva
Veda (1500 - 1000 BC) - comments on dreams. To be passive in dreams, or
suffer some kind of loss in them was considered to be a bad omen, whereas
aggressive dreams were favourable, even if the dreamer suffered mutilation.
If a series of dreams were recalled in the
night, only the last should be interpreted - indicating that a refining
process was operating during sleep until an appropriate conclusion was
reached. For the first time, the dreamer's personality type (phlegmatic,
sanguine, bilious) was taken into account in the interpretation.,
Regarding dreams of the future, it was stated
that the later in the night the dream happened, the sooner the actual event
would occur.
Hypnos was the Greek god of sleep, and Morpheus
the god of dreams. An early Greek idea was that a god or a ghost would
visit the dreamer, entering the room through a keyhole.
Dream incubation was widely practised in Greece,
especially for acquiring useful information that would bring about a cure
for an illness. A famous sleep temple existed at Epidaurus. It was dedicated
to Asclepius - the god of medicine. The dreams that people experienced
while sleeping there were interpreted by physician-priests.
We don't really know how effective the technique
of dream incubation was, but it lasted for thousands of years and many
grateful incubants left testimonials inscribed on the walls of temples.
There may have been various forms of trickery involved, such as voice-production,
and the surreptitious administration of drugs but, equally, the strong
anticipation built up in the incubant was probably enough to initiate the
necessary dream.
In the seminal Treatise on Dreams, attributed
to Hippocrates, it was asserted that dreams could indicate imminent disease,
by way of symbolism. A dream of seeing bright stars would indicate a healthy
body, whereas observing dim stars preceded illness. A dream of rivers pointed
to an excess of blood. Thus, the microcosm of the body's state of health,
was associated with the macrocosm outside.
While Hippocrates accepted that some dreams
were 'divine', Aristotle refuted the notion. In his work On Sleep and Waking,
he pointed out that if the gods sent dreams, then only intelligent and
learned people should receive them. He also noted that lowly animals dream.
Plato, pre-stating Freud, wrote that we possess 'a lawless wild beast nature
which peers out in sleep'.
Roman beliefs about dreams were similar to
those of Greece. Their premonitory aspect was taken seriously and the historian
Plutarch mentioned that Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar, dreamed of
his assassination the night before it occurred.
The emperor Augustus actually made a law that
in parts of the Roman Empire, anyone having a dream about its welfare had
to announce the dream in a market-place.
It is reported that the day before the tyrannical
and mad Roman emperor Caligula was assassinated in 96 AD, he had a dream
in which he was standing by the heavenly throne of Jupiter, when the god
gave him a push with the big toe of his right foot, causing Caligula to
tumble to earth.
A most outstanding legacy of Roman dream interpretation
is the five volume Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams), compiled
by Artemidorus of Daldis (c 200 AD). He drew on much earlier information
and the work reveals the extensive nature of the topic. The work includes
over 3000 dream reports.
It was clearly understood that each dream
was individual to the dreamer - the various symbols and associations were
personal. There were two broad classes of dreams : Insomnium, about everyday
things, and Somnium, concerning the future.
In a systematic approach, it was initially
decided whether the events were natural, lawful, customary for the dreamer,
and so on. Verbal puns
were recognised and symbolism identified. Ploughing the ground was
known to be a sexual symbol ; the mouth might represent a home and the
teeth the people in it. Much accumulated knowledge was crystalised into
those major insightful volumes.