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CHAPTER 1
SUBSTANCE OR SHADOW
"There is no reason why we should not get together while we can and tell each other our dreams."— Plato, The Apology.
Notwithstanding its world-war, the twentieth century has wrought a truce between the Apocalyptic lion and lamb. Science, represented by Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, Dr. Carl Jung of Zurich, Dr. Morton Prince of Boston, M. Jules Bois of Paris, Mr. Havelock Ellis of London, and numerous other savants of France, Italy, England and America, has granted the existence of a sixth sense, the subconsciousness, clairvoyance, crystal-gazing and dream interpretation.
Thus a cosmic circle, formed of the thought of the ages, has merged ultra-modernism and ancient myth. The recent cognizance taken of dreams by physiology as well as by psychology, savors strongly of ancient philosophy; and an astonishing similarity between twentieth century thought and that of ante-Christianity is apparent in the resuscitated science of dream interpretation. The practice of translating dreams and of searching for their meaning was forgotten by the educated classes during the ages intervening between remote antiquity and our own era, albeit it was to a certain extent kept alive by the superstition of the masses, who, despite the ridicule of the enlightened few, clung to their dreams and to the established and symbolical interpretation thereof. They were a fantastic antidote for the oppression and misery of the lower classes during the Middle Ages.
The emphasis with which the wise men of each century affirm or deny the validity of dreams indexes the enlightenment, spiritual or mental, of the era in question.
In the dawn of recorded history dreams were held as divine. The Egyptians Chaldeans, Greeks and Romans studied, recorded, and classified their visions, and various degrees of importance and divers meanings were attached thereto. Divinatory and prophetic qualities were attributed to the higher, holier dreams, and the temples of antiquity, notably those of Greece and Egypt, were provided with dormitories wherein the supplicant might slumber and await the message of his dream.
From Noah in Genesis to John on Patmos the Bible abounds in dreams. That Jehovah of the Jews is believed to have appeared to His chosen ones as they slept is evidenced by the reverence with which Moses, Abraham, Elijah and other mighty men of the historic past received these nocturnal messages.
"For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instructions." Thus spoke Elihu, son of Barachel, to Job.
The prevalent belief that men were unerringly consoled, warned or punished according to their deserts, established dreams as a medium for the expression of Divine wishes, whether these were thundered from Sinai by Him of the Unspeakable Name, or whether they were attributed to Osiris, the mighty, or to Zeus of the human foibles and numerous loves.
The visions of Abraham were undoubtedly dreams and God's promises were made to him as he slept. "And the Lord appeared unto Abraham and said: Unto thy seed will I give this land and there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him."
Philo Judeas (25 B. C.) in his "Book of Giants and of Civil Life," pronounces Abraham the first dream interpreter.
Believers in an anthropomorphic Deity will note the significant fact that, notwithstanding His love for Abraham, when the latter sinned by denying Sarah as his wife to Abimelech, King of Gorar, God appeared to Abimelech in a dream of warning. And when Abimelech answered horror-stricken: "Lord, wilt Thou slay a righteous nation?" a dream reassured him: "Nay, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart."
Herodotus and Josephus regard dreams with reverence, and their historical characters rely upon visions for counsel and guidance, but time has lessened the humility of the world toward these messages. Though still heeded as auguries and portents, dreams had obviously lost their esoteric significance and had assumed the nature of personal premonitions. Herod the Tetrarch dreams of his brother's death, and Mariamne, Herod's wife, is warned that her own beautiful body must perish, and these dreams, though verified, savour of the gathering shades of superstition rather than the glow of faith.
Even the warnings of Christ's birth brought to Herod's dream interpreters the mere foreshadowing of an earthly monarch who might supplant the weak despot on a tottering throne held at the caprice of Rome. While the thunderous portents of the Christian Era were translated to Herod's puerile egotism as earthly rivalry, until, shivering under his own pigmy conception, he issued the edict that "fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet," the proclamation that spread woe among the mothers of Judea.
Joseph's dreams concerning the son of Mary seem to have left him troubled and somewhat puzzled, while the forewarning sent to Pontius Pilate's wife pierces the centuries as the cry of an anxious woman, rather than the wail of a soul over the tragedy of all ages.
Mary the Virgin and Saint Elizabeth dreamed with clearer vision than did their contemporaries, or than did the smoke-smothered oracles of the past, but these two stood alone, even as Saint John of the mystic Revelation and Saint Paul, who became blind that he might see, were the pharos of their time, shining upon a world darkened with the double shadow that holds when the stars are set and before the sun has risen.
Thus at the time of Christ's coming, not only men's dreamings, but their very souls had lost the sweep of the spiritual and had materialized to a circumstance in the individual life.
