Global Dream Journal

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Dreams through history

For at least four thousand years, people have asked what their dreams mean. Here are ten of the ways they have answered, roughly in time order: from clay tablets and papyrus to the Upanishads, from Freud and Jung to today's sleep labs. Each summary is short and lists its sources, so you can read further.

Global Dream Journal records your dreams, in your words, with paintings. It doesn't decide what they mean for you. If you like, you can ask for a reflection in one of these traditions on any dream in your catalog.

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Ancient Iraq, from the 3rd millennium BCE

Mesopotamian dream texts

The approach

In ancient Mesopotamia some dreams were treated as direct messages from a god, often to a king, while others were puzzling signs that needed an expert to read. Scholars wrote down long omen lists in the form "if a man dreams this, then that will happen," gathered in the Assyrian Dream Book, known after the dream god Zaqīqu (Ziqīqu). In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero dreams of a star and an axe falling to earth, and his mother, the goddess Ninsun, reads them as the coming of his friend Enkidu. A bad dream was not only read but could be "undone" with rituals.

Lasting impact

Oppenheim's split between "message dreams" and "symbolic dreams" is still the standard way scholars describe ancient Near Eastern dreams, and the "if you dream this, expect that" format echoes through later dream books.

Sources

  • Oppenheim, A. Leo (1956). "The Interpretation of Dreams in the Ancient Near East, with a Translation of an Assyrian Dream-Book." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 46(3): 179–373. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • George, Andrew, trans. (1999). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Classics. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Butler, Sally A. L. (1998). Mesopotamian Conceptions of Dreams and Dream Rituals. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 258. Ugarit-Verlag. Link (opens in a new tab)

Egypt, c. 1275 BCE

Ancient Egyptian dream texts

The approach

The oldest known Egyptian dream manual, the Ramesside "Dream Book" (Papyrus Chester Beatty III), was written around the reign of Ramesses II. Each line begins "if a man sees himself in a dream," names the dream, calls it good or bad, and gives its meaning, with the word "bad" written in red ink. Many readings work through wordplay, linking the dream image to its meaning by a pun. The book was kept and passed down by a family of scribes at Deir el-Medina, the village of the royal tomb builders.

Lasting impact

It is the earliest surviving Egyptian dream book, and later Egyptian dream books continued the tradition into Greek and Roman times. It shows dream reading treated as a practical, written skill, like medicine or law.

Sources

  • The British Museum. "The Dream Book" (Papyrus Chester Beatty III, EA 10683), 19th Dynasty, Deir el-Medina. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Gardiner, Alan H. (1935). Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, Third Series: Chester Beatty Gift. British Museum.
  • Szpakowska, Kasia (2003). Behind Closed Eyes: Dreams and Nocturnal Visions in Ancient Egypt. Classical Press of Wales.

India, c. 1000–300 BCE

Vedic and Upanishadic India

The approach

The Atharvaveda includes hymns to Sleep and charms against bad dreams (duḥsvapna), treating a troubling dream as something to be sent away. The Upanishads turn inward: the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad describes the dreamer making a whole world out of their own light, and the Mandukya Upanishad names dreaming (svapna) as one of four states of the self, alongside waking, deep sleep and a "fourth" beyond them. Here the dream is less a message to decode than a window onto consciousness itself.

Lasting impact

The waking–dreaming–deep-sleep model still shapes yoga and meditation teaching today, and Indian thinkers kept using the dream to ask a deep question: how do we know what is real?

Sources

  • Whitney, William Dwight, trans.; Lanman, Charles R., ed. (1905). Atharva-Veda Samhita, Book XIX, hymns 56–57. Harvard Oriental Series 7–8. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Olivelle, Patrick, trans. (1996). Upaniṣads. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press. (Brihadaranyaka 4.3; Mandukya.)
  • O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger (1984). Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities. University of Chicago Press. Link (opens in a new tab)

Greece and Rome, 2nd century CE

Artemidorus, Oneirocritica

The approach

Artemidorus of Daldis travelled the Mediterranean collecting dreams and what happened afterward, then wrote the five books of the Oneirocritica ("The Interpretation of Dreams"). He separated everyday dreams that just replay the day's worries from meaningful dreams that point ahead. His key rule was that the same image means different things for different people, so he asked about the dreamer's work, health, age and circumstances before reading a dream.