The legend of the voice crying across the waters of the Nile, mourning the death of Pan, the god of nature, was founded upon a pilot's dream, yet it bore its literal and prophetic meaning: Pan's day was actually done, the sun had set upon old faiths; and although a brighter day was dawning a long darkness must follow before the sun could wax sufficiently strong to penetrate the materialism of the crepuscular mid-era. This chaos, however, prevailed chiefly in the civilized world. In the barbarous north, for the most part unknown and uncharted, the old gods held sway; the Druids prophesied and dreamed in their groves, and faith and vision remained mystic, strong and true. Saxo Grammaticus and Livy describe auguries, oracles and vivid, sentient dreams, invariably fulfilled, whether of good or evil portent, and received trustfully as sacred messages. They dealt with armies, dynasties and the fate of nations, and with arcana celestial or diabolical rather than with the ordinary individual. The women accompanied their men to battle, counseling with celestial wisdom or healing wounds by magic and by the art of simples. The prophetesses were called Vollen and their songs and lamentations were echoed in the north long after the introduction of Christianity; besides the Vollen there were the Valkyren, dreaming, battling maidens, whose celestial attributes entitled them to immortality, for piety was commingled with ferocity in the hearts of these deep-bosomed dreamers of the north. Vitellius, the first Emperor to make use of the northern troops to become ruler of Rome, was invariably accompanied by one of these sybils who interpreted his dreams. Boadicea, the "British Warrior-Queen," was of this race, as were Villeda, the renowned maid who dwelt in a lonely tower in the Bructerian forest and whose dreams forecast victory for her people and defeat to the Romans, and Ganna, the wise woman who chrsed as lustily as she blessed and who went with her people to battle. The dreams and visions of these women are in sturdy contrast to the timid remonstrance of the wife of Pontius Pilate, or to the vaporings of Calphurnia, the spouse of Julius Caesar.
Yet civilization in the south has ever held its few seekers after the old dreams and ideals, and the teachings of these rare spirits, whether pagan or Christian, were to loom large in future thought. Plotinus, founder of the school of neo-Platonists, and his pupils, lamblichus, Porphyry and Proclus, united and revived the doctrines of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus, who lived in the third century during the reign of Alexander Severus, not only persuaded the Emperor to many deeds of clemency and kindness, but he is said to have inspired Alexander's treatise upon dreams and divination. The influence of Plotinus was not, however, confined to followers of the pagan deities. The Greek fathers, Basil, Clement and Gregory, and, at a later date, Saint Augustine, and still later the mediaeval mystics, Anselm and Hugh de Lorraine, absorbed largely of the teachings of Plotinus upon dreams and other occult subjects. These Christians were, to be sure, of the elect and understanding few; Plotinus was generally held in horror by the followers of orthodox Christianity, who consigned him to oblivion as soon as might be. Here he remained, save for an occasional plagiarist, until the twentieth century restored him to his own.
In the second century Artemidorus compiled a dream book. His claim of having been aided in the work by Apollo Daldianus probably accounts for the obloquy that succeeding generations have cast upon his name. However, his dream dictionary, in four volumes, forms the basis of dream interpretation and symbolism of the present day.
Synesius, the paradoxical pagan bishop of the fourth century, whose manful defense of Cyrenaica and Ptolemais when those cities were besieged by barbarians, adds a touch of quaintness to his history, wrote a treatise upon dreams entitled "De Insomnis." Before he became a Christian he was a pupil of Hypatia. His recipes for creating dreams are preserved in the Leyden Papyri.
Ambrose, the saintly Bishop of Milan, wrote a treatise on dreams in which he testifies as to the fulfillment in every detail of a dream in which he was commanded to open the earth at a certain spot and to exhume the bodies of two martyrs, dead two hundred years. He found the bodies and obeyed the command to bury them with Christian rites.
The clear vision of the few, however, failed to lighten the blindness of the world, and the majority of thoughts and dreams must follow the outward trend of events.
Despite the barbarity of the rising nations that were to rule the world after the fall of Rome, early Christianity gathered strength therefrom, and the invigoration developed a certain ferocious fervor not altogether congruous with the spirit of the Founder of the Faith. The first compulsory conversions to Christianity, under Charlemagne in the eighth century, blazed the path for future persecutions. The din and clamor of clashing faiths sent mystics and dreamers to seek the silence of the deserts of Arabia and of Africa, where the cenobites and hermits might dream in peace and keep alive the Spirit of the Master.
The expulsion of the Druids, who were compelled to hold their meetings beneath the trees at night, founded the legend of the Witches Sabbath, the nightmare of the Middle Ages.
The legends of King Arthur's Court and of the Quest of the Grail were but visions, dreams higher than the dreamers knew, and the mental progenitors of the Crusades.