Lasting impact

It is the only dream-interpretation manual to survive from classical antiquity. It was translated into Arabic in the 9th century and fed the Islamic dream books, and Freud discussed it in his own Interpretation of Dreams.

Sources

  • Harris-McCoy, Daniel E. (2012). Artemidorus' Oneirocritica: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Oxford University Press. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Price, S. R. F. (1986). "The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus." Past & Present 113: 3–37. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Lamoreaux, John C. (2002). The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (chapter on Hunayn ibn Ishaq and the Arabic Artemidorus). SUNY Press. Link (opens in a new tab)

Islamic world, from the 8th century CE

Ibn Sirin and Islamic dream interpretation

The approach

In Islamic tradition, a good and true dream (ruʾyā) is held in high regard, and the art of interpreting it is called taʿbīr, from a root meaning "to cross over." Interpreters weighed the Qur'an, the sayings of the Prophet, proverbs, language and the character of the dreamer. Muhammad ibn Sirin of Basra (d. 728/729 CE) was remembered as the master interpreter of his age, and his readings were passed down as stories. The well-known dream book sold under his name was compiled later; scholars such as John Lamoreaux have shown the attribution does not hold, though the book is still widely read.

Lasting impact

Early Muslim scholars built one of the richest dream-interpretation literatures in the world, and dream interpretation is still a living, respected practice for many Muslims today. For religious questions, people turn to their own scholars and teachers.

Sources

  • Lamoreaux, John C. (2002). The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation. SUNY Press. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Fahd, Toufic (1966). La divination arabe: études religieuses, sociologiques et folkloriques sur le milieu natif de l'Islam. Brill.

Tibet, from about the 11th century CE

Tibetan dream yoga

The approach

Dream yoga (milam) is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa, a set of advanced Tibetan Buddhist practices, and it also has a long lineage in the Bön tradition. Its aim is not to decode a dream's symbols but to recognise, while dreaming, that you are dreaming, and to carry that clear awareness through sleep and waking life alike. The practices are traditionally learned from a qualified teacher, as part of a wider path.

Lasting impact

Books by teachers such as Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche brought these ideas to Western readers and helped shape today's interest in lucid dreaming and meditation around sleep.

Sources

  • Wangyal Rinpoche, Tenzin (1998). The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Snow Lion. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Mullin, Glenn H. (2005). The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary. Snow Lion.

North America, many nations

Native American traditions

The approach

There is no single "Native American" dream tradition: there are hundreds of nations, each with its own understanding and its own rules about sharing. Seventeenth-century Huron (Wendat) and Haudenosaunee people saw dreams as the hidden wishes of the soul, which the community helped fulfil. In Ojibwe life, dreams could be real encounters with other-than-human persons who give blessings and abilities. Many Plains peoples sought visions as sources of power and direction, and at Zuni, who hears a dream, and when, is part of its meaning. Among Southeastern nations, Cherokee accounts recorded by James Mooney treat dreams as real events with real effects (a dream of being bitten by a snake was treated like an actual bite), and Muscogee (Creek) accounts collected by John Swanton describe a personal spirit, inu'tska ("his talent, his genius"), that talks to a person in their dreams.

Lasting impact

Anthropologist Anthony Wallace noted in 1958 that the 17th-century Haudenosaunee and Huron theory of dreams as the soul's hidden wishes anticipated Freud by about 250 years. Most published records were written by outsiders, such as missionaries and anthropologists, so they are a partial view.

With respect

This knowledge belongs to the nations it comes from. Some ceremonies, such as the Lakota haŋbléčeya (vision quest), are restricted: Lakota spiritual leaders have asked that they be kept for Native people. So the Journal's reflections in this tradition draw only on published, documented themes, name the nation each theme comes from, and never offer symbol dictionaries, ceremonies or how-to. Most of the written record comes from outsiders, so it is a partial view.

Sources

  • Wallace, Anthony F. C. (1958). "Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory among the Seventeenth Century Iroquois." American Anthropologist 60(2): 234–248. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Hallowell, A. Irving (1960). "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View." In Culture in History, ed. S. Diamond, 19–52. Columbia University Press. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Irwin, Lee (1994). The Dream Seekers: Native American Visionary Traditions of the Great Plains. University of Oklahoma Press. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Tedlock, Barbara, ed. (1987). Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge University Press. (Includes her chapter on Zuni and Quiché dream sharing.) Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Mooney, James (1900). Myths of the Cherokee. 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1 (section 49, "The Snake Tribe"; see also Mooney 1891, The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees). Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Swanton, John R. (1928). "Religious Beliefs and Medical Practices of the Creek Indians." 42nd Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology: 473–672. Link (opens in a new tab)

Vienna, 1899

Sigmund Freud

The approach

In The Interpretation of Dreams (published in November 1899 and dated 1900), Freud argued that every dream is the disguised fulfilment of a wish. The story we remember is the "manifest content"; underneath lies the "latent content," the hidden thoughts and wishes. The mind's "dream-work" disguises them, by condensation (squeezing several ideas into one image) and displacement (moving strong feelings onto something minor). Freud called dream interpretation the "royal road" to the unconscious.

Lasting impact

The book founded psychoanalytic dream work and spread the idea, now everywhere in culture, that dreams have personal meaning. Later sleep science challenged it: Hobson and McCarley's activation-synthesis theory (1977) argued dreams begin in random brainstem activity, though the debate is still alive.

Sources

  • Freud, Sigmund (1900 [1899]). The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. A. A. Brill (1913), Macmillan. Free at Project Gutenberg. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Hobson, J. Allan, and Robert W. McCarley (1977). "The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream Process." American Journal of Psychiatry 134(12): 1335–1348. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Solms, Mark (2000). "Dreaming and REM Sleep Are Controlled by Different Brain Mechanisms." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6): 843–850. Link (opens in a new tab)

Zurich, 20th century

Carl Jung

The approach

Jung broke with Freud and saw dreams not as disguises but as natural, honest messages that speak in symbols. Beyond our personal memories he described a "collective unconscious" shared by all people, full of archetypes, recurring figures such as the shadow, the wise old man or the great mother. Dreams often compensate, balancing a one-sided attitude in waking life. To read one, he asked what each image means to the dreamer, then "amplified" it with myths, art and folklore.

Lasting impact

His ideas shaped dream groups, art therapy and the language of archetypes, and inspired artists and myth scholars such as Joseph Campbell. His own illustrated Red Book, published in 2009, showed how much of his thinking grew from painting his dreams and visions.

Sources

  • Jung, C. G. "On the Nature of Dreams" (1945/1948). In Collected Works, Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Princeton University Press. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Jung, C. G., and M.-L. von Franz, eds. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Aldus Books / Doubleday. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Jung, C. G. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus. Ed. Sonu Shamdasani. W. W. Norton.
  • EBSCO Research Starters. "The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell" (on Jung's influence on Campbell). Link (opens in a new tab)

Sleep labs, 1953 to today

Modern neuroscience

The approach

In 1953 Aserinsky and Kleitman discovered REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and linked it with vivid dreaming. In 1977 Hobson and McCarley proposed that dreams arise when the forebrain makes a story out of bursts of activity from the brainstem. Later research suggests sleep and dreams help sort memories and soften difficult emotions, and Revonsuo's threat-simulation theory (2000) proposes that dreams let us rehearse dangers safely. Science looks for what the brain is doing, not for hidden symbolic messages.

Lasting impact

Sleep science turned dreams into something we can measure and study, and it underpins today's understanding of sleep, memory and mental health. How much dreams "mean" is still debated.

Sources

  • Aserinsky, Eugene, and Nathaniel Kleitman (1953). "Regularly Occurring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, During Sleep." Science 118(3062): 273–274. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Hobson, J. Allan, and Robert W. McCarley (1977). "The Brain as a Dream State Generator." American Journal of Psychiatry 134(12): 1335–1348. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Revonsuo, Antti (2000). "The Reinterpretation of Dreams: An Evolutionary Hypothesis of the Function of Dreaming." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(6): 877–901. Link (opens in a new tab)
  • Walker, Matthew P., and Els van der Helm (2009). "Overnight Therapy? The Role of Sleep in Emotional Brain Processing." Psychological Bulletin 135(5): 731–748. Link (opens in a new tab)

Native American dream knowledge belongs to the nations it comes from. Dream-card readings in those traditions draw only on published, documented themes, name the nation each comes from, and never describe ceremonies or offer symbol meanings.
The painting spaces on this page are waiting for original work by Charles Johnson.
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