The inception of the Crusades was a visionary's dream, and the end a nightmare. The barons and princes who dreamed of following the footsteps of the Saviour and of regaining the Holy Sepulchre for Christianity, found a rude awakening at the hands of the Saracens. Their return filled Europe with broken lives. The legend of vampirism is scientifically traceable to nightmare induced by physical, leprous conditions. The peasantry, neglected and starving during the absence of landowners in the Holy Land, were fit subjects for infection, and thus the nightmare of the vampire grew and spread. To the fancy distorted by disease fairies became witches, religion bigotry; all things bright, happy, or wholesome, were forgotten by a tortured world; God Himself became personified Revenge. Mawkish sentimentality, strongly flavored with Oriental sensualism, confined the women to castles. They were permitted wings, but denied nether limbs, a relegation scarcely conducive to health or happiness. The sterility of the moyen age resulted and its very mysticism was perverted in its dreaming. The pietistic imagination dwelt ravenously upon bodily agony, the marks of the stigmata, physical temptations and hysteria. Witches and sorcerers, the dream manufacturers and hypnotists of that day, flourished apace, until in sheer reaction the Renaissance robbed dreams of their morbid significance and left them empty visions by declaring that they held no meaning whatsoever. Materialistic joys now put a suffering world to shame; there were no more portentous dreams, no more Witches Sabbaths; God not only ceased to appear Himself, but would not permit Satan to do so. An era of practicality followed: utilitarianism, the sciences of mathematics and medicine buried traditions, dreams and abstract truths without partiality. Then, suddenly, a new science came to the fore and resuscitated not only truths that had heretofore been challenged, but symbols, traditions and dreams.
She came as a clean-cut, clear-eyed creature whose practical tolerance silenced anaemic orthodoxy, while the sturdy commonsense of her raiment was in absurd contrast to the rainbow wings of ancient faith. The knowledge that the dreams and visions of the world had been driven from the realm of fact by her grandparents, the eighteenth century sciences, only stimulated her interest in the banished legends.
With a laugh she unearthed the dreams of past ages and resurrected their accompanying faith. Myths, gods and heroes were likewise revived and with their return to earth were accepted as psychological entities. Dreams were investigated, recorded and labeled with their classification, origin and pedigree. Symbols to which ancestral memory had always clung were recognized and accepted.
The news that Modern Science had rehabilitated dreams was flashed around the wire-bound world. Volumes upon the subject were promptly forthcoming. Psychologists and students proceeded to analyze their own dreams and those of their long-suffering friends. Whenever an unwary dreamer could be induced to reveal his dream his soul was dissected with a thoroughness that warned against future confidences. The scalpel, microscope and X-ray were alike invoked. Diviners and oracles of the past had become the dream analysts of super-civilization.
The preservation of dreams in man's memory is their strongest claim to consideration. The fact that amid the myriad evanescent visions of the dream-world any one dream should be sufficiently strong to figure in human history, is in itself proof of the importance of the dream state. But for these examples the transient character of the average dream, its apparent irrelevance, and above all the frequency of its occurrence, would relegate it to a functional rather than to a phenomenal condition. In the former circumstance the average person could no more recall his dream than he could recollect the normal beating of his heart, the circulation of his blood, or his respiration.
Yet notwithstanding their proverbial fragility, dreams have frequently coped with time, which is even more destructive than death, in that death may leave in its wake memories which time destroys. The pyramids of Egypt have thus far defied time, so have Buddhism, Christianity, a few of the more precious legends and — dreams. Dreams came before man found articulate thoughts or words for the myriad symbols that crowded his brain with the persistence and regularity of a physical process. Despite their infinite throngs on countless nights in unnumbered brains, many dreams have been preserved and handed down to posterity. We may forget our thoughts of the past, our opinions, the garments that we wore, or even the friends whom we loved, but memory holds our more significant dreams from our very childhood. Herodotus does not tell us what Xerxes wore, nor how he looked, nor whom he loved, yet one of the Persian King's dreams altered the course of history.
Xerxes, bewildered by quarreling counsellors, some of whom advised the campaign against Greece, whilst others opposed it, had fallen into a troubled sleep. A tall, beautiful figure appeared to his dream and urged the continuance of the expedition. Xerxes, however, remained undecided. A second time the admonitory figure appeared. Puzzled, Xerxes summoned Artabanus, a counsellor who had opposed the undertaking. Artabanus sneered at his master's weakness, whereupon Xerxes, whose superstition makes him human through the centuries, became indignant and commanded Artabanus to don the royal robes, place himself upon the kingly couch and await developments. The figure presently appeared to Artabanus, but its respectful demeanor was replaced by a ferocity that frightened Artabanus into withdrawing his opposition to the expedition.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Fabric of Dreams"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Katherine Taylor Craig.
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